Hello hello! All right, so after letting hifiDJ borrow my Kimber Axios Copper cable, he and I did the swap the other direction and I now have the Brise Mikumari Ref.2 cable in my setup. A huge thank you to @hifiDJ for letting me borrow it!
As I mentioned earlier, I do find the Kimber already an improvement over the stock cable:
However, I agree with hifiDJ that the Brise is kinda just better than the Kimber. I spent a few days listening to the Brise (both some critical listening and distracted/working listening), and when switching back to the Kimber, the Kimber sounded both more blunted and more hollow-sounding to my ears compared to the Brise, and it felt to me like the Kimber didn’t have as much depth as the Brise. Also, I’ve heard hifiDJ occasionally talk about looking for an “engaging” quality, and there does seem to be something about the Brise sound that kind of draws you into the music.
However, at least with my ears on my chain, these differences were pretty subtle. I’ve recently swapped around quite a few cables in my setup, and for a point of comparison, my recent digital cable purchases made a more noticeable difference than swapping from the Kimber to the Brise.
Now while hifiDJ and I are running the same amp which should make this a little more apples-to-apples, the rest of our chains are pretty different! He’s using a higher-tier chip DAC and I’m running an R2R DAC, he has a nicer streamer while I’m still running a microRendu, etc, so it’s not unreasonable to assume the difference in the magnitude of what we’re hearing would still be affected by overall resolution, downstream signal quality, or just plain synergy. (Or that I’m a less-experienced listener, which is also probably true.)
I’ve actually been considering upgrading from the Kimber cable for quite some time, and when I borrowed the Brise, I told hifiDJ that if I loved it, I was just going to immediately order one. So it’s kind of weird to be sitting here saying that there’s basically nothing the Kimber does that the Brise doesn’t do better, and yet, I’m probably still going to hold off on buying one. At least for now, that money seems to be better spent upgrading other parts of my chain first.
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Okay, so while we’re here, let’s also talk a little bit of cable ergonomics, because the MYSPHERE is pretty weird in this regard. The MYSPHERE has two 3.5mm jacks, and you can run either a single TRRS cable to one side or you can run two TRRS cables, one on each side. In addition, the plugs are at the bottom of the headband, and because of how you wear the MYSPHERE, the plugs kind of line up with your shoulders and angle backwards. (Most other headphone jacks are in front of your shoulders and angle forwards.)
The stock MYSPHERE cable is a single TRRS and actually has an angle built-in to the cable so you can still run the cable in front of you relatively comfortably, but basically no other aftermarket cable will have that. So for me, I’ve been running these cables behind my shoulder. Note that this can artificially shorten the cable length, so if you’re in the market, you might want to buy a slightly longer headphone cable than you would usually buy.
My Kimber cable uses dual-TRRS 3.5mm connectors and I run it behind my head, so I’ve jokingly referred to it as having a cable ponytail. But apart from being dual-entry, the Kimber has pretty nice ergonomics otherwise; it feels nice in the hand, it doesn’t hold shape much at all, it doesn’t have a splitter so it doesn’t ever catch on stuff, and like, it lays flat and coils nicely and does all the things it needs to do to be well-behaved.
The Brise cable uses a single TRRS 3.5mm connector, so you’re only connecting it to one side of the MYSPHERE, which is nice (though I still run it behind my shoulder so to not strain the cable). The Brise is sleeved and also doesn’t have a splitter, but it’s overall a bit more rigid and is less amenable to being bent or coiled. (I’ve also been babying it maybe a bit more than normal since it doesn’t belong to me.)