With over 20 years’ experience behind it, Richard Cesari continues to develop its Esprit cable ranges with the recent arrival of the Esprit Beta G9 series. This 9th generation is even more advanced than its predecessor, particularly in terms of noise and interference reduction, for ever more developed musicality and ever more realistic sound reproduction, as already demonstrated by the brand’s second line, called Beta.
Previously confined to the Eureka range, which many music lovers could not afford, Esprit has further developed its ranges in recent years, at the request of countries such as India, South Korea and China. The manufacturer has produced the Gaïa range, followed by the extreme L’Esprit, the ultimate model in the style of the Italian car manufacturer’s LaFerrari supercar, released in 2013.
More modest, but still affordable for many, the Beta range comes second among the ten existing models, and remains without doubt the one offering the best value for money.
Esprit Beta cables are particularly carefully designed, with an electrically symmetrical structure of 720 strands of pure 6N copper (this number defines the degree of oxidation, so here a purity at 99.9999% ). The RCA cable has a diameter of 0.08 mm, the XLR cable 0.19 mm and the loudspeaker cable 0.37 mm. Protected in an asymmetrical dielectric sheath, the conductor of this G9 generation benefits from a new assembly of insulators, as well as a shield that is no longer floating as on the G8 products, but connected on both sides while being reduced compared to the previous generation. This partial shielding provides protection against waves, keeping interference and noise to a minimum. The bandwidth, rhythmic tracking and sound concentration are thus increased, while the unshielded part maintains greater flexibility and naturalness. The result is simply the best of both worlds, with an even better balance than before.
Focusing on ten types of cable, from mains connections to jumper cables, Esprit’s initial ranges are limited to just a few models. The manufacturer doesn’t feel it has much to offer on certain entry-level cables, as the savings required to reach certain price points result in insufficient musical quality, in its view. This is why the Beta range currently comprises just four products, RCA, RCA phono, XLR and HP, as tests on mains or RJ45 cables, for example, were not deemed conclusive enough to offer these products to consumers.
In the Beta range, only the XLR cable already has a twisted dielectric – a technique widely used for the higher ranges – with a silver-plated phosphor bronze female plug and a silver-plated pure copper male plug. The RCA cable benefits from connectors developed exclusively for Esprit, with the EH50rca fitted to the first three ranges, up to and including Kappa products. It features a pure copper central pin and a brass body, plated with four copper-silver layers totalling five microns, while the loudspeaker links benefit from banana plugs or forks with a multilayer copper-silver plating of 20 microns.
The set up
Still relatively flexible, Beta cables are very easy to install, especially on 18 mm terminals, where the RCAs fit directly, whereas the ferrules have to be unscrewed to fit them on 20 mm terminals, which are often used for top-of-the-range equipment. HP cables are still light enough to be chosen with banana plugs without any problem, with forks becoming reassuring from the Aura or Lumina ranges onwards, which are considerably heavier. As with all the brand’s products, there is a direction to follow when listening. This is indicated by an arrow pointing towards the amplifier for the interconnections, and towards the speakers for the loudspeaker cables. A final word of warning: don’t neglect the break-in period of several dozen hours, because the first listening sessions produce an overly shrill high frequency and a relatively closed soundstage, which you can hear opening up hour after hour as the signal becomes more fluid.
For our tests, carried out on the Atoll SDA300 Signature and the excellent Kora TB140, to drive the Atohm GT1, Jern 15H and Fyne Audio F500SP, we initially used simple cables. Then we moved up the range by integrating Beta G9s with Celesta and Eterna G8s, using HP, RCA, then RCA and XLR on our Accuphase E-600 and our Sugden Masterclass HA-4 headphone amp.
The sound of the Esprit Beta G9
With the G8 series, Esprit succeeded in developing its name internationally to become a reference in high-fidelity, a fact largely deserved when one hears the gain in substance and detail due to the integration of certain of the brand’s cables into a Hi-Fi system. With G9, at least on the Beta range – while waiting to test even higher ranges – all the impressions of respect for timbre and development of nuances already audible before are maintained, but with an even more remarkable concentration and an even greater reduction in noise than with the previous generation.
At present, an RCA Beta G9 cable can almost be compared to a Célesta G8, which it does not surpass in terms of grain and substance, but against which it develops greater clarity and purity thanks to its new jacket and the work done on the insulators and partial shielding. Of course, we have no doubt that a Célesta G9 will go even further, but already the Beta G9 offers more realism and quality of detail than cables from inferior or competing ranges, enough to create the impression that you’ve simply changed speakers or source, so much so that the addition of volume to a system is felt from the very first second of music.
Our conclusion
The striking changes in the G9 series propel the Betas almost two ranges above the previous generation, to the level of the Célesta G8s, further refining the sound and freeing it from numerous impurities, which were already very limited. More concentrated, the gain is obvious with the speaker cables, even for ears not used to quality listening. However, the almost equally important contribution of modulation cables should not be overlooked. If we have to confine the superiority of XLR over RCA to the fact that equipment with balanced connections is often made to work better this way, it remains clear that adding a Beta G9 interconnect cable to a Hi-Fi system still amply extends the soundstage, at the same time as refining harmonic nuances.
Author: Vincent Guillemin
Technical sheet: Esprit Beta G9
- Origin: France
- Price :
- From €320 (RCA; 2 x 0.6 m)
- From €350 (XLR; 2 x 0.6 m)
- From €440 (HP; 2 x 2 m)
