Audioquest Mythical Creatures Analog Interconnects

There is an official statement on their LinkedIn account:
—
The Mythical Creature Analog Interconnects — ThunderBird, FireBird, and Dragon — will be AudioQuest’s most advanced and best-sounding interconnects yet.

Designed by AudioQuest’s Founder and Chief Designer, Bill Low, and Senior Director of Engineering, Garth Powell, the Mythical Creature interconnects will be our first to incorporate ZERO-Tech, further reducing dielectric-involvement and dramatically improving RF Noise-Dissipation.

Following a path long established by Lapis & Diamond, Panther & Cheetah, Anaconda & Amazon, Niagara & Sky, Wild & WEL Sig — with these new models, we come closer than ever to our sonic ideal of completely invisible cable.

Bill explained: “I’ve often compared my audio journey to one long climb up a mountain whose summit I will never reach. Most of the 41 years I’ve been designing cables, I’ve been steadily walking up the same mountain as I learned…

Since the introduction of the current range of ZERO-Tech AC cables, the ZERO-Tech Mythical Creature and Folk Hero speaker cables, and now the ZERO-Tech Mythical Creature interconnects — all cables Garth has made possible — I almost daresay that AQ has arrived on the upper half of the mountain.”

We invite you to join us. We think you'll enjoy the view.

Shipping January 2022.

The MusicDirect catalog has images & pricing I can't find elsewhere. They look fancy, but VERY expensive - especially if you need XLR
The Fire was a really great silver IC at its price point (especially XLR, now) - is it now discontinued?

Looks like 2 "cores" for RCA nd 3 for XLR - man those connectors must be massive:

Wow! Thanks for posting these pics.

The addition of Garth Powell a few years ago at AQ has really made them more competitive.

Certainly the Dragon interconnects and speaker cables will be compared against the other flagships. Odin 2 , Sigma V2 etc...

The question I have is, at these prices, Are the AQ made in China? Whereas many of their US based competitors are building their flagship cables in the US.

We ordered a full loom of Dragon for our AQ room.

We have full dragon in the AQ room, full Odin 2 in the Nordost room and full Omega/Sigma (soon to be all Omega) in the Shunyata room. We ain’t messing about!


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Mike said:

We ordered a full loom of Dragon for our AQ room.

We have full dragon in the AQ room, full Odin 2 in the Nordost room and full Omega/Sigma (soon to be all Omega) in the Shunyata room. We ain’t messing about!


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Wow!

I know this an Audioquest thread but, did you just spill the beans on the Omega speaker cables and interconnects?

Btw, I remember when you carried MIT but, at the time, not Soulution.

MIT Cables + Soulution + Magico is crazy good.

So linear and just so "Right" when I heard it years ago. Loved this combo and I think Magico uses MIT (and others) cables in their factory listening room.

I'm sure the latest from Shunyata and others is amazing too.

Can't wait to read more.

mdp632 said:

Wow!

I know this an Audioquest thread but, did you just spill the beans on the Omega speaker cables and interconnects?

Btw, I remember when you carried MIT but, at the time, not Soulution.

MIT Cables + Soulution + Magico is crazy good.

So linear and just so "Right" when I heard it years ago. Loved this combo and I think Magico uses MIT (and others) cables in their factory listening room.

I'm sure the latest from Shunyata and others is amazing too.

Can't wait to read more.

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AGREED! But here’s the issue: MIT has disappeared. Our sales rep is gone (quit?) and we haven’t heard a peep in months. Not a word.


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get behind some this Thunderbird... you won't care about your cables tomorrow...

If it were me, and I wanted AudioQuest solid Perfect Surface Silver interconnects, I would pick up some discounted WEL Signature because the Dragon interconnects are going to have stratospheric pricing.

Ken

We have a full Dragon system in the store now. The Dragon IC’s are incredible sounding and quite unique looking.






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Hi Mike,

I have no doubt the Dragons are the best AudioQuest interconnects yet but what is the MSRP?

Ken

I've got two sets of Firebird here...RCA and XLR; they arrived the other day and I've been letting them settle for 48 hours as they just came off the logisitics truck. I listened to the RCAs last night for a bit. They have quite good inner detail, and a large and expansive presentation. While the images in the soundstage were large and expansive, it seemed that the "edges" of the vocal and instrumental images were a bit soft and "blurred" and "fuzzy", in the way that the "outline" of a person or object are slightly blurred in a photograph that is not perfectly focussed and sharp all the way to the edge of the subject. They're also slightly hot on the very top end, and there might be a bit of a wonky noise component layered on top of the presentation, but that may be due to them not having fully settled yet...so the jury is still out on that. Overall, they seem really nice, but with a coupla "niggles" at this point in time.

