Gryphon Audio Vanta Speaker Cables
REFERENCE AUDIO – WITHAM ESSEX
BOB’s Review Series - No 42 – Gryphon Audio Vanta Speaker Cables
Introduction – The relatively new Vanta range by Gryphon Audio was introduced in 2020 to celebrate Gryphon’s 35th anniversary and indeed 35 years of making cables. They are built to very high standards using a silver/gold alloy for the conductors, which means they are not designed or indeed priced to be entry level cables and will probably only find their way into systems where similar or considerably more amounts of money have been spent on electronics and speakers. The 2m set of Vanta speaker cables with spade connectors reviewed here costs £12,950/pair (at the time of writing) and an additional £2,250 for every additional half metre pair. A 5m pair would therefore cost £26,450 and if you need jumper links for your speakers a matching pair is an additional £1,750. Alongside speaker cables the Vanta range comprises Interconnects (XLR and RCA), Power Cords, 75 and 110 Ohm Digital and also USB Cables.
Technology – Gryphon use microscopes to ensure perfect terminations when soldering their silver-gold cables to the plugs which are chosen from some of the finest available from Oyaide and Neutrik. Gryphon say they have designed the Vanta cables to ‘identify and control all the major influences that cables have on their ability to pass information without compromising the original signal for a ‘full, free flow of music’, hopefully they will live up to this ambitious goal.
All cable manufacturers make claims that their solution is the best, and why shouldn’t they, but where Gryphon seem to differ is by not claiming their cables enhance the sound. What they say instead is that Gryphon cables ‘reveal with unflinching precision exactly what your audio system is capable of’. The speaker cables use 2 x 13 AWG conductors made of their silver-gold alloy with a non-active silver-plated copper screen all held in a shiny polyurethane jacked that I measured at 11mm diameter.
System Components used in this Review:
Preamp: Gryphon Essence Preamp.
Power Amplifier: Gryphon Essence Stereo Power Amp.
Digital Sources: Innuos Statement Streamer – Marantz SA-11S3 SACD Player.
DAC: PS Audio Directstream DAC.
Analogue Sources: Meridian 204 Tuner and Revox B77 MKII Reel to Reel.
Streaming Sources: Tidal HiFi and Qobuz Hi-Res – Innuos Statement Hard Drive.
Streamer Management: Roon – Innuos Statement acting as Roon Core and Storage
Speakers: Marten Mingus Quintet – with Marten/IsoAcoustic Isolator Feet
Performance – I’ve come across the use of silver-gold alloy conductors only once before and found them to be some of the very best available, seemingly releasing the pent-up performance in the link between your amplifier and speakers. The performance of any cable is also very much reliant on the termination plugs fitted, be they RCA, XLR, Spades or Bananas and I’m glad to report that Gryphon seems more aware of this than most using plugs and sockets selected from some of the best manufacturers. When considering how to terminate their cables manufacturers can of course have no idea what terminals will be provided by the customer’s choice of amp and speakers. Some such as Nagra, Marten, TAD and of course Gryphon gives this interface a lot of thought and build in high quality connectors that offer secure connection to cables whether you chose spades, banana plugs or bare wire. Yet it never ceases to amaze me that some supposedly high end manufactures of amps and speakers give little thought to the connectors they use.
The Gryphon Vanta speaker cables are, they say, designed not to act as filters to colour the sound but are designed to be neutral so that they can reveal what the rest your system is capable of. I can’t of course verify this at home, they may in fact be neutral, but they do have a sound signature which as Gryphon suggest is caused by releasing the potential of my amp and speakers rather than by the cables themselves. Whichever is correct doesn’t really matter because it’s the resulting uplift in sound quality when these cables are placed in circuit that matters to those of us who listen to music rather than equipment, and this is what I found after extended listening and running in.
My first impression was where was all that bass coming from and that feeling was maintained throughout the time I had them wired into my home system. It wasn’t a warmer sound, just deeper and more extended, kind of like adding a sub but without all the hassle. The cables did take a couple of days to burn in but after this any changes to performance were subtle. So there I was listening to a well tried and trusted playlist when it started raining and by coincidence my cat came in soaked but it turned out that I wasn’t hearing the rain outside, I was in fact listening to the introduction of ‘Road To Hell’ by Chris Rea, a track I’ve played many times but I have never heard the rain at the beginning of the track reproduced so realistically (16bit/44.1kHz ripped CD), I nearly went for the umbrella.
Allison Krauss has one of those very distinctive and easily recognised voices that always come across as well defined and clear, so I played ‘When You say Nothing at All’ and her vocals were even better defined than usual with seemingly greater dynamics and emotion, even the backing piano held me spellbound with emotion. ‘Looking For Angeline’ by Love and Money presented James Grant’s voice again with real emotion and a vibrancy seldom heard outside of a live environment. These Vanta cables draw you in, keep your attention and make everything else around you a distraction. I guess using Gryphon’s logic it was just my amp and speakers sounding better than before but of course they couldn’t do this on their own.
‘Cluster One’ from Pink Floyds Division Bell album (Qobuz 192/24) opens with some haunting keyboards and guitars and the Vanta cables rendered this track with utmost clarity, stopping me from writing my notes just to listen uninterrupted. Listen to ‘Into My Arms’ by Roger Daltrey and try not to well up, not easy.
Conclusion – I admit to being mightily impressed by these cables which are truly exceptional and are right up there with the very best. Visually, apart from the lovely terminals and the jewel like alloy splitters at each end of the cables they are not chasing the bling factor, these are cables designed to do a job whist also looking good. Your friends may or may not be impressed when you tell them how much they cost but if your friends know their music, they will love what they do, and so will you. Highly recommended.
Bob – Team Reference Audio