Behold my necromancy skills and witness me reviving this thread!
So, the thing is, I’ve been meaning to put my EL-8 back into rotation for a while now. It might be a headphone that has its issues, I still like it.
Audeze still sells the pads and for the headband I used a generic cover from Geekria, because I don’t see another option atm.
But then the cable… The stock cable is awful and it has the dumbest proprietary connectors in the universe. I really wanted 4.4 cable now, only … I’m in the EU and I don’t want to be scammed by Moon Audio again. Even finding the connectors alone is a pain the ass.
Enter Matt from Forza Audioworks.
https://forzaaudioworks.com/en/
I heard some good things about him in the past, so I decided to contact him and see if he had those connectors and was willing to make a cable for me. If needed I was willing to send him my stock cable and use those connectors. But I was lucky! Matt had one pair of connectors gathering dust. After a bit of back and forth to specify the order (Matt responds in abt 1-2 days to e-mails), I got my cable in a little under a weeks time.
I’m a happy camper!
I think that this is the first time where I feel that spending a bit more than usual on a cable (I don’t normally spend more than €100 on a cable) has actually gotten me a cable that seems worth the money. It’s supple, it coils nice, it’s not microphonic, the braid is very consistent and stiff, the hardware is nice. And most importantly, it feels like it will last a long time.
Fyi, I don’t subscribe to cable compositions altering the sound, so I won’t be able to provide an answer to those questions.
All in all, Matt has been great to work with and the cable looks and feels great.
So if you’re in the EU and don’t want to deal with Alie-express or customs fees from US based companies, I would recommend checking out Forza Audioworks.