It's very early days yet, so we'll see how they do over time. Need to get a hundred hours or so on them....

I'll post some pics, and I'll keep you guys posted with respect how they do with more hours on them...

mdp632 said:

The question I have is, at these prices, Are the AQ made in China? Whereas many of their US based competitors are building their flagship cables in the US.

Click to expand...

Just in the interests of accuracy here, "Quality" is not the result of where something is manufactured, only how. It's not constrained by geographical boundaries, it essentially comes down to two things: mediation of the product transfer function and Process Capability, measured as Cp/Cpk. Both of these can be evaluated with statistical rigor.

Alpinist said:

Hi Mike,

I have no doubt the Dragons are the best AudioQuest interconnects yet but what is the MSRP?

Ken

Click to expand...

See post #3.

Stephen Mejias sent me the pricing when arranging for me to demo the cables:

ThunderBird
US Retail: $2,900/1m (RCA); $3,900/1m (XLR)

FireBird
US Retail: $5,500/1m (RCA); $6,900/1m (XLR)

Dragon
US Retail: $9,500/1m (RCA); $11,900/1m (XLR)

The 1.5M length pairs of Firebird I have here are: $6750/pr (RCA) and $8650 (XLR)

Alpinist said:

If it were me, and I wanted AudioQuest solid Perfect Surface Silver interconnects, I would pick up some discounted WEL Signature because the Dragon interconnects are going to have stratospheric pricing.

Ken

Click to expand...

Agreed - the price of PSS silver keeps going up significantly with each new line
Even the existing Fire is now 3,750 for a PSS 1m, and not long ago this was 3,000! As bad as inflation is, the PSS seems to outpace it. And even the top PSC+ cables now can go beyond what PSS pricing was a couple generations ago.

So I just have to brag on my new-to-me Everest double biwire, well over 2 POUNDS of PSS silver in these 6 AWG 8 foot cables. They're missing all the great new tech in the new Zero cables for sure, but my Tannoys just LOVE the ludicrous amount of PSS silver in a full biwire.

Here's a pic of the Firebird XLRs. Having three individually insulated and sheathed cables is a bit odd and makes the dressing of the cables a bit "bulkier"...

Puma Cat said:

I've got two sets of Firebird here...RCA and XLR; they arrived the other day and I've been letting them settle for 48 hours as they just came off the logisitics truck. I listened to the RCAs last night for a bit. They have quite good inner detail, and a large and expansive presentation. While the images in the soundstage were large and expansive, it seemed that the "edges" of the vocal and instrumental images were a bit soft and "blurred" and "fuzzy", in the way that the "outline" of a person or object are slightly blurred in a photograph that is not perfectly focussed and sharp all the way to the edge of the subject. They're also slightly hot on the very top end, and there might be a bit of a wonky noise component layered on top of the presentation, but that may be due to them not having fully settled yet...so the jury is still out on that. Overall, they seem really nice, but with a coupla "niggles" at this point in time.

It's very early days yet, so we'll see how they do over time. Need to get a hundred hours or so on them....

I'll post some pics, and I'll keep you guys posted with respect how they do with more hours on them...

Click to expand...

Let me guess, the Shunyata blow these out of the water.

MPW said:

Let me guess, the Shunyata blow these out of the water.

Click to expand...

of course lol

MPW said:

Let me guess, the Shunyata blow these out of the water.

Click to expand...

It's way too early to do any accurate comparisons or form any conclusions. From the get-go, they're quite nice, no question. They have very good detail and a large, immersive soundstage. "Inner detail" is also very good. Just want to give them a chance to settle and run in...they just came off the logistics truck the day before yesterday and shipping cables really vibrates them a lot. It generally takes about 72 hours for a cable to fully settle. I've got them stably dressed and resting on DF-SS Minis so they can settle nicely without being moved or jostled or influenced by vibration or static electricity fields. I have them for 3 months for evaluation, so they'll have time to settle and run-in fully. I also have a pair of Firebird balanced ICs, so I can try those with the Constellation Inspiration integrated as I've heard the Constellation sounds even better when run with balanced cables.