˻ PREMIERE ˼

⌈ The Polish company SOYATON was established in September 2019. Its founder and designer is JULIAN SOJA, a member of the Krakow Sonic Society. The company specializes in manufacturing high-end interconnect cables. It started with interconnects and speaker cables, which have recently been joined by power cables. We are first to be testing one of them. ⌋

F I WERE TO DESCRIBE a classic small audio company, Soyaton based near Cracow could be a model. This is because it is a manufacturer that makes its products manually, almost to order, according to self-developed "recipes", relying on semi-finished products from companies specializing in conductors, dielectrics, or plugs.

Since it doesn't have R&D facilities like big companies such as Siltech, Nortost or Audioquest, it has to cope in a different way, adding other types of weights on the scales from its side. And it copes in such a way that it spends a lot of time listening. Having an idea of how to build a cable, the manufacturer compares successive prototypes, chooses the most promising ones, and by improving, changing and streamlining what can be improved and changed in them, achieves satisfying results after some time.

It is the time and attention paid to these small details that constitute an advantage of such companies. What makes it easier for JULEK SOJA, the owner and designer of the Soyaton brand, is that he has a high-end listening system housed in a carefully crafted room – one that, we should add, hosts meetings of the Krakow Sonic Society (more → HERE). So, he has a special laboratory in hand, and time at his disposal.

▌ Benchmark Mk ²

There is only one series of cables in the SOYATON COMPANY's OFFER, including four models. The series is called Benchmark, and the available cables are analog, RCA and XLR interconnects, speaker cables and a power cable. They differ in the color of the outer sheath, but share the same design DNA. Now the series is available in a new, revised version, so the mk2 symbol has been added to the Benchmark name (the company styles it as mk²).

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A few simple words with…

JULIAN SOJA
owner, constructor

THE POWER CABLE, whose full name is BENCHMARK mk² SERIES POWER CABLE, is the latest addition to the company's lineup and appeared immediately in the mk¹ version (bolding by the Editor). This is because the mk1 version was only available for demonstration and testing purposes, and the results of those tests and the feedback I gathered were used to refine its new version.

In a small firm, work on each new product takes a very long time, one reason being that a small company simply cannot afford to make a mistake – a new product must be a "hit" right away. The prolonged R&D time also meant that the previously introduced cables had already made it to the mk² version (except for the balanced interconnect, which is now offered in the mk1/2 version), so introducing the mk² version right away was the only logical solution.

How do the mk² versions differ from the previous ones? At first glance, in terms of aesthetics and finishing – heat shrink sleeves have been replaced by elegant aluminum sleeves with the company's logo, which, in addition to their appearance, also significantly improve the convenience of use, cable durability and resistance to repeated plugging and unplugging, but also enhance insulation in one of the sensitive areas, i.e. in close proximity to devices with, e.g., power supplies and other sources of electromagnetic interference. The geometry of wire stranding in each conductor has also been refined.

As for the cable itself, it was built according to principles I use in all my cables, i.e., for the conductor I chose a wire spliced from a few 6N monocrystalline copper wires of different diameters, made in Japan using the OCC (Ohno Continous Casting) technology and then coated with a layer of 24K gold and colorless enamel as electrical insulation. Another design element of Soyaton cables is a vibration-damping silicone tube, so they don't require anti-vibration stands.

The plugs I used, manufactured by leGO, have contacts made of Japanese Furukawa copper coated with silver (on request, it is possible to use other plugs with similar parameters, such as those made by WireWorld). JS

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Julek Soja has published MOST INFORMATION ON the construction of his cables on his website. It's a fairly general discussion of each subject, but entertaining and quite sufficient in most cases, all the more so since he has supplemented this above with some new information. Let's summarize it.

The basis of all Soyaton cables is gold-plated copper. As we read in the referenced comments, it is 6N-purity OCC copper, i.e., a monocrystalline material made by casting and slow drawing according to a recipe by the Japanese engineer, Dr. Atsumi Ohno from the Chiba Institute of Technology. The material is purchased from a Japanese manufacturer, but Mr. Soja does not explain from which one. The copper wire is purchased in Japan through an American intermediary – Soyaton is too small a company to buy directly.

The conductors are then plated with 24K gold in the USA. This is what we read about the choice:

Why should I invest in plating an entire wire? In a nutshell, because of the skin effect. I don’t have room for a detailed description here, but you can easily read up on the details online. The bottom line is that a wire’s external layer is key to its overall sonic performance. A gold layer makes sound deeper, richer, sweeter and more natural; it just makes sound more authentic and magical. I believe that live music illusion simply isn’t complete without it.

⸜ → SOYATON.com, accessed: 27.12.2023.

