Intro
Contents
Van den Hul needs no introduction. This Dutch brand has been making cables – as well as phono cartridges, pre-amps, etc – for both consumers and manufacturers for decades. If you want more background, we refer you to the presentation at Poulissen. We previously covered a big, fat Van den Hul speaker cable in the mega test. Now it’s time for a slightly more expensive model: the Nova. A cable that – according to the website – has extremely low resistance. We’ll see!
Extremely low resistance, high conductivity and bandwidth, super shielding. Sounds all very interesting. Whether this is all true, we will see later in the measurements. Although we must confess: Van den Hul does not come across as a manufacturer who claims things they cannot deliver. A.J Van den Hul is a scientist pur-sang and will remain humble rather than sell hot air.
The Van den Hul The Nova (or Van den Hul Nova) is a pretty thick, stiff cable. The stiffness is mainly due to the extremely thick outer jacket and double shielding. The conductors are ultrapure copper with a silver coating. Now Van den Hul pulls the copper very differently than usual. The process is pretty slow and with very little bending. That would cause tiny cracks. The silver is also applied differently. You can see all that in the presentation. There A.J explains it all. The bottom line is that the sound of a cable is determined by the way the conductors are pulled and the chemicals used to apply other metals.
Thick!
We all know that 4mm2 is quite a lot for a speaker cable. That’s calculable. The Nova offers 16.8mm2 (!) in twin-lead configuration (just single-wire that is). With bi-wire, this thickness halves. After all: the conductors are divided over two binding posts at the speaker. However, 8.4mm2 is also pretty thick. But hey… 16.8mm2 is more impressive ;-).
The thickness of a cable largely determines the conductivity. Thicker copper offers a higher conductance factor. The material also cooperates. Silver conducts better than copper. Then there are the transitions of materials. Poor transitions cause loss. And that in turn manifests itself in a lowering of the conductance factor and thus an increase in resistance. Van den Hul has thought this through and – according to its website – provides very high-quality transitions between the cable and the spades. Banana plugs are also an option.
Ground
What is striking about Van den Hul speaker cables is the ground wire. This is connected to the shield and must be connected to both the amplifier and speaker. This ‘grounding’ ensures that the EMI / RFI picked up by the shield is neatly dissipated. The Pass Labs X150.8 has a dedicated connection for this ground. Speakers usually don’t. At least: our TAD does not have a ground connection. So we left it loose on the speaker side. Some speakers do have a ground connection on the filter. Then you can use this.
