If you’re developing a mould breaking supercar then it either breaks 7 minutes at the Nurburgring or it doesn’t. The measure of most of its success is fixed and indisputable. In High End audio however, it couldn’t be more different and the judgement of a product is open to such a wide latitude of interpretation; one man’s ears versus the next. Similarly then the knowledge base, R&D levels and testing criteria behind different companies also varies enormously and this all ultimately means that there is far too much product out there in the dark pitfall-infested labyrinth we know as the marketplace. Nowhere is this more true than in the world of cables; it’s just a piece of wire right ? So almost anyone can have a go at being the next big thing.

For someone like me then, who has to very carefully discover the future to bring to my customers, it follows that technology is very important, especially newly discovered technology. Our industry evolves as rapidly as digital cameras or say automotive technology, and so when I investigate new brands unless they have something which has the potential to advance the status quo, then I’m probably just looking at another ‘me too’ variation of what already exists.

Behind many of the greatest High End hifi companies lies a Grandmaster and when it comes to Korea, we know from outfits like Allnic Audio and Waversa systems and indeed the country at large, that there is no shortage of very clever people. This is the nation that has experienced one of the largest economic miracles of the last 100 years, in part because of very smart people involved in the innovation of technology. Meet Doyoung Chung who was formely the lead engineer at Indratec, a company which spent a number of decades deeply researching the adverse effects of RF and EM interference on electronic equipment. Chung is a devout audiophile as well though, just like you and me (he owns 5 or 6 reference systems for his own personal pleasure) and in 2008 Indratec funded the birth of Hemingway Cables with a very considerable R&D budget and a huge inherited knowledge base of existing research.

Hemingway cables today incorporate a number of truly authentic and unique technologies into their products but perhaps most crucial of all is their 2008 FMCF patent – frequency modulation cavity fundamentals. In highly oversimplified form, FMCF is the control of vibration and magnetic fields through the use of free space in the wire insulation. With this tech, electromagnetic fields along the wire – those staunch enemies of a clean noise free signal – can be manipulated and optimised to ultimately bring about what the company likes to call ‘the perfection of ultra realism’.

If you head over to their website the claims continue and are similarly bold and fancy but does any of it really hold out ? Well Hemingway cables for me sound unlike any other wire I have ever experienced, and their effect is immediately apparent to all ears. They are perfectly neutral and linear, they do not flavour the tonality or manipulate the frequency spectrum but they do do something to the architecture of the sound by virtue of their control over inherent magnetic fields. If Tara Labs are the masters of invisibility and “cables doing nothing” then the Hemingway way is about increased focus, a certain disciplined precision, saturated vividity, increased three dimensionality, exceptional timing, surefootedness and the ripening of instruments to new levels of timbral lucidity. In short, they banish noise in a very singular way and you can hear instantly that there is something else taking place here which other cables simply do not do; their technologies, their claims, are spookily audible and you will hear it too, it takes just a few seconds of the very first track.

We were introduced to Hemingway at Munich 2022 by Thrax Audio who partner with them and employ their cables at all the major shows. The brand synergy with Thrax therefore does not disappoint but curiously, we have also found them to work staggeringly well with Vitus, bringing about a degree of focus and enthusiasm to the Danish electronics that I have not witnessed previously. The RI-101 and SIA-025/030 in particular now have a new found potency when doing battle in the demo room. The Hemingway Z-core range reaches to the highest levels of transparency and resolve that the industry currently enjoys and this, coupled with their innate linearity and neutrality, means that they are also a very worthy choice when building a Tidal system as well, no matter how lofty.

Hemingway will fundamentally change your system. If your Hifi requires more life, dimensionality, realism or suffers from smearing or timing issues, then prepare to be amazed. If your system however is already fine performing, then watch it go completely stratospheric.