Cables for full-size headphones make, at best, tiny differences (excepting for the SR1a and electrostatics, where impedance or capacitance, respectively, are CRITICAL factors and must be tightly controlled).
I only say this, because until everything ELSE in your system is “end game” then cables are the last place to spend your money, as they’ll give by far the smallest return. Excepting getting to a reasonable balanced cable if you don’t have one (and re-terminating the Focal cable if the best way to go there without spending a lot … it’s easy to do and beyond the ergonomics and length, is excellent).
All that said, you can read my prior posts to get the answers to your specific questions - in some cases you may need to read back a post or two to get the proper context:
I just say I’m a fan boy of Norne. The longest I waited was month shortest was week. What I found with Trevor if you don’t bother the guy he gets it out quick. I have three of his cables. A Skruag(never ended up on the website think he just did Draug sc3) which is a silver copper combo and two Draug sc3 cables. The quality it excellent and I feel the price is good.
While I’ve listened to the Eligia I’m not extremely familiar with it so unfortunately I wouldn’t be the best person to ask. Also depends on what you are wanting to get out of your cable, what do you feel is lacking in your current set up?
I had to smile when reading what you listen to: with your Focal headphone you listend to focal music. It’s a vocal music that’s gone through the Focals
I am posting this as a heads-up. Do not use UPS for shipping, at least not if you live in Canada.
I ordered cables for my Elegia from Forza AudioWorks a month ago. Matt assembled and shipped them out quite rapidly but they have been sitting in a UPS trailer 20km from where I live for over 2 weeks now! Because of Covid, UPS is overwhelmed with volume and can’t manage it. They are impossible to get a hold of and when you do, there is nothing the agent can do for you. They can’t even give you an estimate as to how long the package will be held. I have had packages delivered with FedEx and Canada Post without issue during this pandemic so this seems to be a UPS issue. If you order cables from Forza ask that they be shipped with a service other than UPS.
What irks me is that UPS has twitter adds promoting Covid discounts to small businesses but they are not warning their commercial clients that they are backlogged and experiencing huge delays in deliveries. If I had known I would have either requested another shipping service or not ordered anything at all but I paid an expensive UPS fee for express service and my package sits in limbo for weeks.
Meanwhile UPS just released their Q1 earning for 2020 and profits are up.
UPS is also managing the 24/7 operation of receipt and distribution of PPE, at FEMA’s direction. Not sure how secure I would feel knowing that if I lived in the US.
Basically, “pay for whatever shipping you want but because of this we won’t guarantee the package will reach you in that time frame, if at all”.
I can’t speak for Canada as our UPS shipments have been going through normally but in the US it’s been pretty random for which courier decides to deliver and which one doesn’t. FedEX, UPS and USPS have been good for about 95% of shipments though, maybe with a day or two of delays. The other 5% have been absolute clusters though.
Based on the amount of online traffic and sales happening though along with reduced staff, I can only imagine that all couriers are absolutely slammed.
UPS does have the most brutal customer service of the major couriers though as they just transfer to a call centre and generally the person there doesn’t have the authority to tell you anything or do anything. If anyone has ever had the displeasure of dealing with Amazon seller support you will know the pain.
At least with USPS you have a 50/50 chance after sitting on hold for an hour of talking to someone who will either be very helpful or just hang up on you.
It definitely sucks that your cables are being held though and I hope they get dropped off soon!
I have seen many twitter and facebook posts with complaints similar to mine throughout Canada. For a while there was a UPS rep asking people to send a private message with their tracking number and the response was always," sorry due to the pandemic your package is being held in a trailer, I have no idea how long it will be held." But the volume of complaints is now so high the reps seem to have stopped responding.
On other forums there are what appear to be UPS people blaming those who order non essential things for backlogging the system. I get that we are in a global crisis and drivers are at risk and on the front line but people should be warned before they order and pay that there is a good chance their shipment will be delayed by possibly weeks.
It’s interesting that in the US only 5% of shipments have not been clusters considering how much worse the US has been hit with the pandemic compared to Canada.
All that said, I concur that before this pandemic UPS in my experience had the worst customer service.
I mailed off a UPS ground package to Cardas for some Headphone cable re-terminations earlier this week. It ended up getting delayed from Friday to Monday. No big deal, but normally this would be a couple of days to Oregon from California. I’m on good terms with my local UPS terminal guy. He told me UPS was getting hit pretty hard with an increase in parcel delivery demand. Everybody is ordering stuff online. It’s kind of like Christmas right now, but without the additional staff of part-timers. Simply put, they’re having trouble keeping up. I could see the conveyor belt at the terminal and it was mega-full with parcels.
I know the frustration of dealing with USPS. I have sent a PM Taron. It must be really frustrating running an online business in these times especially when you have to rely on the services of couriers so much. Hope everything gets better for everyone soon. With everyone else experiencing delivery problems this makes me feel better. Patience is a virtue.
I have sent one week ago two different packages with UPS from the EU to New York and even there it was delivered within 4 days. So maybe you just have bad luck.
If it is luck it must be quite bad because right now I have 2 packages that have been sitting in UPS trailers for over two weeks. One is a replacement battery for my laptop that I need to work from home.
Their twitter and facebook pages have many similar complaints from Canadians. Canada Post and FedEx have delivered without issue.
I just ordered the Claire HPC mk2 from Forza for my new Senns HD650. According to Matt this cable emphasizes imaging, soundstage and dynamics. Will post a review once I have them up and running.
I hope you asked him to NOT ship with UPS. The cable he shipped to me on April 7 is still sitting in a UPS trailer 20 km from from me. He can’t get through to them because the line is always busy and on the UPS Twitter page there are many complaints similar to mine. Zack from ZMF has recently shipped to me using FedEx and there were no issues at all.
An interesting update. I have been at my wits’ end as getting in touch with UPS is near impossible so I found the email address of the UPS CEO and emailed him. I doubted he would read an email from a rando so I used the name of a UPS president in the subject line. 2 hours later I got a phone call from his assistant. She gave the impression of being surprised and appalled at my situation and said she would contact management at the sorting center in my city where my parcels are supposed to be. A few hours later I got a call from management; they asked if I could send them photos of my packages so that they would know what to look for, LOL! They now have 8 people looking for my boxes and I am still waiting.
