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WK Audio The One mk2 English ver.

Link do zapowiedzi (en): WK Audio The One

Opinion 1

After the midrange offering, the blue The Air, and the topline The Red, which is red obviously, time came to review the cable opening the portfolio of the Plichtów based company on the expected price level (because here we also have the budget The Two) called The One in the new version marked mk2. And I immediately need to remark, that the creator of the cable, and the whole commotion, Mr. Witold Kamiński, the owner of WK Audio, remained true to his initial nomenclature, while the cable itself is completely reengineered, so that only the exterior sheath and plugs remained from the previous version. All the rest was created anew. On one hand you could think, if in such case it would not be better to let go of the old model, and just start promoting the new one, building up its recognizability from scratch, but on the other, we can just give our regard to the manufacturer for signaling, that changes were introduced to the original model, as in the warranty and promotional materials there is always a statement “the manufacturer may introduce changes and modifications to the product without prior notice”. But here things are quite obvious – we know what started the series, and as some things changes along the way, a special marking indicates just that. So let us not prolong the introduction too much and invite you to meet the newest version of the power cable WK Audio The One mk2.

As you can see, the WK Audio The One cable is looking quite modest, compared to the previously mentioned brethren, as well as other audiophile oriented competition. While it is covered with an opalescent black-yellow-green sheath, and is supplied in a nice, sponge lined plywood box, instead of a cardboard box like the previous version, it is quite far from any byzantine ornamentation or superfluous glamor. It is just a fairly thin, yet noticeably stiff and springy power cable, terminated with standard Furutech plugs (E38R and FI-28R), which have smoked, greenish enclosures, fitting nicely with the colors of The One. The company “ornaments” changed, as instead of the previously used aluminum tube, we have a somewhat simplified, leather pendant, known from The Air, with a brushed metal hanger with the model name and company data. And looking inside the sheath, things got even more interesting. While the predecessor had a combined cross-section of the wires 14.5 mm² (two working wires, L and N, 6 mm² each and the PE wire 2.5 mm²), in the current version all the wires have 10AWG (6 mm²). Additionally, all are made from higher purity copper, which was cryogenically treated. Of course the whole is fully handmade, each of the conductors has a different construction, new winding geometry was used and different antivibration materials were also applied. To put things short – this is a complete revolution.

Now we have gone through the esthetic-organoleptic impressions, after a few acrobatic moves I was able to connect the cable to the back of my sound source, the Ayon CD-35, so we can now start with the rest of the review. As you can probably imagine, the few first days went on with a slow adaptation of the cable in my system, and I was also accommodating to its presence, because I really do not like to remove the Furutech Nanoflux Power NCF, that usually resides there. Additionally The One is a cable from a lower tier, so I needed to perform a certain kind of reset of my expectations and habituation. Please do not misunderstand me – it was not about living through a trauma coming from the regress, but just about adjusting expectations and requirements to the segment represented by the tested cable. Just that and only that.
But it quickly turned out, that The One does not bring shame to its more noble brethren, it can even become a very nice business card of the Plichtów manufacture. Due to its universality it can be a very safe proposition not only for the beginning of the adventure with audiophile power cabling, but also a sensible choice everywhere, where we are looking for solid, but also affordable power cords. While The Air clearly brought together and made the sound more concrete, and The Red put size and might of the sound as the main aspects, The One takes something from both approaches, making sure, that neither gains the upper hand. So it has a nicely springy, well controlled and low reaching bass, due to which, even the power metal gallopades from “Born from Fire” by Induction, seasoned with large amounts of symphonics, do not sound like a maliciously boiling kettle, covered with a metal lid, but have the right amount of energy, detail and melodics to provide a highly satisfying differentiation and selectivity of the sound, instead of a shapeless bass pulp. And in this moment it is worth noticing, that The One does not try to civilize at all costs, it is not trying to pull the less well made recordings up the ladder. This allowed the guys from Induction to roar happily even at concert-like levels of volume, sounding truly splendid, while you would really need to have lots of strong will to survive the live recording “The Stranger Returns (Live 1991)” by Richie Sambora, which is recorded below even bootleg standards. Thus you need to know, that there will be no protective averaging here at all. This is in fact a very good thing, as on this level I do expect appropriate truthfulness and transparency, and not any masking of the shortcomings of the system or the recording itself, just to keep the wrongly understood musicality as the overarching concept. The tested WK Audio is not pointing fingers at the mistakes, not bringing them under the pillory or heralding with a sacred indignation to Urbi and Orbi, neither makes the sound matte, like many computer type cables do, it just shows what and how was recorded, leaving the assessment of it to the listener. This is the reason, that when coarseness and garage edginess are used fully consciously, as means of artistic expression, like for example in the dark, and full of electronic pulses woven together with guitar sounds “Tales from Six Feet Under” by Charlotte Wessels (yes, yes – the Charlotte Wessels from Delain) you can rest assured, that with The One in your system, you will not only hear that, but you will also be able to interpret correctly, if it was something done by the artist/sound engineer, or any element in our system tries to put its mark on the played music, proposing its point of view. And that without the need to think about it for prolonged periods of time, you will just know it immediately. But to not bend the facts too much, or according to purists – confabulate, it is worth reaching out for natural, unamplified instruments. This is why I allowed myself to spend a bit longer time with the splendid recording of “Swan Lake” performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra, directed by Leopold Stokowski from 1954. Here you can have a nice surprise, as despite the recording being quite old, it still has a thrilling dynamic, breath and incredible coherence. Additionally I had the impression, that The One could reproduce the size, the space of the New York Manhattan Center better, than The Air did. The brass and cymbals have a lot of freedom and shine, but they are far from being hardened, what becomes tiring in the long run. They were also not overagitated. All in all, this was just common sense balance, something, that is a great prognostic for the future.

