Special thanks to Beat Audio’s Stephen Guo, in association with MusicTeck, for making this review possible.
It’s been five years since Beat Audio released its first ‘super flagship’ cable, Astrolabe. That cable, with its eye-watering price, was limited to only ten units, but its popularity was such that it sold out almost as soon as it was announced.
Fast forward a year or two, and Orbit Saga (reviewed here), based on the same design as Astrolabe, was ushered in as a more readily-available, yet still frighteningly expensive foray into the world of extreme IEM cables. I can personally attest to how special this cable was – and still is – and I’d encourage anyone who’s into the wiry end of the hobby to at least give it a listen if they can.
I thought Orbit might be the pinnacle of Beat’s ambition at this level, but I was wrong. A few weeks after I published my Orbit review, Stephen Guo let me in on a little secret: a new super flagship was in the works. All I had was a name – Valhalla – and a few early images of its intricately hand-engraved hardware.
Little did I know that, a month later, I’d be in the rarefied position of actually getting to hear and use Valhalla myself, but here we are. Hopefully this review will, at least in part, reveal some of the mysteries behind the making of these obsessively perfectionist cables, but I warn you that I’m still in the dark myself when it comes to the dark arts of Beat’s complex cable metallurgy.
Enter Valhalla
Norse mythology seems to be all the rage in portable audio nowadays. Odin, Thor, Loki and Bifrost have been used as monikers for IEMs, cables, and everything in-between. It makes sense from a marketing perspective, given the mysticism behind the names suggests something transcendent, aspirational, and rarely attainable for mere mortals.
None more so than the ‘hall of the slain’ itself, Valhalla. It’s where your soul ends up after you’ve fought the valiant fight and failed, which probably happens to most enthusiasts faced with today’s super-summit prices. It stands to reason, then, that the $8,299 Valhalla will see most of us clinking beer glasses in the Great Hall of Audiophilia soon enough.
Jest aside, this cable, adorned in a dark, regal purple skin and suitably presented in a solid, handmade wood casket, is as serious a piece of cable hardware as you’re likely to see in the hobby. In my opinion, it’s pure audiophile jewellery, and exceptional performance notwithstanding (we’ll get to that shortly), it’s something you’re more likely to purchase as a statement piece rather than a practical accessory.
Speaking to Stephen about the inspiration behind Valhalla, it’s clear to me that this cable was intended as a complement rather than a replacement for Orbit Saga.
“The Astrolabe and Orbit Saga are basically the same in terms of technicality, so we wanted to surpass ourselves once again with something that even customers who already own the Astrolabe and Orbit Saga would still want to purchase.”
Technically, Valhalla is indeed more complex, as you’d expect from the not-insubstantial price jump, but it also needed to be different enough aesthetically and sonically to entice Orbit Saga users to buy big again.
Design and tech
If you’re at all familiar with other Beat Audio cables, the first difference you’ll notice in Valhalla is the intricate engraving patterns on the signature gold hardware.
The interlocking semi-circular shapes hand-carved into the Y-splitter, chin slider, 4.4mm plug and 2-pin connectors are inspired by the ancient designs of the Tang Dynasty, flowing patterns that closely resemble grasses and leaves. In Chinese these are called 唐草 (Tang Cao), meaning Tang grasses, and represent fortune and good health.
In addition, each of the 100 Valhalla owners will have his or her name engraved into the hardware on request.
The gold hardware contrasts sharply with the purple-hued sheathing, even more so than the gold and green of Orbit Saga, and looks particularly handsome with gold-accented, purple-tinged, or dark/neutral IEMs. The purple is understated compared to the brighter hue of Beat’s recently-released Oslo Mk IV cable (reviewed here), and to me looks more elegant as a result. Still, if you’re not into gold bling, you might find Valhalla’s colourway too bold.
Skin feel, like the other Beat cables I’ve reviewed, is soft and supple, with minimum microphonics. Valhalla is ever so slightly stiffer than Orbit Saga, most likely because of the denser quad spirals (see below) and additional internal coating and sheathing, despite being the same thickness.
Unlike Orbit Saga, there is only an 8-wire option, so if you’re not into girthy cables, look elsewhere. That said, Valhalla, like Orbit, is far more supple, lighter and less prone to tangling than PW Audio’s 4-wire paracord cables, especially the shielded versions.
Quad spiral design. Beat pioneered the dual spiral design in Astrolabe and Orbit Saga, made up of two separate metals that are flattened into micromillimeter-thin ribbons, and spiralled in a helix-like pattern around the core wires.
Valhalla ups the ante by using four different spirals, two each of graphene and pure silver, pressed together into a dual spiral array. The spirals each conduct signals at different speeds, theoretically aiding the tuning differences developed for Valhalla. As with Orbit, the ribbons act as both surface conductors for tuning and shielding.
According to Beat, “Graphene and pure silver spirals are compressed onto each other. The silver spiral ribbon is formed from a thin silver thread (that’s actually a rod shape), and is compressed first into a ribbon. The ribbon is then cut into the width that we want, and is sonically polished, giving a very shiny surface for reduced skin effect. The graphene layer is then attached onto the polished silver ribbon, giving the same ribbon another sonic channel. Each type of material only conducts signals at a certain speed, and to get balanced sound, we need to conduct signals at different speeds.”
Multistrand, multi-wire, multi-alloy. ‘Purity isn’t everything’ is a Beat Audio design philosophy that carries through most of its cables, especially the premiums. The company experiments with different types of metals and metal alloys to find specific combinations that match conductivity, resistance and impedance targets when used together. Valhalla’s specific concoction of metals, which was formulated over a three-year period, includes copper, silver, zinc and bismuth alloys, aside from the pure graphene and silver spirals.
Structurally, Valhalla features seven small threads to form a bigger core thread (copper alloy and rare minerals), around which are six bigger threads with seven small threads of silver alloy mixed with rare minerals. The different threads create a balanced structure with 49 total threads in each wire. A green isolating layer is then sprayed onto each wire at high temperate and high velocity, settling onto the surface of each thread and maximising the conductive surface area.
A translucent sheath covers the 49 inner threads, and is used for isolation as well as physical stability. This is very thin and tight, so it doesn’t feel stiff, and provides a base for the double helix, quad spiral structure to cling onto, giving the overall structure even more stability.
Packaging and accessories
Each of the 100 final versions will be delivered inside a handcrafted, hand polished box made from North American maple wood, finished with seven layers of piano lacquer similar to that used on acoustic guitars and expensive watch boxes. Since only 100 of these boxes will be made, you can rest easy that production ends as soon as the last box is filled.
Along with the cable, each box will also include a laser-carved piece of ore as a warranty card, made from the same rare mineral raw material used to make the cable. However, since my Valhalla is only a production demo sample, it didn’t ship with the original packaging or accessories you can expect to get with your own limited-edition Valhalla, so that’s about as much as I can tell you at this point.
Now let’s get to the fun stuff.
Continue to sound impressions…
