New in The Library: Bella Sound - A Home Run

The easiest cable evaluations are those single cables - digital cable and power cords - that only need to be plugged in on each end and you're off. I am mostly analog, so for me, my favorite evaluations are power cables. 

I also find that power cords tend to be among the most powerful of all cable upgrades and so the easiest to evaluate and compare.

Nonetheless as a jaded audiophile who thinks I have "heard it all," I approach new products somewhat reluctantly and skeptically. So it took me a while to get around to trying new cables from a new company called Bella Sound.

Bella Sound has exactly one product, a power cable they call Kaula 2 (from $5000/1m, standard length 2m, $5500). I wrote it in the title of the article so as not to "bury the lead": this is a home run right out of the gate. Like some other true reference level AC cables I have tested, even one on the preamp was truly transformative for my entire system.

Who is Bella Sound?

Michael Vice was a neighbor of, and collaborated on many projects with, Jack Bybee, the well-known audio designer who I am sad to say passed away last September at the age of 89. Bybee Technologies continues to be run, as it has been in recent years, by members of Jack's family, and so his fascinating range of DIY and audiophile products continues to be available. For more on Jack Bybee, and a special offer on Bybee products, see the next article.

Michael Vice on his own has been designing audio products on the side for over 50 years while accumulating over 40 patents in his "day job" as a physicist specializing in microwave technology.

This Bella Sound AC Cord represents Vice's decades-long accumulated understanding of both the theory and art (read "listening") of audio design, and not surprisingly given their close relationship, incorporates certain of Jack Bybee's core concepts. While it is not a Bybee-branded product, given the level of performance the Bella Sound power cable attains, which, frankly, exceeds Bybee's own efforts in the cable category by a considerable margin, it is a fitting tribute to Mr. Bybee.

The Sound
If I may say so, my home system operates at a pretty high level, which can make one prideful and arrogant, at least until one gets "schooled" by hearing just how much better the sound could be. It is good to periodically test the limits with great cables such as the Bella Sound. It keeps you both humble and open-minded. Truly with audio you often don't know better till you hear it.

After hearing the Bella Sound cable excel in my home system, I asked Michael Vice if there were any reviews in the works. To my surprise he told me the cable had already been reviewed in 2020 on the Stereotimes website. So rather than try to wax poetic here about the impact of this cord on my system, which was in a word, amazing, I will link to that review by the Stereotimes publisher, Clement Perry, with two of the other site reviewers adding their own comments. For purposes of this article I just want to announce the availability of this new brand and to reinforce how important it can be to try a reference-level product in your own system to learn what is possible. In other words - what are the limits of your components?

I encourage you to borrow one of these Bella Sound AC cables and/or some of the other reference level power cables we offer through The Cable Library to try on your preamp. Then move it around in the system. Hear what is possible. Challenge yourself. Dare to be amazed!