I’ve got history with Black Rhodium, and it goes back twenty years. It was circa 2006 and I was on the hunt for some nice looking, good sounding, good value cable that offered plenty of flex for my tightly shelved separates.
My search ended with its Jive model, which I lived with for some time, before moving house and gaining a bigger hifi rig. So the speaker cable went to my mate’s system, between an Audiolab amp and Castle speakers. Why is this relevant? Because I saw that mate a few months ago. He’s still jiving to that cable. Quality counts, as they say.
The postie always rings twice, especially when they’re delivering some nicely boxed speaker cable
So when I saw the brand’s new Minuet speaker cable hit the market earlier this summer, my interest was piqued. And after a chat with Graham and the team at BR, two 5m lengths were on their way to AG HQ.
If you’ve not met Company Founder Graham Nalty then you should, as he’s been a passionate hifi cables advocate for decades. And he knows his stuff – based on the laws of physics rather than pseudoscience, he’s even written a book on it, which is well worth a read.
Lifting the lid reveals a product that looks much more premium than the Minuet’s price tag suggests
It only takes a minuet
The Minuet range doesn’t just encompass speaker cables. There’s mains, analogue interconnects, subwoofer and digital wires are all catered for as well, with prices starting from a hundred quid up.
A dedicated two-channel cable, the Minuet Speaker is constructed around a 3mm² cross section copper conductor, with a layer of highly conductive silver on its outer surface. This layer is intentionally targeted for where high frequency signals travel, and means you get the conductive benefits of pure silver, but without the astronomical expense of silver throughout (have you seen the price of precious metals these days)?
Woven fabric outer includes red/black sleeves denoting left and right channels
Instead of mechanical screening, its conductors are twisted together to help reject RFI while also reducing intermodulation distortion (an approach we’ve seen many high-end manufacturers favour for its sonic benefits). And for added high-frequency noise rejection, a chunky ferrite-cored barrel surrounds the speaker end of the cable.
All of this sounds more high than mid-end, yet the Minuet costs just £540 for a 3m pair and £750 for a 5m pair, which harks back to the brand’s longstanding good value ethos. And if you want bespoke lengths, that’s no problem, as these can be made to order.
Our review samples came sporting gold plated Z plugs as standard, but if you’re in the spade brigade then fear not, as these are a no-cost-extra option (having spades at one end and Z-types at the other is also an option).
Installation is a breeze, because despite the reflective nature of the outer jackets in my review snaps perhaps suggesting a slightly stiff cable to manipulate (looking and behaving in a similar manner to Chord Company’s SignatureXL for example), the Minuet’s outer braid is a made from a fabric that’s soft to the touch, while also being chosen for its noise damping qualities. This also makes it nice and compliant, again reminding me why I fell for its Jive back in the day.
Clamp-on Z plugs are top quality, with the option of spades at no extra cost
Performance
With the Minuet cable designed for speakers costing up to £1,500, Dynuadio’s do-it-all Emit 30 seem the ideal partners, which have been my budget to mid-priced benchmark floorstanders for the last few years.
Amp wise, I need little persuasion to power up Audio Resurgence’s Kraken AR6A Evolution, while source gear is my Primare CD15 Prisma digital player and Systemdek IIX with Goldring’s current G1042 pick-up (the focus of our recent Classic HiFi feature).
Having lived with the Minuet within this system for a month or so, the overall sense you get is how it’s been blessed with a lovely organic nature that it brings to the music. Take Eddie Vedder’s stripped back acoustic on Just Breathe from 2020’s Matter Of Time rockumentary (Tidal 24-bit/96kHz FLAC), and the Minuet allows all of his vocal intonation to shine through, from the long, thick and rich baritone notes to the rising inflections as the track’s momentum and emotion builds. And when the music subsides towards the end of the track, the way this cable lets its partnering gear dial it down so that Vedder’s softer “oohs” and “mmmns” are allowed to form within the mix with realistic gentility and without over emphasis, really gets the best out of it.
Ferrite barrels are there for noise rejection, while also denoting signal flow, model and year of manufacture
This attribute also comes to the fore on more polished material. I’ve been on a bit of a Billy Idol back catalogue rediscovery of late, stopping off for extended stays at 2006’s Happy Holidays, 1993’s (under appreciated) Cyberpunk and 1990’s Charmed Life before landing squarely at Rebel Yell.
Across each album, they way this cable allows my system to bring the changing production approaches attached to each period and album to the fore is impressive, showing how transparent it is, while also being perhaps more forgiving than higher-end rivals.
The glossy edges for example of Idol’s Eyes Without A Face (24-bit/96kHz) sound almost too clean, bordering on razor sharp via some wires I’ve had in my system, and the smoothness with which the music is allowed to flow via the Black Rhodium cables is a welcome tonic. If your system has a tendency to shimmer at the extremes, the Minuet could be a welcome addition.
Bring out the big guns
Challenging the the brand’s rhetoric the price bracket of speakers that this cable is aimed it, the temptation to add a loudspeaker a little more demanding than the Dynaudios is too great to resist. And with Rotel Michi X5 amp and MoFi’s SourcePoint V10 Master Edition speakers called into action, I can confidently report back that the Minuet has no issues serving systems a few rungs up from the mid-priced breed.
I love what the MoFis can do with lower frequencies when fed plenty of power, and the Minuet holds none of this back. Revisiting the Idol’s track and the texture afforded Sal Cuevas’s rumbling bass guitar notes reveals this to be no budget cable in a fancy jacket. While the depth has been there with lesser cables in my system, the tonality in these lower notes can often get flattened, but with the Minuet, there’s an authentic resonance that’s telling not just of the instrument producing them, but the subtle playing style of the bloke wielding it, which making for a much more engaging listen.
Instrument separation is also high on the Black Rhodium’s priority list, perhaps revealing the cable’s well constructed nature and noise rejection at play. Soundgarden’s Superunknown (20th Anniversary) at 24-bit/96kHz is a recording that warrants plenty of unpicking, as on some systems I find the mix muddied enough to be off-putting, which the Minuet manages to keep in check, both across my high-end system and the Kraken/Dynaudio duo. The Day I Tried To Live is a point in case, with the track starting in style thanks to its isolated riff, percussion and growling bass. But when the chorus kicks in, so does the compression. Thankfully, the Minuet manages this nicely, because while it cannot remaster something on the fly, it can make sure that the music being piped through it is afforded enough breathing space to avoid it sounding overly congested or bottle-necked, making it a more enjoyable listen than I’ve experienced for some time. And you can’t really ask for much more than this in a speaker cable at this price.
The Minuet is an ideal cable for taking a mid-priced system up a level
In summary
For mid to high-end systems, Black Rhodium’s Minuet is just what the hifi doctor ordered. It’s blessed with a tonality that’s designed for longterm listening, being smoother than many brightly lit rivals, while also balanced across the frequency spectrum with excellent separation.
It’s also a very easy to live with cable, thanks to its flexible nature and quality construction. How Black Rhodium has managed to offer a package of this quality at this price I don’t know, but I’m delighted it has, as it’s worth every penny.
