With the Fog Lifters, cable specialist Audioquest offers an accessory that almost every music lover can use in their system. The Fog Lifters don't ruin anyone financially. How much sound improvement can you expect from them?

A few years ago, a good friend of mine carefully suspended all the power and signal cable connections of his elaborate system with six mono power amplifiers, all of which were placed on their granite bases on the floor and not in a rack, from the ceiling of the room with acrylic threads so that they would not rest on the carpet. When I visited him afterwards, I was amazed at the undoubtedly enormous gain in sound since my last visit. "What did you change?" was my first question then. "Nothing, I just removed the cables from the floor," he said with a slightly mischievous smile. Musically, this measure was undoubtedly a definite improvement, especially in terms of spatial depth and differentiation. I won't say anything about the visuals at this point, but perhaps you can picture it in your mind's eye. But lifting the cables from the ground also be done in a more beautiful way because the topic is by no means a new one. Some respectable manufacturers offer supports for power and audio cables, often made of acrylic or precious woods, which are supposed to improve the sound thanks to the material alone. So claims the marketing. I do not question the quality of such mostly high-priced solutions here and now.

This is where the Audioquest Fog Lifters come in. They are not made of precious wood, but of plastic. They are also not that expensive at 149 euros for eight pieces, if they keep what Audioquest promises. They have a technical advantage over all the upscale alternatives I know: Only a strong acrylic thread contacts the cable. Therefore, the contact surface is minimal, and the theory is implemented in the best possible way. The thread is 12.5 centimeters long and accommodates more than one cable if required.

My previous thoughts about power cables lying on the floor assume that all cables used in our set ups, no matter how elaborately designed and manufactured, are not entirely sealed units. Power cables radiate more or less of their alternating fields to their nearby environment, even when no current is flowing through them. This leads to irregularities, especially when these electric field lines do not form uniformly around the cable. They are reflected, creating an unstable environment, and the cable itself is, therefore, in an irregular aura. Proximity to the signal-carrying cables disturbs them, either when crossing them or running in parallel. It is an unwritten law not to bundle cables for the sake of appearance. On vibrating surfaces such as wooden floors, cables can also experience unwanted excitation due to structure-borne sound or resonance.

When developing the Fog Lifters, Audioquest paid particular attention to interference from high-frequency noise. Since high-frequency interference due to, for example, mobile phones, radio, or Wi-Fi, is deflected by solid materials such as carpets, wood, or stone, it affects bodies with lower energy status (i. e., less mass) such as the cables lying directly on them, more. Even the best jacket and hull do not offer perfect protection. This high-frequency noise causes a capacitive load in the cables, and this also has audible consequences, especially with sensitive audio signal lines.

First, I test the effect of the Fog Lifter on my Mudra power cables. Three supports go under the three-meter-long supply cable from the wall socket to the MAX power strip. The other five lift the 1.5-meter-long power cables of the D/A-converter/preamp, CD drive, and the AirTight mono power amps. First, I use the lifters to listen to the Egmont Overture by Ludwig van Beethoven, a Chesky CD with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Rene Leibowitz. The recording is powerful with imposing low strings on the one hand and delicate textures in the quieter passages on the other hand. After removing the Fog Lifters, I could hear the difference: Not that this accomplished recording wasn't still worth listening to, but some things fell by the wayside: primarily that was the power and presence with which the loud passages had appealed before, especially in the double basses. Without the Audioquest Fog Lifters, the Basses simply came across less powerful. The soundstage was also less open and seemed a bit stocky. So, I quickly put the power cables back on the lifters and got the confirmation: Now the music sounded more powerful and grand again.

If you like, you can take the name Fog Lifters quite literally because they dissolve a kind of fog. This should be audible during the test on my speaker cables even more clearly than I had expected because compared to the power line, relatively weak currents flow here. I placed the three-meter Real cables on four of the Audioquest Lifters each. This time I chose the live album by Nnenna Freelon, namely the interestingly orchestrated piece "Body & Soul." In this track, the powerful electric bass and the Hammond B3 organ are grooving together and build up a formidable foundation for the vocals and the filigree percussion. It sounds quite okay without the Fog Lifters, but I wouldn't have imagined the small Audioquest stands having such a significant impact. Above all, the superior transparency in a more generous space was audible, especially around the subtle instruments and vocals, giving the overall soundstage a more three-dimensional appearance. The delicate transients of the percussion, now more precisely resolved in detail, were also more apparent and more three-dimensional, as well as more stable in the deep of the stage. The music sounded more gripping and immediate, which increased listening pleasure.

Another test with the cables between the CD drive, the converter/preamplifier, and the power amplifiers was technically not possible. The interconnect cables have hardly any contact with surfaces in my setup and do not touch the wooden floor. After the experiences with mains power and loudspeaker cables, a third attempt anyway seems to be rather unnecessary – what we heard leaves no doubt. From my perspective, it's pleasing that Audioquest doesn't go for expensive materials and glamour here but offers a practical solution that largely rids the signal of the "electric fog." You can certainly imagine what the Fog Lifters effected when both the power cables and the speaker cables were lifted off the floor simultaneously.

Even though measurements are usually not a topic at Hifistatement, I would like to describe one I came across during my research that you may be able to try out yourself. All you need is a millivoltmeter with a sensitive AC voltage measuring range. Do not connect the speaker cable to the amplifier and only the positive wire to the speaker terminal. Connect the cable's negative terminal to the positive terminal of the meter and the negative terminal of the meter to the ground of the wall socket. Now, if you raise the cable from the floor to the height of the Fog Lifter (around 15 centimeters), you can read a significant change in AC voltage. Here it was 1 volt to 0.1 volts, a change of ninety percent.