Originally Posted by
batteredhaggis
Good reviews guys. As a newbie here and just to add my two cents, I bought a 'The Highlands' cable a few weeks ago. Apart from the slightly daft name and (IMHO) beautiful but slightly OTT packaging (sorry Hugo!), it seems to be living up to expectation. The following is in no way a proper review though:
Coincidentally (with reference to Tom's situation), I too had been running an Audio Note AN-V silver cable in my system. By happy chance it had come with a standard SME IV I'd bought second hand and now it was running from my main arm, another SME IV but this one Kondo silver-wired, with an Ortofon Cadenza Blue cart. Jack (Non-Smoking Man) and I had compared it at some length with the original SME (VdH) arm cable and thought it very beneficial in my system (some might argue that's not hard). Now I was looking for a longer silver cable as I had re-sited my TT. I'd also installed the other arm and mono cart, with a separate phono stage sited nearer the deck, so the AN could run from it and remain in the system for the time being. The Zavfino fitted the bill and the length was perfect so a call was made to Hugo who sorted me out impeccably and very quickly too.
It's a little early days yet as I doubt the cable is remotely run in, although on their website, Zavfino make quite a bit of their manufacturing process which they claim allows them (quote) "to get a unique “break-in effect” normally associated with cables that have had 30 to 40 hours of signal and/or current run through them." Their words, not mine, but this cable certainly did not sound 'wrong' in any way from the start. I'm not running my normal system at the moment and good as they are, my little desktop Dynaudios are not remotely as revealing as the Revel Studio 2s I usually use, so my normal references are a bit out-of-whack. All I can say so far is that I concur with the findings of both the OP and Tom. It certainly isn't embarrassed in any way in company with the AN cable, and that is high praise from me. Detail is very high and I'm not noticing any 'thinning' in texture if I've understood the observations above correctly. Whether that remains in the big system with a Class A as opposed to Class D power amp remains to be seen, but that system is not short of midrange richness so I doubt it will be a problem. If current performance is anything to go by I'd say (at least in comparison to the AN), it's a bit of a bargain. It is unquestionably well made and finished to a very high standard. I've seen more expensive cables than this that were poorer from a construction point of view and woeful cosmetically.
In due course I will reverse the cables and make a comparison with the AN-V in the Kondo-wired arm, but for now there is little incentive to do so as it sounds so good.
For info, I'm using the straight connector version (and a very classy connector it is too). My phono stage is a Sutherland 20/20 which being two identical mono units in one chassis has the left and right inputs spaced unusually far apart. The Zavfino cable has longer tails than usual and fitted the task perfectly, whereas I had to gently prise back the joined insulation on the AN with a scalpel for it to fit.