Customer Comments:

I have had a chance to thoroughly test Alan Maher Design's newest creation, the Infinity Cable Filter (in this case, the basic Cable Filter model without the Bybee Slipstream upgrade added), for a period of a few months now. I can only say that this newest product in the Alan Maher Designs line-up proves my dear old mother right once again: good things come in small packages! Or make that GREAT things! Because for their size, these little add-ons can take an ordinary speaker cable and transform it into a form of 'air pump'. Yes, you heard right, an 'air pump'! Why do I say that? Because adding these new Infinity Cable Filters to my speaker wires pumped more "air" into my system than I ever thought possible! And I couldn't be happier!

Frankly, Mr. Maher should have named the little devices, "Infinity Air Filters", because that's what these babies do in spades, and then some. If you love classical and jazz recordings and crave that sense of openness that only comes from witnessing a live performance in a open, lively space, then these Infinity Cable Filters are for YOU! Oh, sure, all you dyed-in-the-wool rockers out there don't fret none, as these new little filters will make Robert Plant and the rest of Led Zep sound uncannily like you were transported to the original recording venue (which is trademark for ALL of the designs coming from Mr. Maher currently, at least in my experience.) But take a really great recording, say, a Chesky or Mapleshade, or maybe a really great jazz or classical performance from the glory days of tube-based recording, and you better hold onto your golden ears, folks, because those little Infinity Cable Filters are gonna knock your socks right off! You simply will not believe the 'air' you will hear around the instrumentalists and performers, the 'see-into' quality of the presentation, the over-all increase in sound-staging and depth, and all from these little add-on filters that fit easily and quite nicely into your speaker's binding posts. 

[Just one suggestion to Mr. Maher: think about offering silver-clad or pure copper banana plugs as an option, please, as they will much more easily be fitted into most applications. Now, maybe Mr Maher thought about this already and wants the direct contact between the Infinity Cable Filters gold-plated spade terminations and the speaker cable, rather than going through the binding posts as an intermediate step. This would make much sense sonically, as a totally tweak approach (and believe me, Alan Maher Designs are TWEAK, baby! Everything Mr. Maher does is as 'tweak' as it gets in audio currently.) But there is a lot to be said for the convenience of a banana plug, especially if the step down in absolute sound quality is minimal. Just a suggestion, which I'll leave in the VERY capable hands of Mr Maher.]

So how do these little filters work? Mr. Maher explained to me in an e-mail about the Infinity Cable Filters, that they are a specialized R-C network (which is also offered with a pair of Bybee Slipstreams added as an upgrade; see below) and that the filters do a great job of killing a lot of high frequency-destroying RFI hash and other distortions on the signal, and (here is the key!) they do so without adding any veils or colorations in the mids and lows! Now that's a tall order! 

In my own personal experience, I have DIY'd just about every speaker wire and AC resistor-capacitor network ever posted on the Audio Asylum. They uniformly did a few things really well (like filtering the RFI that distorts the highs), but always ended up clogging and/or veiling certain frequencies (mostly mids and lows), and slowing down the pace and dynamics of the music. Some designs were better than others, but all eventually were tried and discarded as being too reductive in areas that I didn't want reduction, or too likely to cloud and veil certain low-level mid-range and lower frequency information. Thus, many of these designs make the highs sound glorious, but the rest of the sound seems ho-hum and not too involving. Apparently another high-end give and take. Pick your poison.

Not so with Alan Maher Designs' new Infinity Cable Filter creation. Obviously, Mr Maher set himself down and decided to solve this dilemma, and somehow he DID! (Boy, did he ever!) This filter design simply has NO audible downside to my ears. Experience it for yourself: live with them for a while, then try and take them out of your system, and you'll be screaming for AIR! They are simply something that, once you have them in your system, you simply won't want to be without them ever again. And best of all, these little filters don't wear out or go out of audio 'style'. Effectively and dramatically reducing HF noise levels NEVER goes out of style, and will ALWAYS be a welcome addition to any serious audiophile's system. In short, this is no 'flavor-of-the-week' mod, this is a fundamental positive change across the board with no audible downside, and one that will most assuredly provide its audio pleasures for a lifetime. You can make a purchase with confidence that the Infinity Cable Filters won't be 'out-of-date' before they even arrive at your door.

But what I LOVED the absolute MOST about these little Infinity Cable Filters is that they don't take a gazillion weeks to break-in to be effective and clean up the sound. Their effect was immediate and obvious. This is NOT a subtle mod! It will have an immediate impact on the quality of your sound, and most assuredly, for the better.

