Audio Space Odyssey!

PROS: premium quality cable with solid custom hardware, very supple and comfortable even considering 8-wire construction, enhances soundstage expansion and imaging, has a black background, improves articulation and layering of the bass notes, gives mids natural organic tonality while still improving the retrieval of details.

CONS: PRICE, sound improvement vary depending on pair-up synergy.

The product was provided to me on loan for review purposes in exchange for my honest opinion.

Manufacturer website:  Beat Audio.  Available for sale from authorized retailers like Musicteck.

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Preamble.

I’m aware that some people are skeptical about cable contribution to the audio chain.  It’s not my intent to start an argument here.  Instead, I would like to share what I hear during my testing.  Perhaps, I can’t fully explain why there is a change in sound, but I do hear it and don’t find it to be a placebo effect, especially in blind testing of various cables with IEMs.  What makes sense to me is that a metal wire is a material with physical properties of resistivity, conductivity, and purity, all of which act as a filter between your source and earphones.  Variations of these physical properties can affect the conductivity of analog signal, resulting in a sound change, from a subtle to a more noticeable level.  Also, the sound change introduced by a specific cable is not universal because it will depend on the design of earphones and their synergy with a source.

Intro.

Beat Audio has been around since 2006, and I heard about their cables many years ago when I started my review journey.  But for some reason, our paths never crossed, not until early this year when I “discovered” their cables at the CanJam NYC’24 while visiting Musicteck tables.  For some reason, I was under the impression they make only premium cables, thus I was pleasantly surprised that for such a high-end manufacturer, they have a wide selection of products starting at $199 and going up to…  Well, that is where my review comes in, focusing not on the entry-level, but the other side of the price spectrum, their flagship TOTL model, Orbit Saga.

When I got a chance to borrow this cable for review, I figured that at this price point, the target audience would be audiophiles who are comfortable with cost-no-object products and understand that a multi-kilobuck cable will not turn mid-fi IEMs into the flagship.  That is the reason I’m reviewing an 8-wire version of Orbit Saga with other TOTL IEMs.  For those who get upset with the pricing of flagship IEMs, cables, and DAPs, it all comes down to having a choice.  Many companies offer a variety from the entry to the summit-fi level and present all their products at audio shows, like CanJams, to let their customers decide if it is worth their hard-earned money.

As I mentioned in the past, when it comes to high-end cables, it is not only about the cost associated with the selection of exotic materials or complex manufacturing processes but also about understanding diminishing returns when paying a higher price for sound refinement rather than drastic changes.  Some audiophiles have no problem with that and will pay a premium even for a 5% improvement because they look at it as an investment and because they can afford it.  Also, the price envelope is being pushed because there is a demand, and manufacturers respond with a supply to meet it while also still offering more affordable options.

If you are still curious about what this cable brings to the table and how it pairs up with and compares to other cost-no-object premium TOTL IEMs and cables, here is what I found after spending a few weeks with Beat Audio Orbit Saga flagship 8-wire cable.

Unboxing.

Here is a funny thing, when I received the Orbit Saga cable, it arrived in a very interesting and rather odd-shaped 4-sided small box that had a round foam cutout for the cable storage and a folded origami-like letter under the cover.  It was a neat compact box, but not exactly what I would expect from a $7.3k flagship product.  I was about to mention this in the Cons of my review until I Googled the cable and saw pictures of the large luxurious wooden box with a premium construction and packaging and quickly realized that for a demo purpose, I only received a temporary storage box which is used with some other lower-end Beat Audio cables.

But the fact remains that even their compact cardboard box had a unique shape to make it stand out from the crowd.  I also noticed that Beat Audio mentioned on their website that the packaging for Orbit Saga is being updated due to issues with their current supplier.  Maybe that was one of the reasons why I didn’t receive full new packaging since it wasn’t ready and made no sense to showcase the old one in the review.

Design.

While reading the history behind Beat Audio cable releases, I learned that back in 2020 they announced their 10^th anniversary cable, Astrolabe, limited to only 10 units worldwide.  I’m aware that the company was founded in 2006, thus not sure how it translates into a 10th anniversary in 2020, perhaps 2010 was the year when they released their first original cable.  But what is important here, Beat Audio used the same technology as in that exquisite Astrolabe release to create the Orbit Saga, no longer limited to just 10 units, just a different tuning (which they have been perfecting for years) and in a different custom color scheme.

From the cable description, according to Beat Audio, the key elements of Orbit Saga design are Silver, Copper, and Gold.  From what I understand, Copper and Silver are the base core materials of the cable, while they add other exotic materials to form a multi-elemental alloy which I assume gold is a part of.  On top of that, Beat Audio utilized their Dual-Spiral technology using two thin sheaths, one pure copper and one pure silver, spiraling around the core of the cable while providing both acoustic tuning enhancement as well as core isolation.  According to Beat Audio, it took them a while to perfect this dual-spiral technique to get to their ideal sound and to make sure the cable stays supple.  Despite using 8 wires in a square-shaped not very tight braid, I can confirm that the cable is very soft, tangle-free (no memory effect), not heavy, not microphonic, and very ergonomic and comfortable to wear.

The solid metal hardware parts of the design were new and updated last year (in 2023).  These are custom-made golden-finish solid-build parts with connectors done by a specialized casting process to reduce any manufacturing errors.  The wires of the cable have emerald green and vibrant brown color sleeves, creating a nice contrast that enhances the premium look of the spiral braid unless you are OCD about the color-matching with your fancy-faceplate IEMs.

What I found interesting here, unlike other manufacturers of premium cables that use 3D CAD design drawings, and focus on pointing out the wire geometry and exotic precious metals, Beat Audio’s design description of Orbit Saga was rather brief and minimalistic.  In a very bold statement, they mentioned: “We use materials that sound good and do not just look good on paper”, meaning that they let their product speak for itself.

Page 2 – Pair-ups, Comparisons, and Conclusion.