September 1998
Bybee Technologies Quantum Interconnect Filter
by Dave Duvall
Jack Bybee, while not only
being a theoretical physicist, is one of the most easy-going folks you'll ever meet. He
may not agree with that, but every time I've run into him at the shows, Ive
thoroughly enjoyed his company. Bybee worked for the Navy as a private contractor from
1971-1974 with the mission of designing wire technologies and power-purification systems
to lower the already low noise floor of DC-powered passive sonar systems in submarines. In
plain English, Jack translates that to mean "we had to be able to discern the noise
of a whale burping from a Soviet Sub."
Partnered with Carl Brinkman, an avid audiophile
and savvy marketeer, Jack formed Bybee Technologies, Inc. in 1997 to bring his line of
Power Purifiers and other related AC-treatment devices to high-end audio. Last year Bybee
teamed with legendary audio designer John Curl to add RFI filtering and surge/spike
protection to their AC products, attempting to bypass some of the sonic downside of doing
so. Since then, a line of speaker filters were introduced that have been widely accepted
amongst the audio press as statement products. This year, Bybee is about to announce a new
line of interconnect filters, and who knows what they'll be filtering next year? I could
imagine their products OEMd into other manufacturers products, but I don't
know if that's in the cards or not.
The theory behind his Quantum Mechanical Filters
is that of superconductivity. While electrons travel through most electrical wires
somewhere around 50%-60% of the speed of light, it was discovered that the use of certain
ceramics mixed with such rare earth metals such as Zirconium, Yttrium, Neodymium,
Praeseadoyium, and Lanthanum oxides could create conductivity at 92% of the speed of light
at room temperature. Bybee Quantum mechanical filters were also developed to create a
barrier to clean, align, and stabilize individual electrons, while the surrounding damped
mass absorbs the irregular discarded electrons. Pretty heady stuff, eh?
My life and "Quantum Filtering"
It's always fun when simple folk like myself can
introduce fancy terms like "Quantum Filtering" into their vocabulary. It makes
me feel that I've actually progressed from the caveman stage a bit.
A couple of years ago when I reviewed Bybee's
original Power Purifier, it was being distributed by TAD Systems of San Mateo, California.
Since then, Jack and Carl Brinkman have started manufacturing and distributing the
products themselves. The original Power Purifier, still in use in my system, had one level
of filtering of the incoming AC line, while subsequent products have gone to multi-levels.
I asked Jack if at some point too much filtering negatively affects the sound, to which he
answered that he personally has the equivalent of 20 sets of filtering on each leg of his
AC, and it only gets better as he filters more stages of the signal. What with having
introduced Quantum Filtering at both the power-cord and speaker levels, it probably only
makes evolutionary sense that the Interconnect Filter would come to be.
According to Jack, the Interconnect Filter is
"the greatest improvement [offered] of all his products." They work on the same
principles of passing the signal through exotic metals and ceramics that the AC products
do, but instead of filtering the raw AC, they are now filtering a modulated audio signal
that has been constructed from the original AC. Bybee states that the Interconnect Filters
"tame the overshoot of a square wave signal," which results in less signal
distortion and brings us closer to linearity. In principle they also work to absorb
quantization noise, and Jack suggested that I also try them on a digital cable. But in
their primary usage, they work on an analog interconnect to solve phase anomalies on the
low-voltage signal.
To keep things in context: the review system
Nothing much has changed of late (a sign of
musical pleasure), so the rundown goes as follows. Muse Model Five transport via I2S
connection to the Muse Model Two Plus DAC (with HDCD filter); Audible Illusions L-1 preamp
(with Amperex 7308 tubes); Belles 150A stereo amplifier (with Vampire binding posts);
Kimber BiFocal-XL speaker cables; Kimber PowerKords; Cardas Golden Cross interconnects;
PSB Stratus Gold speakers; TAD Systems (Bybee) Power Purifier (amp direct to wall);
home-brew racks, isolation (I've gotta try Barry Kohan's Bright Star Audio products!)
combos, and absorbers; a lot of good music (albeit on CD); some extreme love and care; and
a hope for good will amongst men.
The downside of being a reviewer
I'm not a rich man; not even a member of the
six-figure income bracket. My day job is in management (until I get fired, as most
managers do), and I've got the mortgage and a couple of kids to feed. Workin' Man,
remember? But I've got this audio-jones coupled with a love of music, and feeding my habit
with so much great-sounding audio gear is not going to make me a member in good standing
at Audiophilia Nervosa Anonymous (ANA).
Which leads us to...
...the fact that the Bybee Interconnect Filters
cost $600 per pair, and I have grown accustomed to their presence. I have two pairs of the
production models in house, so you're looking at $1,200 plus tax should you decide to
accept this mission. Soooo...we need to find a way to rationalize this expenditure (unless
you've got the larger income that I don't) or better put -- how do I talk myself into this
one? Spoken like a true junkie.