WK Audio The One mk2 is a cable, that is absolutely worth your attention and my recommendation. Not only does it not pull the sockets out of the walls, it also does not move your electronics around (at least the one weighing below 10kg), it does awaken the dynamic potential, slumbering in it. But instead of artificially upping the motoric, or enhancing the sound spectrum extremes, it emphasizes on balance and linearity. In a nutshell, this is the cable equivalent of “tomato soup”, which everybody likes, so we can easily assume, that everybody will also like The One.

Marcin Olszewski

System used in this test:
– CD/DAC: Ayon CD-35 (Preamp + Signature) + Finite Elemente Cerabase compact
– Network player: Lumin U2 Mini + Franc Audio Accessories Ceramic Disc TH + I-O Data Soundgenic HDL-RA4TB
– Digital source selector: Audio Authority 1177
– Turntable: Kuzma Stabi S + Kuzma Stogi + Dynavector DV-10X5
– Phonostage: Tellurium Q Iridium MM/MC Phono Pre Amp
– Power amplifier: Bryston 4B³ + Graphite Audio IC-35 Isolation Cones
– Loudspeakers: Dynaudio Contour 30 + Brass Spike Receptacle Acoustic Revive SPU-8 + Base Audio Quartz platforms
– IC RCA: Tellurium Q Silver Diamond
– IC XLR: Organic Audio; Vermöuth Audio Reference; Acrolink 7N-A2070 Leggenda
– Digital IC: Fadel art DigiLitz; Harmonic Technology Cyberlink Copper; Apogee Wyde Eye; Monster Cable Interlink LightSpeed 200
– USB cables: Wireworld Starlight; Goldenote Firenze Silver; Fidata HFU2; Vermöuth Audio Reference
– Speaker cables: Signal Projects Hydra; Vermöuth Audio Reference Loudspeaker Cable + SHUBI Custom Acoustic Stands MMS-1
– Power cables: Furutech FP-3TS762 / FI-28R / FI-E38R; Organic Audio Power + Furutech CF-080 Damping Ring; Acoustic Zen Gargantua II; Furutech Nanoflux Power NCF
– Power distribution board: urutech e-TP60ER + Furutech FP-3TS762 / Fi-50 NCF(R) /FI-50M NCF(R)
– Wall power socket: Furutech FT-SWS(R)
– Anti-vibration platform: Franc Audio Accessories Wood Block Slim Platform
– Switch: Silent Angel Bonn N8 + Silent Angel S28 + Silent Angel Forester F1 + Luna Cables Gris DC
– Ethernet cables: Neyton CAT7+; Audiomica Anort Consequence + Artoc Ultra Reference + Arago Excellence; Furutech LAN-8 NCF
– Table: Solid Tech Radius Duo 3
– Acoustic panels: Vicoustic Flat Panels VMT

Opinion 2

Do you know the Polish brand WK Audio? Easy, this is a rhetorical question – at least for our readers, who know, that it makes cables for any systems generating sound. Why does it do that? This is quite simple, the music lovers understood, that without quality cable connections, for power and signal, they will not be able to get good sound, even when they collected the best possible system components. And the mentioned brand came to life as a response to that realization. Currently it concentrates on power cables only, but we have to mention, that the catalog of its products is expanding – we tested products like The Air and The Red. Also, following the requirements of the demanding market, those products are also evolving in quality. How do I know that? Well, this is the reason for our today’s encounter. We will be having a look at the second version of the cable we did not test before, which was provided to us directly by the manufacturer from Plichtów, the power cable WK Audio The One mkII.

