Brand Spotlight – Flash Acoustics Cables

The Cable Superheroes!

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

Manufacturer website: Flash Acoustics. Available for sale from authorized retailers like Musicteck.

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 is that a metal wire is a material with physical properties of resistivity, conductivity, and purity, acting as a filter between your source and earphones. Variations of these physical properties could 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.

Since I only had a week with these cables before returning them to Musicteck, this is going to be labeled as a Spotlight Review, a shorter review focusing on introduction of Flash Acoustics brand I wasn’t myself familiar with, going over their design and quick sound impressions which should help you decide which cable will suit you better if you are looking to pick one. All the testing was done using P6 Pro as my neutral sources, and Jewel, Odin, and RN6 IEMs for a variety of monitors with a different sound sig to find a common sound enhancement/change characteristics between Blaze, Thanos, Ultron, and Venom cables from Flash Acoustics.

Design technology.

From the Flash Acoustics website, I learned that the company was established in 2016 by a group of audiophiles and cable enthusiasts, however, it officially started in Hong Kong in 2017, and then two years later in 2018, moved to China. They are responsible for developing a custom hardware and new tech with a unique cable structure. Down to cabling geometry, structure, and stranding parameters, everything is designed by their in-house experienced cable engineering team from Hong Kong. Flash Acoustics invested in the whole manufacturing line from cable stranding to shield braiding until extrusion inside their factory to have the entire manufacturing process under the highest quality control and to maintain the design confidentiality.

Some of the highlights of their wire technology as mentioned on their website:

FreqSync is a type of stranding technology that calculates length difference between the core and the outermost layer. To have the same phase, a special SZ stranding ratio will be used to compensate the length difference between layers.
Special formula of SoftFlex PVC, not only having great UV-resistance and ability against acid & alkaline, but also softness and transparency. Moreover, SoftFlex uses extra high temperature in extrusion to make sure crystal-like transparency of our wires.
S-Z Stranding is a contra-directional stranding method which effectively lowers proximity effect between metal conductors after stranding.
S-Z Multi-stranding is a combination of multi-stranding and S-Z contra-directional stranding.
Customized Golden ratio structure for IEM cables, enabling frequencies to pass through different conductors due to skin effect.
X-Cross structure is an interior cable structure which uses signal delay between positive and negative conductors, enhancing the depth and width of soundstage.
Dual Lock is an oil locking technology that uses silk fabric and polyethylene to seal mineral oil inside a IEM cable, while a braided silk fiber is being exposed to a vented condition for at least 3 weeks before extrusion.
Unlike conventional Cryo treated wires (-184C/-310F), Flash Acoustics developed an enhanced Cryo wire (-196C/-321F) drawing technology which uses the annealing properties of Cryo treatment to maintain crystallization.

I know that some people treat the technology behind cables as snake oil and probably will take the above with a grain of salt. Regardless of that, the point of me listing the tech behind these cables is to show that Flash Acoustics is not a company that buys 3^rd party wires and randomly throws stuff together. They invest their time and resources into developing and manufacturing their own wires and cable hardware. The only thing from outside is the use of ConX modular interchangeable connectors adopted into the design to give more flexibility for their cables to be compatible with different connector IEMs.

The overall design of the packaging was also nice and compact, with a “splash of color” external sleeve, nice sturdy storage box underneath, welcome and warranty card, and in addition to a full set of ConX connectors, you also get a leather organizer strap.