Of course, this wouldn't be an issue if the
damned things didn't improve the sound of my system. As I'm sure is evident by this point,
the Bybee Filters don't just make a difference, they make a difference that I enjoy, that
is in peace and synergy with my system, and asks the question, "Where else could I
invest but $1,200 in my system and get the kind of results I'm hearing with these
filters?" At the current state of flux with this system, I'm getting close to ringing
just about all the performance out of her I'm going to get. Of course, I was thinking this
same thing prior to the arrival of the Bybee Interconnect Filters too.
Do I think they make the sound more
"accurate?" Who's to say? I wasn't at the original recording session for any of
the music I own, so accuracy is pretty hard to pin down, though a lot of reviewers throw
that term around too easily. I'd bet I'm guilty of it myself somewhere in my intrepid
past. Let's just say I've learned a bit over the years. Would I say the Interconnect
Filters help me accept the illusion as a second cousin of reality? I'll go that far. I've
heard a fair amount of live jazz, classical, and folk, as well as all the amplified,
distorted, electric music that a soul can handle, and I recognize qualities that are
similar between all of it and the recorded equivalent. But two things here: It's never
going to be "just right," and those who claim their musical memory of live sound
is an excellent reference need to understand how valuable A/B/A comparisons are -- and the
difficulty of setting the orchestra up behind your rack for some meaningful observations.
But when you hear a number of similarities to a live experience, things can get a bit
magical in your listening room.
May I play some music for you?
I spun some rock early on in the review period,
with the Bybee Filters attached to the input jacks of the preamp and power amp, as
instructed by Jack Bybee. Listening to "Green Grow The Rushes" by REM (Reconstruction
Of The Fables [IRS IRSD-5592]), I detected a bit of dimensionality to the sound that
was missing without the Bybee filters. I've always felt this was a somewhat bright
recording, but the interconnect filters alleviated a lot of pain in listening to this
great music. Because Fables was recorded in the mid-80s, when CD still had
some learning to do, the digital brightness and the flatness of the soundstage didn't seem
unusual. That the Bybee filters could help this at all did seem out of the ordinary; they
either added some admirable qualities to the sound, or uncovered things that were on the
disc but were not getting through. I'm going to vote for the latter because playing the
beautiful HDCD-recorded Cafˇ Blue by Patricia Barber [First Impression Music FIM
CD 010], which is the antithesis of bright, did not demonstrate an overblown warmth and
rounding that I would suspect would have been the case otherwise. Those two recordings
clearly show how far the 16-bit/44.1kHz format has come since its inception. DSD or
24-bit/96kHz promise (and I have heard for myself) the subtleties that may finally put us
over the top.
Taking one more step in the rock world before
moving on to some music a little better for evaluating equipment, I got into "Anybody
Seen My Baby" by the Rolling Stones (Bridges to Babylon [Virgin
7243-8-44712-2-4]). With the Bybee Filters on the inputs to both preamp and amp, the bass
line rounds out a bit, yet maintains its enormous drive. There was a noticeable increase
to the presence of Mick's voice, as the band seemed to take a step or two back with the
filters in place. I sensed a taming of the brightness that appears to be recorded into
this disc, but not at the expense of losing any sparkle to Charlie Watts cymbals,
making listening a little easier on the ear. Although I personally don't think that Don
Was hit the EQ balance right on this disc or Voodoo Lounge, his work is still a
blessing over the, as Jagger once called it, "mixed on a boom-box" sound on a
lot of earlier Stones recordings.
Moving on to mellower modes, Chris Isaak's
"Blue Spanish Sky" (from Heart Shaped World [Reprise-9 25837-2])
demonstrates acoustic guitar recorded well. The guitar work here, as well as Isaak's
voice, both seemed more whole and harmonically complete with the filters and imparted more
of the resonance of the guitar body and his chest into the presentation. Removing them
during this A/B/A session showed that the filters also relieved a slight layer of grain in
the upper regions of frequency that I didn't even know existed. This was not a world-class
difference, as this slight grain texture was just that, slight, but it was noticeable.
This was certainly a benefit that would be missed for a short period of time after
removing the Interconnect Filters. Our brain is kind though, and this level of nuance can
be forgotten, but the Bybee Interconnect Filters are a welcome improvement in this respect
that I'd rather live with than without.
Diana Krall has a mature voice that is hard to
believe comes from such a young woman. And yes, all you hound dogs, she's even more
attractive in person than she appears in photos. Needless to say she's another female diva
to me, and I've got a thing for her music. While her vocal range is somewhat limited,
there is a breathiness and body to her voice throughout her working range that will make
you forget about such trivia. When I removed the Bybee Interconnect Filters during a
session involving "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" (All For You-[Impulse!
IMPD-182]), I heard the loss of a bit of richness, and Kralls voice took on a bit
more leading-edge bite and sibilant spit. Her piano seemed a little bit more jangly when
the right hand reached for the upper registers. With the filters, the piano sounded a tad
more connected from bottom to top, and the higher notes didn't seem to attack the listener
as aggressively. Russell Malone's hollow-body electric guitar took on a small increase in
life, with his strings producing a rounder sound and the guitar-body resonance becoming a
larger factor.