Julek doesn't say much about dielectrics, but mentions "silicon tubes" in which the wires are routed. He generally uses two or three wires braided together. The wires are coated with clear varnish to make a multi-Litz cable, after which each wire is insulated with a thin tube, or (effectively) air, and two or three are inserted into a silicone tube that absorbs vibrations. The outer braid is Techflex braid. The designer notes that the conductors have been braided in a way that protects them from external noise. This is helped by shielding, which, the manufacturer says, "is a must."

As we wrote on the occasion of testing the Benchmark interconnect, through trials, listening and measurements at the AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, he selected materials and strands which he later "perfected" with the selection of plugs (test → HERE). And plugs play a very important role in the tested cable. You can choose between two models, from leGO Dreamworks and WireWorld. Their common feature is that the copper contacts are covered with silver. Silver was also used in the solder with which the cables are additionally connected to the contacts.

The tested cable featured leGO plugs. They are very similar to the WattGate plugs and are made of pure copper supplied by the Japanese company Furukawa. As their manufacturer says, this is Japanese "red copper of the highest quality" with a purity of 99.99%. The material is subjected to an acid bath to remove impurities, and the entire connector is subjected to a deep cryogenic treatment at -240°C for 20 hours to "reduce internal stresses in the material," which also "improves the conductivity and hardness of the material."

The cable comes in an simple elegant cardboard box locked with a magnet, inside of which is a woven transparent pouch with the manufacturer's logo. There is a small envelope on the top panel, in which we find a cardboard box with the technical data of the cable.

▌ THE LISTENING SESSION

THE WAY WE LISTENED • The Soyaton Benchmark mk2 cable powered the Ayon Audio CD-35 HF Edition player (№ 1/50) during the listening session and was compared to my Siltech Triple Crown reference power cable. The test consisted of an AA/BB/A comparison, with known A and B, using short two-minute samples from a given album. Since the powered player is a tube device, the comparison was not instantaneous, with ca. one-minute gaps between the samples. Therefore, I did not compare individual tracks, but three at a time.

Both cables were plugged into the AC Acoustic Revive RPT-4EU Absolute power strip, powered by a 2.5-meter AC Acrolink Mexcel 7N-PC9500 cable. The Acrolink cable was connected to the Furutech NCF wall socket with a separate power line with HPA's own fuse. This line is made of a 6-meter section of the Oyaide Tunami Nigo cable.

⸜ Albums used in the test ⸜ a selection

⸜ SONNY ROLLINS, Way Out West, Contemporary Records/JVC VICJ-60088, XRCD (1957/1997).
⸜ PAT MARTINO, East!, Prestige/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab UDSACD 2018, SACD/CD (1868/2006).
⸜ OSCARS MOTETTKÖR, TORSTEN NILSSON, ALF LINDER, MARIANNE MELLNÄS, Cantate Domino, Proprius/JVC XRCD 7762, XRCD2 (1976/2003).
⸜ BECK, Sea Change, Geffin Records/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab UDCD 780, „Special Limited Edition | No. 01837”, Gold-CD (2002/2009).
⸜ TOTO, IV, Columbia/Sony Music Labels SICP 10139~40 „Deluxe Edition. 40th Anniversary”, SACD/CD ⸜ 1982/2022./

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MANY TIMES IN "HIGH FIDELITY" I have written about what a great sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder was. The result of my fascination with his work was a series of articles devoted to his person, the techniques he used, and the records he made.

What I didn't write at the time, and what I think the time has come for, is to add this: if I had to choose one sound engineer whose work impresses me the most, it wouldn't be Van Gelder. I admire, appreciate and respect him, but the most important place in my pantheon of sound engineers is held by someone else – Roy DuNann.

Therefore, listening to the records he produced, I am impressed by the naturalness of the sound and the incredible color imagination he had at his disposal. So, listening to Way Out West by SONNY ROLLINS, an album released in 1957, was pure pleasure – also because I listened to it with the Soyaton Benchmark mk² cable plugged into my SACD player.

As it turns out, the Polish cable preserves the harmonic structure of recordings, without breaking them down into individual components. It was immediately audible that it differs from the reference cable, the Siltech Triple Crown, in that it shows the reverberation and acoustics around the instruments more strongly, and less emphasizes the tangibility and immediacy of the sound sources. This gave a different perspective of the recording, but with a very similar "tissue" filling the space in front of us.

To be precise – on the sides, not in front. This is one of early stereo recordings, so we hear the saxophone in one channel and the drums and double bass in the other, while there is nothing in the middle. That is, there seems to be nothing there. In fact, there is "air" and slight crosstalk between the microphones set up in the corner of the Contemporary Records shipping warehouse where this recording was made, and the saxophone and double bass set up more in the middle of the room.

Julek Soja's cable showed this really nicely. It moved the instruments slightly away from me, immersing them in a more strongly shown acoustic environment. As it turns out, it's a cable that plays a lot of information, but without making it "precise". By this I mean a natural display of details, textures, images, etc., but without emphasizing their distinctiveness. In my opinion, this is the only way to draw a listener into the musical world; details draw them into the world of sound.

