This is a progress report on the V-Twist wire. The V-Twist is a new DIY interconnect cable designed and distributed by Chris VenHaus of VH Audio. It is a twin lead cable where each conductor is a high purity 24 gauge solid copper wire with Teflon insulation. There is no shielding. A full description is at the link below. The cable presently sells for $15 per foot or $30 per foot for a stereo pair.
http://www.vhaudio.com/v-twist-cu24.html
The V-Twist and Belden 8402 share the same basic cable geometry in that they are both twin lead designs, but whereas the Belden uses old school materials the V-Twist is modern all the way. One consequence of this is an extremely long break in time. Chris says 400 to 600 hours is required---the cable reaches about 90% of its potential in 400 hours and the remaining finishing touches fall into place during the next couple hundred.
I initially wired the V-Twist with Switchcraft 3502AAU RCA plugs so I could do a fair comparison with my Belden 8402 cables that use the same plugs. Chris recommends WBT 0102 Cu plugs for best performance.
My V-Twist cables now have 440 hours so they are over the 90% mark. I will spare you the details of how the sound changed during this time. Suffice it to say the sound changes rather significantly so hold off on making any judgments until they have at least the 400 minimum.
I compared my 1M V-Twist cables to several other interconnects as the link between my phono preamp and linestage. The other cables on hand for a direct comparison were: Belden with Switchcraft plugs, Belden with WBT 0102Ag plugs, Ocellia Silver Reference and Wireworld Eclipse II.
In a nutshell, the V-Twist wire has excellent inner detail, a smooth extended tonal balance, excellent dynamics, and a neutral perspective in terms of soundstaging. The specific qualities are affected quite a bit by the RCA plugs used. For example, the Switchcraft 3502AAU plugs have an inherently warm tonal balance, slightly rolled off treble, soft leading edges on transients, pretty good detail, and a somewhat upfront perspective. With the Switchcraft plugs, that is how the V-Twist sounds. Unfortunately the softness annoys me so I moved the WBT 0102Ag plugs from one pair of my Belden cables to the V-Twist. This made for some very interesting changes. Basically the V-Twist with silver WBTs is fast, clean and detailed, with full extension in the treble, and the softness is gone, but the V-Twist now sounds somewhat lightweight; the bass is not as weighty as it was with the Switchcrafts and there is a hint of "plastic" colorations in the midrange especially. Perhaps I need to use the copper WBT plugs as Chris recommends, or perhaps both the V-Twist and WBT plugs need more hours. (The WBTs have about 150 hours on them.) I plan to run the V-Twist/WBTs for another week or so with signal 24/7 and see how it sounds then. If it still has some issues, I will consider getting a set of copper WBTs.
From what I have heard so far, the V-Twist clearly has much potential. To my ears it is in a very different league than the Belden 8402.
