I would once again like to thank Eric Chong for his generous time and support, and for his dedication to the hobby that goes well beyond the conscripts of business etiquette.
Preface
In my fiftieth year, I wanted this, my fiftieth review for The Headphone List, to be something different, something less structured and more meaningful.
It’s a happy coincidence, then, that in a relatively short space of time, I’ve gotten to know and work with Eric Chong and his boutique cable company, Eletech. The way Eletech has themed its current products, mainly around the storied brilliance of Renaissance artists, resonates with my own interest in the artists of this period, and the rolling hills of Tuscany and beyond where their stories took place.
Raphael (reviewed here) was my entry point to the Eletech universe, a modest cable that looks and performs like something far more expensive. Then came Eletech’s newest flagship, Sonnet of Adam (reviewed here), that actually is far more expensive, but backs it up with impressive performance and equally impressive build quality.
But there is one cable that stands alone as arguably the pinnacle of what Eletech’s modern Renaissance is all about: Ode to Laura. It’s not a new cable, having first appeared in August 2022, and yet somehow it flew under my radar despite my preference for pure copper cables. It’s an error I had to correct, especially since so many people reached out to me after the Adam review asking how it compares to Laura.
Wait, hasn’t Laura been widely reviewed already, you ask. Yes, and brilliantly so by many, including my friends Tokpa Korlo on Head-Fi and Ryan Soo in this esteemed publication. So ‘yet another Laura review’ wouldn’t do.
As luck would have it, Eletech recently announced (and now released) a new modular cable connector system called Versa, as part of its five-year anniversary celebrations, which promises, among other things, to deliver virtually lossless signal passthrough with multiple IEM terminations.
So, I asked Eric about creating what is likely the world’s first Ode to Laura cable with Versa, and he pulled all the stops to make it happen before the Chinese New Year shutdown. As such, you’ll also find a dedicated section on Versa in this review.
Throughout this review, you’ll also find snippets from a Q&A with Eric, giving us more insight about the products and the stories behind them.
An ode to audiophiles
Francesco Petrarca, commonly known as Petrarch in historical literature, is considered by many the father of humanism, a philosophical and intellectual movement rooted in the early Renaissance that focused on human values, interests, and capabilities.
As the story goes, our friend Petrarch, a virtuous, priestly man by all accounts, finds himself walking into a place of prayer one day, and lo and behold lays eyes on the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Her hair golden, her eyes angled just so, her lips red and full, her…
Ok, that’s enough of that. Today we know her as Laura, because that’s what Petrarch calls her in the many sonnets of unrequited love he spent the rest of his life writing.
But what has any of this got to do with audio in general, and a certain copper cable in particular?
Well, Petrarch’s sonnets about Laura detail the relentless pursuit of perfection. He tirelessly sought to capture the essence of his beloved in verse, with each sonnet conveying the depth of his emotion and the nuances of his experience.
If you think that sounds a lot like how many of us pursue the perfect sound, you’re not wrong. There’s more…
In Petrarch’s verses, every word is carefully chosen to evoke a specific mood or sensation, much like how audiophiles meticulously select components to achieve a desired sonic fidelity. Just as Petrarch agonised over the ideal rhyme scheme and meter, us audiophiles obsess over the minutiae of sound reproduction, striving to achieve a harmonious balance that transcends the ordinary.
I asked Eric how this pursuit of perfection shapes the way his team goes about creating the perfect cable:
“We explore and log down every material that we have access to,” he says. “Materials from different processors and different processing techniques result in a completely different canvas. As part of our R&D lab’s daily work, we meticulously log down every material that we have according to base performance and signature/performance in differing geometries and setup.”
He continues:
“We tend to give every material a fair chance without reading too much into parameters such as ‘purity’, ‘conductivity’, and ‘resistance’, as each of these affects the perception of sound in a different way, depending on implementation. In many cases we find that the best material – in terms of purity and conductivity – doesn’t always result in the best sounding configuration.”
Like Petrarch’s unattainable love for Laura (historians claim she was married, and he was a man of the cloth), the pursuit of audio perfection is a journey marked by moments of ecstasy and frustration.
We, too, share a dedication (some would day obsession) that drives us to push the boundaries of our craft and gear. Ultimately, Petrarch’s sonnets, like our passions, remind us that the real beauty lies in the pursuit itself. Whether capturing the essence of forbidden love in verse, or chasing the mirage of extraordinary sound in gear, it’s our inherently human desire to strive for excellence and transcend the ordinary.
Continue to Introducing Laura…