But at the same time it's a cable that plays with a wide bandwidth, as both the brass and the powerful double bass on PATA MARTINO's album titled East! are portrayed in a dynamic, energetic way. But it's also the case that our attention is focused more on the midrange. Maybe that's because the consonances of sounds in this range are so cool, so nice, so well conducted by the Benchmark mk2. But there's something else – it's not an emphasis on the midrange, nor its "burn-in".

The recording I'm referring to, made in one month in 1968, has both psychedelia and eastern (see the title) touches. Its peculiarity is the rather high noise level, but also an identical treatment of the stereoscopic panorama as on Rollins' disc – the piano and double bass were placed in the left channel, while the guitar, drums and percussion were placed in the right one. The tested cable did not artificially spread them across the channels, that is, it did not "inject" them into the speakers. After all, the double bass can be heard a little closer to the center, just like the brass and the guitar.

This was supposed to be about midrange, however. It's an incredibly "palpable" recording that is easy to "roll over" and lose distance. The Soyaton cable did not do that. What's more, it slightly brought the closely recorded guitar out of its "cocoon" of warmth and showed it in quite a large space. As it turns out, it's a very resolving cable, because it made the piano, recorded in a somewhat "muted" way, without a sonorous treble and a clear left hand, more defined. It still wasn't clear, but it wasn't covered by strong bass.

The bass is clear, distinct, and still natural, in the sense that it is slightly warm. By putting "natural" and "warm" next to each other, I am not making a mistake. Although these terms seem to be mutually exclusive, any experienced music lover knows that natural is one that does not draw attention to itself, but to the content it carries. And this is achieved precisely in the way the Polish cable does it. That's why both the double bass on Rollins' album and the double bass on Martino's album were natural.

They did not have equally high energy at the very edge of the bandwidth, as when I listened to them with the reference cable. But neither did this change lead to a "light" sound. That's not the case at all – the Benchmark mk² plays a full high-quality low end. And it does so with energy in a very clear way. Its selectivity is at a high level.

Recorded in 1976 using just two microphones onto a semi-professional Revox A77 reel-to-reel tape recorder in the mighty Oscarskyrkan church (Stockholm), the Cantate Domino CD, played by me from the beautiful XRCD version, was shown in a wonderful way by the tested cable – it was both spatial and "dense". Interesting, but the large choir was quite close to me, and yet it did not "jump" out of the speakers. It was similar with the organ. It was a very large-scale sound – admittedly, a little smaller than with the Siltec cable, but not enough to speak of a change in perspective.

ALTHOUGH THE BENCHMARK MK2 has a tendency to move the foreground slightly away from us, if a recording was made with closely placed microphones, a system equipped with this cable will show them that way, just like very close BECK’s vocal from the Sea Change album released in 2009 by the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab on a Gold-CD. The Soyaton cable showed the excellent energy of the kick drum, dense and warm, but also made very good use of space, surrounding the orchestral parts with air, maintaining a strong foreground (I’m talking about the track ˻ 2 ˺ Peter Tiger).

I have heard it before with the Oscar’s Motet Choir, and I can hear it now, too: is a cable that shows space exceptionally well, preserving the natural timbre of the instruments and only slightly sweetening them. The sound does not lack treble at all. But we have the impression that the whole thing is gently "smeared" with sweetness.

This is why ˻ 10 ˺ Africa, the last track from the IV album by TOTO, had great energy and "power," yet what I liked most was how wonderfully the space was filled by the synths. And that's because the tested cable does well in differentiating dynamics, showing colors and rendering them smoothly, thus binding the musical message into one whole.

▌ Conclusions

THE SOYATON BEMCHMARK MK2 CABLE is a cable of exceptional – as the classic Makłowicz says – beauty. Made by hand, it is not a craft from under the Florian Gate in Cracow, if you know what I mean, but a high-end approach to the product. At the same time, it is pretty and convenient to use. Also important is the box with the hand-lettered data ratings – simple, casual and elegant.

And then there's the sound which we may miss and which we'll look forward to hearing after we unplug the cable from the system. Expensive cables from Siltech and Crystal Cable give us an even faster, even bigger, more palpable and even more resolving performance with a stronger bottom end. However, they cost several times more. Here and now, in this price range, the Benchmark mk2 is a tempting proposition almost beyond belief. It offers a beautifully arranged, deep sound with high dynamics and a sonorous treble that will grace any system, from tube to solid-state ones, with digital in the lead role, as well as those with vinyl. What can we add? Congratulations! ●

THIS TEST HAS BEEN DESIGNED ACCORDING TO THE GUIDELINES adopted by the Association of International Audiophile Publications, an international audio press association concerned with ethical and professional standards in our industry, of which HIGH FIDELITY is a founding member. More about the association and its constituent titles → HERE.

→ www.AIAP-online.org