What does the tested product hide inside? From the information provided by the manufacturer, we can judge, that in fact this is a completely new construction, when compared to its predecessor. There are some similarities, like the sheath, its color and used plugs, but the cable itself is completely different. In this case, it is much more pure copper, which was cryogenically processed, a completely different way the conductors are woven, bigger diameter of the individual wires composing each conductor and finally, different anti-vibration materials. It is also important, that the whole cable is fully handmade, similar to the best manufacturers in the world, what implies a very solid construction. Unfortunately this is all we could learn about the product, as due to the fear of it being copied, the manufacturer does not disclose anything else. The completed cable is packaged in a nice, wooden box. And we did not ask about the sound, as this is the part, that we can assess for ourselves, and the result of that assessment you can find in the paragraph below.

Before I move to the description of the sound, let me tell you, that the tested cable is a kind of entry point for the two cables we tested previously, in price, but in theory, also in terms of sound. This makes checking, if in fact The One mkII lives up to the expectations created by the older brethren, the most important aspect of the test. The first tested cable was very expressive, yet a bit untamed, the second one also full of energy, but provided in a more noble way, and most importantly, without killing off the drive present in the reproduced music. And you know what? You can hear from the first moments, that the manufacturer did his homework well. We can hear the cable wishes to show the events recorded in a dynamic way, but this is not done by stretching only the midrange and directing the power into saturation and clearness of the vocals, with the rest of the sound spectrum having less importance. No, all the spectrum ranges were unified in importance. The music gains in breath. It does not force us to look into a specific aspect, in the previous case related to how the midrange was presented, but allows us to absorb music in an equal way. Of course this is not this kind of refinement, combination of resolution with smoothness, like in a flagship cable, but you can nevertheless hear, that the system emphasizes on calmness, and what comes with that, minimalizes the kind of “in your face” presentation, which becomes tiring in the long run. Instantly it turns out, that the vocalist does not want to eat you, the listener, and the bass player does not want to trigger your heart attach, when pulling on a string amplifier by the instrument’s body. How is this possible? I already told you – this is the effect of treating the whole sound spectrum equally, what makes the musicians, regardless of the genre they are representing, rabid rock or quiet jazz, have proper sound weight and good control of it. The freedom of projection in the air is unrestricted, and the sound has very nice vividness, pleasant when listening. Can this be done better? Of course, for example with the model taken from the top of the catalog. But knowing all the abilities of the three cables, I would recommend to try out the entry level cable, before you reach for the upper “C”. It is really good.

When time came to propose a target group for the tested cable, I would recommend it really to everybody, without worrying of any dramatic defeat. It does not have over the top bass. It is not brazen. It is well seated in mass and due to that, has a nice timbre. And everything is garnished with appropriate amount of freedom of projection. Will it be fitting in everybody’s taste – that is a completely different story, depending on the needs of a given configuration and expectations of the listener. But one thing is certain, the time spent with it will be full with nice sensations. And this is exactly what our little hobby is all about. Or am I not right?

Jacek Pazio

System used in this test:
Source:
– transport: CEC TL 0 3.0
– streamer: Melco N1A/2EX + switch Silent Angel Bonn N8
– DAC: dCS Vivaldi DAC 2.0
– Master clock: Mutec REF 10 SE-120
– reclocker: Mutec MC-3+USB
– Shunyata Research Omega Clock
– Shunyata Sigma V2 NR
– Preamplifier: Gryphon Audio Pandora
– Power amplifier: Gryphon Audio Apex Stereo
– Loudspeakers: Gauder Akustik Berlina RC-11 Black Edition
– Speaker Cables: Synergistic Research Galileo SX SC
IC RCA: Hijiri Million „Kiwami”, Vermouth Audio Reference
IC XLR: Tellurium Q Silver Diamond, Hijiri Milion „Kiwami”, Siltech Classic Legend 880i
Digital IC: Hijiri HDG-X Milion
Power cables: Hijiri Takumi Maestro, Furutech Project-V1, Furutech NanoFlux NCF, Furutech DPS-4.1 + FI-E50 NCF(R)/ FI-50(R), Hijiri Nagomi, Vermouth Audio Reference Power Cord, Acrolink 8N-PC8100 Performante
– Table: BASE AUDIO 2
– Accessories: Harmonix TU 505EX MK II, Stillpoints ULTRA SS, Stillpoints ULTRA MINI, antivibration platform by SOLID TECH, Harmonix AC Enacom Improved for 100-240V, Harmonix Room Tuning Mini Disk RFA-80i
– Power distribution board: POWER BASE HIGH END
– Acoustic treatments by Artnovion
Analog stage:
Drive: Clearaudio Concept
Cartridge: Essence MC
Step-up: Thrax Trajan
Phonostage: Sensor 2 mk II

Manufacturer: WK Audio
Price: 6 900 PLN / 1,5m

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