Eije Oue and the Minnesota Orchestra perform a
wonderful rendition of Pictures at an Exhibition on the Reference Recordings label
[RR-79CD]. My favorite portion for critical listening is "Gnomus," as it runs
pretty much the gamut in audiophile terms as well as being an exciting piece of classical
music. I used this piece to test the effectiveness of positioning the filters, not only on
the inputs of the preamp and amp, but with one set on the preamp output and one on the amp
inputs, thus filtering only the set of interconnects furthest down in the chain. In the
first position, the overall sound was a bit more present with more of a distinction
between the background and the music. I felt a better sense that the back wall of the
acoustic space was not immediately behind the orchestra, with more air between performers
and more bloom to their instruments. These were similar observations that I'd made when
listening to 24-bit/96kHz and SACD demos at HI-FI '98, but if memory serves me well, it
didn't take critical listening to pick up on this with the higher data-rate recordings.
With the filters inline, tympani whacks were less constrained, more dynamic and visceral,
and trumpet "blat" was diminished ever so slightly. Removing the Bybee filters
would compress the orchestra from front to rear, back to acceptable but compromised
levels.
The Bybee filters on both ends of the last
interconnects (output of preamp and input of power amp) was the icing on the cake. Again
playing "Gnomus," the orchestra opened up a bit more, individual instruments
sounded cleaner, and slight improvements were heard in terms of detail and dimension.
Strings were lovely as they worked down the scale in a coordinated frenzy. I could hear a
better relationship in space from the strings to the woodwinds, and back to the percussion
section. Hell, I was even able to take this one step further by removing the Audible
Illusions L-1 preamp from the chain, feeding the Muse Model Two Plus DAC (with non-HDCD
attenuation bypassed) direct to the amplifier. Now here was a combo! Sans preamp and with
the Bybee Filters on both ends of the DAC-to-power-amp interconnects, in a
transmitter/receiver fashion, the system made me wanna cry (and wonder how a passive
preamp might sound).
In the realm of ones and zeros
Only thing left to do was to try Jack's
suggestion of using the filters on a digital cable. My Cardas Video/High Speed Data cable
wasn't long enough, and I didn't have the right combination of BNC/RCA adapters to use
with my Max Rochlin Memorial cable, but I did have the right setup to work with the Audio
Alchemy DST powered digital cable. Bottom line, the Bybee Filters on each end of the DST
cable did offer improvements to the digital SP/DIF signal similar to those described
previously. However, I still preferred using the Muse Model Five transport and Model Two
Plus DAC via I2S and saving the Bybee filters for use on the both ends of the
preamp-to-power-amp interconnect. There's a clarity with I2S that just isn't there with
SP/DIF, with or without the filters attached. If you're doing SP/DIF only, I believe
you'll also hear the benefit of the interconnect filter and possibly find it a worthwhile
investment.
Closing arguments
My PSB Stratus Gold speakers are not the
strongest I've heard in depth perception, but the Bybee Filters effect on the sound
could be exemplified, in one way, as if better front-to-rear separation had somehow been
incorporated into the speaker design. This would be a good way of answering the question,
"Are the Bybee Quantum interconnect filters cost-effective at $600 per pair?" In
my case, $1200 added to the cost of the Stratus Gold speakers would have me comparing them
against speakers in the $3500-$4000 range. I would be bold enough to say that I do hear
that kind of jump in performance, but would caution that I am not aware of how these
filters would perform in a more refined (normally equating to a more expensive) set of
components. I suspect they'd perform admirably.
But depth was not the only area that benefited by
using the Bybee interconnect filters. Dynamics, air, bloom, and background noise were all
improved to some extent. I don't want to exaggerate their effect, but I don't want to
underemphasize it either. As I reflect back on my review of the original Power Purifier AC
conditioner, I find that some of those final comments have the same weight here.
I enjoy music on this system without the Bybee
interconnect filters; it has reached a comfortable level for the dollars concerned.
However, with the choice, I'll go with a pair on both ends of the preamp-to-power-amp
interconnects for sure, and if money weren't the object, there's a good bet you'd find
another pair on both ends of the DAC-to-preamp interconnects. For those of you who have
the fiscal means and who value squeezing everything out of your system you can, the Bybee
Technologies Quantum Interconnect Filters may very well become an indispensable part of
your playback chain. Consider the latest products in the Bybee line heartily endorsed by
yours truly.
...Dave Duvall
dave@soundstage.com
Bybee Technologies Quantum Interconnect
Filter
Price: $600 USD per pairBybee Technologies, Inc.
2072 Touraine Lane
Half Moon Bay, CA 94019
Phone: 650-728-9301
Fax: 650-726-6913
Website: www.bybeetech.com |
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