Vortex Eddie Square Review – Verisimilitude

Sound –

When Oscar sent me the Eddie, it came as a surprise as the cable hadn’t been officially released at the time. Rather than spilling the beans, he proposed I listen to the cable and form an opinion before he would discuss the price and configuration. From my initial impression, I found the cable lightly warm and overall, very natural. When he sent me the official release information, I wasn’t surprised to find that it employs a copper conductor array. The Eddie overall provides a pleasing tonality and a sound technical performance. It is certainly a cable that embraces the naturalness of copper over attempting to make a statement.

From the outset, the bass strikes as mildly warm with a light mid-bass focus. It doesn’t prioritize the greatest slam and dynamics but a natural note timbre with a focus on texturing. The sub-bass extends well but never steals attention. It sits behind the mid-bass and is tight and clean though slam is slightly laid-back as a result. The mid-bass sees a gentle rise which injects a fuller note body and a pleasant warmth into the sound. Accordingly, already warmer earphones may suffer from a loss of separation. However, this style of sound pairs well with most modern IEMs that tend to have more sub-bass focused tunings. In addition to this, mid-bass quality is enhanced, boasting superior texturing and a small bump in note definition. Though fuller, bass is a little more articulate and responsive. It provides excellent listenability if sacrificing an iota of engagement and dynamics in so doing.

The midrange experiences a follow-on effect. The tone is light warm, not overwhelmingly so but notable especially compared to silver and SPC cables. Vocals are also brought a touch forward, especially male vocals. There’s a slight increase in lower-mid and centre-mid presence responsible for this and for increasing vocal size. Resultantly, the midrange is slightly more intimate and more powerfully voiced. There is minimal loss to separation and definition due to the increase in note size and the added room presence provides a nice sense of space and layering when combined with the dark background. As the upper midrange and treble aren’t enhanced, the midrange is also never intense or shouty. It’s a structured and coherent sound that offers subtle colouration alongside great timbre and versatility with a small technical bump in imaging performance.

Treble performance is what you’d expect from a copper cable. It’s a nicely balanced copper albeit doesn’t stand out from a technical point of view relative to most other boutique cables. The lower treble is brought forward just a hair, and the transient response is clean and fast. As a result, fine detail retrieval is slightly enhanced over standard OFC cables. Percussion and the general leading edge of notes offer a well-defined presentation and strong separation. At the same time, there is a good amount of texture and body on display. This is reinforced by the immaculately clean and dark background above. There’s ample but not especially impressive extension above to uphold background detail retrieval albeit this is toned back slightly in terms of presence in favour of greater contrast. The result is a strong layering performance and a slightly damped albeit textured note presentation with excellent cleanliness.

As aforementioned, the dark background is a hallmark feature of the Eddie and this is showcased by the imaging performance. Raw dimensions are not a standout. You get a well-proportioned stage but it isn’t notably larger than a standard OFC cable. It’s rather the improvement to layering that will be more appreciated by most listeners. The contrast between background and foreground is enhanced and, as a result, the stage sounds more layered and organized. Though separation isn’t the highest performer, it is still very respectable. The improvements to layering especially mean small details are still easy to discern and the overall sound is immersive and multi-dimensional. This helps to redeem some technical performance in context of its below-average raw detail retrieval.

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