WK Audio TheRay

REVIEW
Alan Sircom
Jun 03, 2025

We’ve been watching the growth of Polish cable brand WK Audio for some time. The brand seriously impressed us with its TheRed power cords (tested in Issue 221), loudspeaker cables (tested in Issue 227) and interconnect cables (tested in Issue 237) and looks like doing the same with its more affordable and practical TheRay power cord.

The original Red is a hand-made cable that features individually shielded conductors. Not everyone will be comfortable with a power cord with separate live, neutral, and earth cables, and not everyone is willing to pay almost €6,000 for a power cord. However, WK Audio’s TheRay power cords address this because they are more practical (the three conductors are housed in the same outer sleeve) and more affordable (half the price of TheRed).

Handcrafted from high-clarity copper, the conductor has a cross-section of 6mm², and the three conductors use vibration-damping materials. TheRay is also the result of the same material science and conductor geometry knowledge that went into TheRed and uses the same listening panel development. TheRay is fettled with Furutech and comes in US, EU, and UK plug options.

Basic and exclusive

The ‘fettled with Furutech’ offers a two-tier quality option with TheRay. In its ‘Basic’ version, the pale blue cable features Furutech’s FI-E38R Schuko and FI-C15 NCF R IEC plugs. The ‘Exclusive’ upgrades these to the FI-E50 and FI-50 NCF R plugs, respectively. TheRay can also be configured in a high-current form with a Furutech FI-52 R plug. We tested the Basic version, and referring to it as ‘Basic’ is probably the only downside of this otherwise excellent cable.

OK, let’s temper that a little. The reason I believe this is an excellent power cord is that it fulfils what a good audio power cord is supposed to do: cause the least harm possible. If you’re looking for a cable that flattens out the bumps inherent in your amplifier’s performance, or one that adds a bit of brightness or richness to the system… keep looking. The WK Audio TheRay requires your electronics to be ‘sorted’. It’s not that it won’t benefit such products, but it adds or subtracts nothing. For those systems that want a cable to act as a filter or tone control, TheRay is too honest for that.

Instead, it gracefully steps aside for the music. Yes, we discuss noise floors being lowered, but this one is no exception. Music doesn’t emerge from some loud, dark abyss here; rather, it presents the music as honestly and clearly as possible. Lowering the noise floor? It’s more like a sigh of relief from the electronics, allowing them to bear less of a burden.

You can truly hear how much TheRay allows the music to flow in any powerfully dynamic passage. It could just as easily be The Pixies belting out ‘Debaser’ [Doolittle, 4AD] as it could be Zinman and the Baltimore SO delivering Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances [Telarc]. The result is the same. There’s no sense of constriction to dynamics, imagery, or the space around the instruments, and those loud-soft-loud moments are given a free pass. It’s as if your amplifier received a performance boost.

The difference between TheRed and TheRay is subtle until you reach the high-end audio systems. At that point, TheRed’s more uncompromising architecture enhances the sound’s freedom even further. On the other hand, considering the more affordably priced option, TheRay’s ability to allow music to be less constrained by electronics offers an extremely attractive proposition.

WK Audio is currently the best cable brand you’ve never heard of, but with products like TheRay (and recently, the even more affordable TheOne… more on that later), it’s clear that the company is on the brink of making a big name for itself. Witold ‘Witek’ Kamiñski’s cable brand is the one to watch!