So what about the extra cost for the addition of a pair of Bybee Slipstreams to the Infinity Cable Filters? Are they worth the extra $$$? Simple answer:

YOU BET THEY ARE! Worth it and then some. Let me explain.

Mr Maher got me into Bybee Technologies last year. Until then, I had pooh-poohed the Bybee idea for a decade or more. "What can those little double-fused black firecrackers do for my sound system? Looks to me like just a lot more audio snake-oil is all! Ha!" 

Well, the laugh was totally on me, I guess, because these little black Bybee 'firecrackers' are just that: ebony-colored audio M-80's to get your system EXPLOSIVE! And it was the pushing by Mr Maher that got me (finally) to try the Bybee stuff in my reference system (a pair of Bybee Large Quantum Filters, IIRC.) Oh man, am I happy Mr. Maher pushed me in that direction, because I now have over 20 Bybees in my system, with more to be installed soon! Musically speaking, I simply don't know how I survived without them all those years. A big fat, "Thanks" to Mr. Maher for that impetus. Without it, I wouldn't be getting nearly the sound I do today. And I owe so much of it to Mr. Maher's great audio advice. Alan truly is an audio 'guru' whose advice and products you can trust. And that's saying a lot in this industry!

Now, because I already have a pair of Bybee Large Quantum Purifiers installed (soldered) at the ends of each of my speaker wires, Mr Maher instructed me that it would NOT be advisable to use the Infinity Cable Filter design with the added Bybee Slipstreams built-in, as that would simply be too many Bybees in one place and would likely have a deleterious effect on the system's over-all sound. He offered instead for me to evaluate the Infinity Cable Filter basic model, i.e., sans the Bybee Slipstreams, which I accepted (and from which experience this review now follows.) 

Again, I couldn't be happier with the performance of the stripped-down version of Mr Maher's Infinity Cable Filter. Simply put, they work like a charm. Again, air, air and more air everywhere! WOW!

But if I had been unaware of the Bybee 'magic' and what it could do for my sound, Mr Maher's new Infinity Cable Filters with full Bybee Slipstream upgrade would have been the PERFECT place to start by cutting my teeth on an application that is sure to blow anyone's socks clean off (including my own, and frequently!). You simply cannot imagine how effective this combination will be: Bybee Slipstreams coupled with a perfectly tuned R-C network. Mr Maher has done it again. 

But how could I be sure that the Bybee Slipstream upgrade would be sonically beneficial over and above the basic Infinity Cable Filter design? I tried to imagine the sound of the Infinity Cable Filters in the system without my own Bybees on the ends of my speaker wires, and how it would sound in either configuration. I simply couldn't do it. (Not with any measure of reliability, that is.)

So I decided to not 'imagine' or 'pretend' anymore, but to simply face the musical truth: I went and took out (de-soldered) my Bybees at the ends of my speaker cables and listened without the Bybees but with the Infinity Cable Filters still in the system. Oh, the sound was still great, but the previous combination of the Bybee magic and Mr Maher's new Infinity Cable Filter was beyond compelling: like any truly great synergy, it was simply that if you REALLY want to hear that AIR around the performers, if you want to hear what the actual original recording REALLY sounds like, then you simply MUST get the Infinity Cable Filter WITH the Bybee Slipstream upgrade. It really is a no-brainer. And with a 30 day return policy, no questions asked, how can you possibly go wrong? 

The only possible caveat I can think of would be this: Bybee devices of all sizes need a long break-in period for optimal sound. Sorry. No way around this audio 'fact of life'. Yet, even after only an hour of break-in you can hear that Bybee magic starting to build. Well, I've got some news for you: if you think the Infinity Cable Filter with the Bybee Slipstream upgrade option sounds good after only a few minutes or an hour of break-in playing time, imagine how thrilled you're gonna be in about another three or four weeks when the Bybee Slipstreams fully break-in. Audio bliss, my friends, audio bliss.....

Given the performance level of the new Alan Maher Designs' Infinity Cable Filter, it seems clear to me that Alan Maher must spend his whole waking life tweaking and comparing every known part currently made (including testing every known capacitor and resistor for sonic compatibility and optimal performance, sound-wise) in order to optimize the performance of his many audio filters he sells. (They all certainly sound like he has, that's for sure!) It is because of these endless efforts that we as audiophiles can literally share in his R & D and let his work and testing become our own. Ultimately, these findings result in the various products Alan Maher Designs offers to help us to achieve sound quality and levels of performance previously thought unattainable in audio. These new little Infinity Cable Filters fit perfectly into this description: another superb product that offers REAL value for the money, and performance that will never fade, never go 'out of style', and will give a lifetime of system enhancement for a very reasonable price. Very highly recommended!

Michael Danis

Leona Valley, California