Cool cable, great design. The best part, to me, is in the cable’s texture and interaction with the working musician.
Once you make the permanent move into high-grade cables, the differences among them are subtle. Sometimes they’re so subtle that there’s no real difference at all, simply because it’s impractical for a listener to be in such an ideal listening environment to notice. For me, the first practical difference is in the way the cable interacts with me. Does it coil nicely? Can the connectors flex into tight spots without the risk of damage? Is it construction-orange dotted with fluorescent purple tadpoles, or will it know its place on the stage or studio? Luckily, Evidence Audio put style and grace into their products.
Evidence derived its name from the proof that hi-fi people are not crazy; there really is a difference among cables. That’s not to say cable manufacturers need affirmation, but they are subject to scrutiny... and hell hath no fury like the scrutiny of hi-fi consumers. Anyway, the principle behind Evidence is noble and unique: transfer all the good stuff of hi-fi cable tech to the people who actually make the music. The inherent problem Evidence Audio had to overcome is that most hi-fi cables are tucked safely behind audio components, never meeting the business end of an instrument or being constantly plugged, unplugged, coiled, straightened, and handed drastically different timbres at different volumes.
The Lyric HG (high gain) is designed to handle the brutal process of musicians making music, but still perform with the tone, texture and quality of a hi-fi cable.
The cable coils like a dry dream. Quality cables have “cable memory,” similar to muscle memory, where the metal strands and innards of the cable get fatigued to your method of coiling. If you wrap a cable in small, over-the-fist loops, after a short while the cable will naturally assume that position. The Lyric HG is thick, and has a lot of resistance to wrapping any other way than how it was perfectly packaged: in a few 1’ loops. This is a testament to the wire construction.
High-grade copper is at the core of the HG. Holding that in place in the insulator, foamed polyethylene. Then the shielding: the conductors are extruded again under a carbon-loaded compound to eliminate tribo-electric noise, and the shielding is a braid of high-density copper.
The connectors for the HG are tough as hell. They’re reinforced, stiff and don’t bend easily. The plugs are made by Neutrik, the world leader in audio connectors, so you’re more likely to damage the female end than the Evidence cable. It hardly squeezes into my board mounted in an old SKB road case because of a cross-brace three inches behind the inputs. The cable also protrudes from my pedal board, creating a slight tripping risk for the poor bastard who wanders too close to my setup. But, chances are, if you’re spending this amount of money on a cable, you’re playing in a secure environment where zombie-footed drunkards aren’t a prevalent concern.
A cable’s jacket design is important to many performers. Plain black can create a mess when you need to quickly identify a signal path or grab your special cable from a bucket of spaghetti. On the contrary, a flamingo-pink cable can be an eye soar. Evidence’s Lyric HG is in my reggae colors: green and black, too cool not to use.
Now for the most important part: the Lyric HG sound. One of Evidence Audio’s goals is to create a colorless cable. That’s kind of every cable company’s goal, they just have different means of pursuing it. It’s hard to hear a practical difference among cables, and Evidence even lets you A-B their cable with a Monster on their website. That’s exactly what I did, too. It’s a tough call because the differences can only be aurally observed in tightly controlled environments. And they are extremely subtle. The Lyric HG sounds smoother and brighter, but not by a landslide. I didn’t switch to the Lyric HG and scream, “Holy Mother of God, those grimy bastards at Monster burned me for the last time,” but I knew I was hooked.
My practical resources tell me the Evidence is the winner, but actually observing a large difference is beyond me. Maybe I don’t have the right ears. Maybe my gear isn’t quality enough to relay the difference. It doesn’t matter, really, because Evidence Audio makes one of the finest instrument cables out there, backed by great design, an all-American philosophy and the finest materials available at a reasonable price.
