Review by Kent Johnson of Two Channel Audio, an online magazine:

LISTENING TO THE MORROW AUDIO MA1 INTERCONNECT CABLES

And now for something quite a bit, if not completely, different.

The Morrow Audio MA1 interconnect cables, along with the other cables in
the Morrow line*, are made of solid core wire.  The wire is of very small
gauge and it is minimally insulated.  It is these qualities that Morrow Audio
says are responsible for the MA1s sound quality and performance.

The Morrow Audio website has technical information on just why Mike
Morrow believes that these parameters are essential to getting the best
sound through your audio system.  You can read more at
www.morrowaudio.com.  The web site also has price information.  One
meter MA1 cables with standard RCA plugs list for $199 per pair; (Morrow
Audio has frequent sales, however.)  The cables can also be gotten with
Eichmann RCA plug termination.  The cables I listened to came with the
standard RCA plugs.

I was loaned two pairs of MA1 cables.  I was slow getting to this article as I
was occupied in finishing up the reviews of the Quad 21L2 speakers and the
Mingda preamp.  I should have checked out the Morrow cables sooner for,
when I did, I discovered that they require a substantial break-in period to
sound their best, around 200 hours.  I got started on the break-in but it
took over two weeks to get it done.   Morrow Audio makes no mention of
the cables being directional but I ran them in my system in the same
orientation that I broke them in, just in case.

DESCRIPTION

These cables are disconcertingly minimal.  Generally, the more a cable costs,
the fatter it gets.  Not here.  I was initially concerned about the lack of any
sort of shielding and that placement might be difficult if hum and noise are
to be avoided.  This proved not to be the case.  The tight twisting of the
wire eliminates problems due to inductance and RFI.

I used these cables in my living room system as having two pairs allowed
me to replace both interconnects.  The Morrow cables have no weight so
they tend to be somewhat hard to dress, sort of like organizing a very light
Slinky.  Despite having the MA1s crossing speaker and AC cords, there
were no noise problems at all; in fact, I felt that the background might have
been a hair quieter.

LISTENING BEFORE THE MORROW

My living room system presently consists of the Sony SCD-C333ES SACD
player, Audio Experience +R preamp, VTL 50-50 amp, and Quad 21L2
speakers.  The interconnect cables are DH Labs BL-1 cable with Eichmann
copper RCA plugs.  The speaker cables are MITerminator 4 bi-wire cables.

This combination sounds extremely good.  The imaging is excellent, the
treble is clean, the midrange is wonderful, and the bass is surprisingly deep
for such small speakers.

I took notes while listening to several CDs so that I could make
comparisons to the Morrow MA-1s.

Jackson Browne’s solo acoustic vol.2 (Inside Recordings INR8021-9) offers
excellent soundstage depth with very good intelligibility of the audience
noises.  Jackson’s voice is surrounded by a realistic atmosphere as he
performs in a large, well-damped environment.  The low level details around
his voice and guitar provide a sense of being right on the stage with him as
he plays.  

The same sort of realism is present on Carol Sloane’s The Songs Sinatra
Sang (Concord CCD-4725).  Her versions of “One for My Baby” and “I’ll be
Around” go well beyond reprising songs Frank sang, they stand on their
own as remarkable examples of what a gifted artist can do with a great
song.  

On Stardust, the Bill Charlap trio plays the music of Hoagy Carmichael (Blue
Note 7243 5 35985 2 5) Tony Bennett sings “I Get Along without You Very
Well.”  Tony does a wonderful version of the song and not just for a
seventy-five year old guy (at the time of the recording).  The last line of the
song is: “For that would break my heart in two.”  Tony sustains the word
“two” for sixteen seconds!  Try just going “ah” for that long, much less
singing it.  Impressive is inadequate.  And while he does it, he is standing in
the room with you.  This is a very well recorded CD and the piano, bass,
and saxophone are also useful for hearing differences between components.

As always, I listened to a lot of other CDs as well.   

LISTENING AFTER THE MORROW

Before I actually started listening to the Morrow MA1s, I had to do some
bass measurements.  Their construction is just so different from anything I
have heard that I just had to satisfy myself that the bass was not in some
way being restricted.  Measuring from 40-80 Hz using the Stereophile Test
CD showed identical bass output between my reference cables and the
Morrow.  With that off my mind, I could do some listening.

