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Elsdon Wonfor Audio LS-40 speaker cables

Cables arrived today, (cheers @Bronzeage )

In now and sounding good, really good - (despite the hifi being off all day due to electrical works happening here today, of all days! )

update later as i am further through the Naim preamp warm up rollercoaster. Looking like very welcome house guests so far!
 
I got my very own 2m LS-40's yesterday following my home trial.
I was wondering about the burn in thing, but within minutes of them arriving they sounded as good, and dare I say even better then the 3m demo pair.
I'd struggle to believe that I can hear the difference between 2 and 3m lengths, but they sound smoother than I remember and an even better investment.
Today they don't seem to have changed after being left playing all night on low, and much of the day on fairly loud.
I'm very happy with what they've done to my system, and may be looking into getting a couple of EWA mains cables next..
Better keep quiet if I do!
 
Cereal Killer said:
So what will they be replacing ;) ?
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he he! Well we are yet to see if anything is permanently replaced (speaks my wallet!) but they have temporarily replaced a pair of WitchHat Phantoms.

Impressions so far are, as others have said: more of everything, an excellent firm, taught but weighty bass and a hear-through quality to tracks I thought i knew inside out.

The Phantoms are no slouches in my setup - Townshend Rock/Superline/NAC52/Dynavector HX1.2 into Shahinian Obelisks and certainly haven’t been disgraced here.

The LS40s are, so far, perhaps a little less open with regard to spatial and high frequency information. The presence range- air, space, echo.. all that. This is perhaps only initial impressions due to a being on a warm up journey - possibly a side effect of a more muscular midrange too.

What i have also noticed with the 40s is the timing: Its impeccable. It has already made me re-evaluate a couple of tracks and subtly changed my understanding of the music and what is actually happening and a couple of clever little flourishes i’d never noticed previously.

A hearty recommendation from me so far then.

Thanks to Alan for the opportunity to try them.
 
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Will be interested to hear more....
@steveinspain Alan assures me there's barely a difference with burn in with his cables. I'm experimenting with mains cables (don't tell anyone!) this weekend and still might ask @ABCaudio to let me have the cables back again at the end of the queue :D
 
ex brickie said:
Will be interested to hear more....
@steveinspain Alan assures me there's barely a difference with burn in with his cables. I'm experimenting with mains cables (don't tell anyone!) this weekend and still might ask @ABCaudio to let me have the cables back again at the end of the queue :D
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I can't argue with Alan on that.
I'd be interested to hear what you find with mains cables, but yes, asking for a second trial can't hurt ( except for the wallet..)
 
jimbot2.0 said:
he he! Well we are yet to see if anything is permanently replaced (speaks my wallet!) but they have temporarily replaced a pair of WitchHat Phantoms.

impressions so far are, as others have said: more of everything, an excellent firm, taught but weighty bass and a hear-through quality to tracks I thought i knew inside out.

The Phantoms are no slouches in my setup - Townshend Rock/Superline/NAC52/Dynavector HX1.2 into Shahinian Obelisks and certainly haven’t been disgraced here.

The LS40s are, so far, perhaps a little less open with regard to spatial and high frequency information. The presence range- air, space, echo.. all that. This is perhaps only initial impressions due to a being on a warm up journey - possibly a side effect of a more muscular midrange too.

what i have also noticed with the 40s is the timing: Its impeccable. It has already made me re-evaluate a couple of tracks and subtly changed my understanding of the music and what is actually happening and a couple of clever little flourishes i’d never noticed previously.

A hearty recommendation from me so far then.

Thanks to Alan for the opportunity to try them.
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It's an absolute pleasure, we're just thrilked with the feedback. I've already made a few minor adjustments to manufacturing as a result.

I hope you enjoy your time with them and your music.:)
 
iansr said:
A pal of mine has some of the new LS80 cables and we recently compared them to my LS25s on his hi end system. There was a marked difference! The best way I can describe it is to say the LS80s just delivered more of everything.

So I’m now curious as to how much difference one would notice between the LS40s and the LS80s. Maybe Colin and Alan would care to comment?
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Hi, I hope you don't mind me chipping in here! I am an EWA cable user and it seems like I am going through much the same process as you all are; testing and upgrading where it works in my system. I found this thread while searching for reviews, as it's nice to know what others think after having come to your own independent conclusions.

I have been using LS-25 for 2 years and LS-20 before that. In the last few weeks I have been testing LS-40 and now LS-80, plus the new IC-25 in balanced and RCA configurations. I have always thought of LS-25 as a destination cable and I can't find anything about it to criticise as such, but some system upgrades prompted me to risk spending more money by trying the new cables! To put things in perspective I use a Rega P10, Aura phono stage, Roksan Blak CD, JS Audio stage 2 upgraded Nu-Vista 600 and PMC 25.26 loudspeakers.

LS-40 was a big upgrade in 2 main areas; depth perception within the soundstage, due to a great increase in definition of each element of the music. Each element takes on a tangible shape, like an artist shading a drawing with highlight and shadow, so you get a true 3D rendition that makes things absolutely holographic. In comparison, LS-25 has great lateral distinction but sounds a bit 2D and each element sounds more like a cardboard cutout than a solid object. LS-40 has much more bass heft with a solid underlying thump that is more felt than heard.

