Audioquest Cables Interview with Founder Bill Low By Positive Feedback's Sasha Matson

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Audioquest Interview

Audioquest Cables Interview with Founder Bill Low By Positive Feedback's Sasha Matson Full Review

Audioquest Cables Founder Bill Low Interview

Matson: I'm glad it took so long to do this with you; I've lived long enough to go through a number of generations of AudioQuest cables, and I feel like I have a perspective on this now. I'm on my fourth generation of AQ interconnects now, and my third set of AQ speaker cables. It gives me a certain continuity, rather than randomly switching components.

Low: I often do bitch and moan about the lack of methodology in the reviewing community—I bitch and moan about the lack of methodology in the entire industry! I think reviewers have a certain obligation. I've talked to John Atkinson about instituting some sort of accountability. Everybody talks about it: how do you come up with an opinion that you have the guts to tell somebody else about?

Matson: So, what did you hear at the Met with John Atkinson? (Note: Bill had mentioned when I contacted him initially that he was in New York and going to attend the Metropolitan Opera with Stereophile editor John Atkinson.)

Low: Yes, we heard Turandot.

Matson: So how was it? Did it give you the sense of actual musicians playing in an actual hall with real singers?! (Laughter…)

Low: It was very good. I've gotten spoiled—the last few times I was sitting in the fourth or fifth row. This time we were just far enough forward from the back to not be right under the balcony. I'm a sucker for full immersion.

Matson: There are some audio people who go to a concert and say, 'Hmmm… doesn't sound as good as my Sonus Fabers', or whatever.

Low: It is often true that the emotional vulnerability required to let music pick you up and carry you away is not dependent on fidelity, but on a basket of variables. Sometimes a hi-fi has an advantage in its immediacy. It is not uncommon that audiophiles, or non-audiophiles, have an easier time crossing the threshold, having liftoff—whatever term you use- in an artificial context.

Matson: The Met is on the high end of the great hall scale right? But you go to hear jazz in New York, for example. I went down to the Blue Note, and I asked the cocktail waitress to sit me somewhere away from the PA. Well guess what? There is no place in that club away from the PA—the speakers are on the roof, beamed down, throughout the entire club. So no matter if you're five feet from the sax player, you're still hearing the PA!

Low: It's what the audience is used to, but what is even worse, it's what the performers are used to; an appreciation that you don't always need to be amplified. It's very hard to get musicians out from behind that—it's almost protection or security.

Matson: Well, let's not rag on musicians. Any predictions for the future now in 2005? I'll be real specific. Several of my colleagues at Positive Feedback Online have gone out on a limb regarding new fiber optic audio cables from another company. You've looked into this—correct me if I'm wrong—you actually have some fiber optic cables in your current lineup. How do you evaluate this technology? Is this a direction you want to go in or not?

Low: I've been making Toslink cables since 1987. There are pros and cons to fiber optics. You should take it seriously, it's a legitimate alternative. One should remain open-minded to the hardware and the implementation, to using different equipment. It's like balanced vs. single-ended. A designer of an amplifier ought to have a strong idea about whether he's going to get a better result from making balanced or single-ended equipment. Cable manufacturers should make the best balanced or single-ended cable they can. And the consumer or the retailer should find out what makes the equipment work best, and do it that way.

Matson: If you look at the history of the introduction and acceptance of 'Redbook' CDs, when push comes to shove, it's really in the conversion. It's fine to talk about fiber optics, but how does the signal get into and out of this domain. There's a conversion isn't there?