Returning to the Carol Sloane CD, the song “I’ll be Around “sounded
breathier and her voice was more detailed.  The saxophone was spittier.  I
heard subtle touches of vibrato in her voice that I had not noticed before.  
“One for My Baby” sounded essentially the same in terms of bass depth
and impact, soundstaging, and treble.  But the vocals sounded as though I
had just replaced or upgraded the tubes in the preamp.  There was
definitely more detail present.  There was also a world-weary quality in her
voice that perfectly complemented the lyrics of the song.  This emotional
input was not as readily evident before.

Tony Bennett sounded even better.  On “I Get Along without You Very
Well,” He sings, “I’ve forgotten you just like” and pauses “I should.”  The “I
should” is sung at a higher volume level and through my reference cables
sounds almost shouted rather than sung.  Via the MA1s, “I should”
becomes a far more integral interpretation of the lyrics and a stylistic
device.  It’s a subtle difference but then the way Tony sings this song is
primer in what talent, experience, and subtlety can bring to simple words
and notes.

Diana Krall Live in Paris is a reference CD for me.  I use it to evaluate pretty
much everything I listen to.  It is great sounding and I can listen to it
relentlessly and still enjoy it.  The song “Devil May Care” has a stunning
drum solo on it.  With the MA1s the drum set extended from speaker to
speaker and, for the first time, outside of the speakers.  Diana’s voice also
had more reverberation around it as she interacts with the space she
occupies.  It was here that the exceptional clarity and cleanness of the
treble was readily apparent.  Diana’s voice, the guitar, and the strings all
benefited.  I began to suspect that some sort of extremely low-level
distortions were missing via the Morrow cables.  I cannot describe what
might be missing—it is too low in level to readily identify—but this would be
consistent with the benefits Morrow Audio claims for solid core cabling in
general.

By this point, I felt that I had gotten a good handle on what the Morrow
Cables were bringing to my system.  They offered better midrange detail,
cleaner treble, and subtle improvements in coherence that made every CD
that I listened to more realistic and involving.  I noticed, though, that the
longer these cables were playing music, the better things were sounding.

Impromptu by Emily Mitchell (John Marks Records JMR 25) is a collection of
French Romantic and Impressionistic harp music.  Ms. Mitchell gets amazing
sounds from her harp.  I was impressed by just how deep the bass
extends on many of the tracks.  Her harp filled the entire space between
my speakers and existed totally independent of them.  The soundstage
also had excellent height as if the harp were in the listening room itself.  As
her fingers plucked individual strings, I could follow the movement of her
hand across them.  Each string had its own unique position in space.  I
enjoyed all the music on this disc, although I would never claim that I am
capable of explaining what the composer has done or intended.  Still, on an
impressionistic composition like “Bells in the Snow” by Marcel Tournier, the
harp produced tones that even I could recognize as various sized bells.   

I finished with Diana Krall’s SACD Love Scenes.  She sings and plays piano;
Christian McBride plays bass; and Russell Malone plays guitar.  I am not
crazy about some of the songs on this disc but the sound is amazing.  I
did not take many notes.  Actually, the truth is that I did not take any
notes.  The sound, the music, the sheer reality of the soundstage was too
good to waste time trying to analyze.  This is a recording that makes
owning the SACD worthwhile.

I only realized after I started writing that I never got back to my Jackson
Browne CD to compare the sound using the MA1s.  I compensated by
listening to John Mayer.  He and his guitar sounded really great, so I figure
it evened out.

SUMMARY

I am very impressed with these cables.  They are very reasonably priced
and their performance is stunning.  And there is further potential
improvement to be had from terminating them with Eichmann plugs or
opting for the more expensive MA2 cables.  Balanced versions are also
available.  Best of all, you can try these cables in your own system for 60
days so you don’t have to depend on reviews like this one to tell you how
they sound.  

The Morrow Audio cables are definitely worth checking out.  I’m glad I had
the opportunity to hear them.

Kent Johnson
May 16, 2008

*Morrow Audio offers speaker and AC cables as well.