I did feel that LS-25 sounded a bit more incisive with a balance more to mids and uppers and sharper edges to sounds, whereas LS-40 was bit more suppressed and softer in some ways. This could be the LS-40 revealing more ambience in the recording and more attack and decay to expose detail at the edges of notes rather than cutting off tones abruptly, but I don't know.

Whilst I really loved some aspects of LS-40, I could not get the bass to sound quite right in my system. I liked the extra heft but I also got some bloom that I couldn't cure, and this is with using EWA mains and interconnect too. It wasn't bad but made me balance up the pros and cons of the 2 cables to come to a compromise and I wanted a sum of both of them. I was interested to hear that one of you made some similar observations...do you have any similar components in the system?

I put in LS-80 about 3 days back when Alan got a 5m set to me. I have only listened for 3 hours on CD and vinyl so far, but I can already state that these are a game changer on MY system. The scale of presentation is huge and each element in the soundstage has more scale. The stage width is not greater than LS-25 and may actually be very slightly less, but the 3D depth perception is there in spades. Additionally, the heft is absolutely monstrous and it moves me to say it has similar character to my Nu-Vista; an iron fist in a velvet glove. The detail and attack is there and it projects confidently, but it never strays into harshness, even on challenging guitar or vocals. Bass is astonishing, but the great thing is that it is much more controlled in my system, like it is cleaned up much better than LS-40 was doing here. The system sounds the most dynamic and effortless I have ever heard it, like there is no constraint at all holding it back. The PMCs need big current and the amp is able to deliver it. Listening is just so easy and the volume seems largely irrelevant. I crept up to 90dB the other day and had no idea! At low volumes it also sounds balanced and full. Weirdly, the cables seemed to slow-down the music too!

Physically it's a bit of a monster. I installed it without the Mrs at home, but she DID notice it and was moved to say, "It looks like a snake and it's scary!" It doesn't like coiling at all, but you can bend it into a series of straight loops a bit like an alpine road.

Another observation I made when using the new LS-40 and 80; if the new IC-25 is used in the signal path, the synergy of the two seems to exceed expectations of the sum of the two cables. Clarity and noise floor are astonishing.

It's good to know there are other EWA people out there rigorously testing the cables!
 
Cliff, thanks for your post, very informative. I had already decided after the listening session mentioned in my earlier post that I need to get the LS80s but its always good to receive reinforcement!

You sound very happy with your amp but I’d encourage you to audition one of Colin’s amps. If anything they are even more impressive than his cables.
 
iansr said:
Cliff, thanks for your post, very informative. I had already decided after the listening session mentioned in my earlier post that I need to get the LS80s but its always good to receive reinforcement!

You sound very happy with your amp but I’d encourage you to audition one of Colin’s amps. If anything they are even more impressive than his cables.
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Haha,

Yes I would love to, but I have already devastated the savings and my amp is "worth" £6700, so I cannot contemplate changing it. The NV does sound spectacular TBH, especially after John Sampson rebuilt it with top quality components.
 
@CliffB Your findings are interesting as they are different to mine! You seem to have found greater brightness/harshness in the 25s but I found this with the 40s. I agree with your other comments though and there was such a leap in detail from 25s to 40s, even contemplating the 80s is scary! (I haven't checked the price of the 80s so I haven't managed to scare my wallet yet!)

I am wondering more and more about system synergy as I can't understand why my findings are almost opposite to everyone else's when it come to the higher frequencies. I'm having a play with some mains cables this weekend (not EWA) so I'll see how that pans out

Enjoy...
 
Hi Cliff, it's really good to see you here!

Nick, feel free to try the cables again later on if you like. No pressure, though.
 
ex brickie said:
@CliffB Your findings are interesting as they are different to mine! You seem to have found greater brightness/harshness in the 25s but I found this with the 40s. I agree with your other comments though and there was such a leap in detail from 25s to 40s, even contemplating the 80s is scary! (I haven't checked the price of the 80s so I haven't managed to scare my wallet yet!)

I am wondering more and more about system synergy as I can't understand why my findings are almost opposite to everyone else's when it come to the higher frequencies. I'm having a play with some mains cables this weekend (not EWA) so I'll see how that pans out

Enjoy...
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Yes it all seems very system and room-dependent. At this level, I guess if an amp struggles to deliver high current for example, maybe the bass would fall back and the cable could seem lean. To me, using 80 seemed to liberate any constraint between the amp and speakers. In comparison previous cables now seem bottlenecked. I was using MC(S)-5 and Russ Andrews Evolution Powerkord 500 for mains and IC-25 for interconnect.

If anything the mids and highs seem slightly more laid back to me with both 40 and 80 and more emphasized with 25. It could just be that the sound on the newer cables is far more full, which rises around the mids and makes them seem more laid back? I played some really raw guitar (White Stripes "Elephant"), which can sound really edgy if a system is a bit bright or gets distorted, but with 80 it was stunning. Projected right out in clarity with explicit detail, but never harsh. After my bass issues with 40 I was a bit concerned about 80, as Alan had described it as a larger scale presentation that makes the amp seem bigger, but it turned out that 80 actually has much better grip on the bass in my system, while giving all the benefits of 40 too. It is more extended and powerful than 40 but utterly clean and free from bloom or overhang. Result!
 
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