Best speaker cable for Martin Logan Monolith II's??


Please give any thoughts on which cable would work
best for these speakers, priced under $1k used, 10'

Used with Carver Lightstar Ref amp
Krell KRC-2 Pre amp
Cary CD-300 CD

Any thoughts much appreciated.

Thanks,
Bob
telescope_trade

Showing 1 response by audiokinesis

Greetings!

I sell Sound Lab speakers, which include full range as well as hybrid electrostats. I like the Martin Monoliths quite a bit - too bad they discontinued that model, as I think it does some things better than its successors.

I've devoted quite a bit of effort to finding amps & cables that work well with electrostats.

My favorite cable in your price ballpark is the Magnan Signature. This cable has a wide, flat, very thin copper conductor, and uses totally separate cables for the positive and negative runs. This geometry has a several advantages:

First, it has extremely low inductance. A twisted wire will have some inductance, and since the impedance of an electrostat is very low at high frequencies, series inductance can roll off the very top end and rob the speaker of air and a sense of ease. Even if the rolloff is theoretically above the range of your hearing, we learned from CD's that you can indeed hear the effect of a rolloff above 20 kHz.

Second, the wide, thin geometry minimizes the "skin effect". The skin effect is the phenomenon whereby high frequencies travel in a field along the surface of a conductor, and low frequencies travel down deeper inside the conductor. The result is a time smear. The conductors are too thin to slow down the low frequencies. Since electrostatic panels are so coherent, might as well minimize this time smear. I'm not sure this would make a sginificant audible difference with all speakers, but with minimum phase speakers like Vandersteens, Meadowlarks and Dunlavys, and with electrostatics, it does.

Finally, being able to physically separate the two runs keeps their fields from interacting.

Customers tell me the Magnan Signature cables give them better dynamic contrast and richer harmonic overtones. One customer tells me his amp (Audio Research D-150) actually plays louder with the Magnan cable than with the more expensive cable it replaced (I attribute this to the lack of time smear - the transient peaks are not spread out and thereby softened). I have sold Magnan Signatures to customers who already were satisfied with their three-times-the-price cables, but who tried and preferred the Magnans. The Magnans definitely need break-in, though, in your system, before they start to sound warm and lush.

I might mention that David Magnan's reference system consists of stacked Original Quads. So it is no surprise that his speaker cables work especially well with electrostats.

Retail for the Magnans is $1,160 for a ten foot pair, so you shouldn't have much trouble finding a used pair well within your price range.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have.