The Music Cable Cables Review Report

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TMC - The Music Cable Audio Cables Review Report
Ozhan Atalay

TMC - The Music Cable is an Australian audio cable production company http://www.the-music-cable.com which informed us about their cables.

TMC uses highly polished pure copper plated aluminium single solid centre conductor. The aluminium is used mainly as a support, and is relatively non-conductive to the music signal. Practically the copper clad carries out most of the signal thereby behaves like a thinnest possible conductor material to eliminate skin effect. Besides, no braid but single solid copper tubing is used as the shielding. Up to my knowledge, no cable producers used such a design.

I did not want to miss the opportunity when they wanted me to test their cables since they use unique topology and technology.

They sent me a full set of reference cables for reviewing. They told me that cables should burn-in at least for 50 hours but I was impatient to wait so long and started testing after 30 hours.

I connected 1 mt TMC XLR/XLR Green Label digital cable from Accustic Arts transport to Kora Hermes 24/192 DAC and 1 meters of TMC White Label RCA/RCA interconnect from DAC to A Consulting Silver Rock passive transformer pre. A pair of 2,5 meters long TMC Yellow Label RCA interconnects are plugged in to pre through Audio Note Quest Silver monoblocks.

A pair of TMC Gold Label Reference loudspeaker cable is connected from power amps to mid and treble units of Avantgarde Unos separately and a tail is connected from mid unit to bass unit. In other terms bass is connected via Midrange Bridge due to bass cable was short to connect from amplifier directly. I am expecting another pair of 100 cms long cable to make a direct three wire connection from amplifier to bass/mid/treble units as I used to.

I have been using my own design of digital and interconnect cables at my system which are I believe state of art design. Two pairs of them took almost a year to complete. They are air dielectric, triple shielded, combination of 2 strand of 0,1 and 2 strand of 0,01 mm (thinner than human air) 0,9999 purity of Swiss silver, very difficult to construct and impossible to solder without using a crimp. Besides, all the cabling are AC polarized shielded and runs together with active shielding unit of Synergistic Research. All cables are lying in sand filled thick tube to eliminate ringing effect and mechanical distortions. Very simple version one of that cable is communicated at the link below;

These cables outperformed so many good brands several times so eventually stabilized at my own system.

My loudspeaker cables are Stealth Hybrid MTL gold/silver/copper multi strands custom designed three wires for my set-up. They are very natural sounding, full bodied but a not so much open, a bit dark and less airy compared to Stealth Ultimate Ribbons. I preferred them to UR due to their neutrality.


I connected TMC gold labels to my system as described above and started listening. What were immediately appearing were the quietness, relaxation and inertia of the sound. It was similar to the effect of adding a good AC filter to mains signal. I have to admit that I never witnessed that any cable added such quietness to system before. In my hi-end history, AC filters, room treatments, separate earth (grounding), vibration absorbers etc brought such improvement but never cables so far !! Layering of soundstage, width and depth are increased, small details at sound become more evident and distinctive. Placements of elements of a trio an orchestra became much evident and lifelike. I wonder if that quietness is mainly or partly the result of the perfect shielding method that you are using.

Besides above, mid bass and lower mids become fully rich, tight and open. Lower octaves of every string-brass instruments or vocals become much richer, natural and fully bodied. Upper and lower octaves of bass were tight, rich and effortless. Bass, mid bass, midrange authority and purity of TMC Golds are awesome. They carry out the listening pleasure to another level.

As a general description, from my point of view, TMCs can be described as honest, authoritarian, non-coloured, non-artificial but a bit cold and a bit mechanical sounding cables. Their characteristics are closer to German kind of sound compared to English, Scandinavian or French sounds (in terms of electronics) or closer to Wilson Audio Speakers compared to Italian made Sonus Faber speakers.

If I have to criticize them, the only thing I have to say is the little-bit roll of at upper frequencies. Treble area of TMC cables may be the only short come. I am not sure this will be in lesser degree after the completion of burning process. I wish interconnects would also contain one or two strands of 0,01 mm thinnest silver which should eliminate that short come. (Note from TMC: the musical performance will improve with about 50 hours of burn in…full $$ back guarantee…. )

When I replaced the TMC XLR/XLR digital green one with new blue one, sound became more open and richer. Treble section shortcoming is partly eliminated. I will compare both of digitals and let you know about my experiment in detail. (Note from TMC again: TMC has been secretly evaluating the performance of our NEW 75 ohms STIFF cabling for digital use. We have sent Mr. Atalay a single run of our XLR/XLR made with our new 75 ohms cable, to obtain an independent customer's valuation under digital application. The blue XLR/XLR digital mentioned above is our NEW 75 ohms XLR/XLR cable. TMC 75 ohms cablings (XLR/XLR and RCA/RCA) will be available soon (early 2007) for all digital applications.)




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