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Cardas Clear Speaker Cables - From cable skeptic to beliver in one fell swoop

Hello,

For many years I have been happily living with various flavors of Mogami speaker cable during the many stages of my audio journey and felt that they did an excellent job at presenting music in a clear, neutral and honest way. For the money I still consider them an excellent choice.

Recently I decided to take a trip to the dark side and go against my belief that an esoteric cable won't offer much more in terms of SQ compared to my super short run (2ft) of Mogami 2921 cables.

As a first test I started by dipping my toes into the water with a pair of Cardas Neutral Reference which fairly quickly showed some promise that maybe I was wrong all this time. I felt that they didn't really do anything wrong and in fact did some things better than my Mogami's did.

After this test I found myself asking the question, "Hrmm, I wonder how a cable further up the chain would sound". I was liking what I heard so far so why stop now.

Next up I tried a pair of Cardas Golden Reference. After hearing these  It didn't take long to realize that My system was indeed being held back by using the cheaper cables all this time. I liked many things about the GR cables but ultimatly thought they added a bit too much salt and pepper to the sound and seemed to round off the bass more than I prefered. But, the new details and soundstage depth/width they extracted became addicting.

As before, I started asking myself another question again "If these GR cables are this good I wonder if a cable even furthur up the chain would give me everything the GR does without the drawbacks?".

This time I decided to just jump in head first and quit messing around. So I borrowed a set of Cardas Clear from the Cable Co with much fear after seeing the price of the cables.

As my time winds down borrowing these Clear cables I can feel my wallet starting sweat. In all honesty it only took about 2hrs from the time the first note started playing until I began to hear these cables start to do EVERYTHING right. Soundstage Width- Check, Soundstage Depth - Double Check, Bass Accuracy - Impressive is an understatement, Soundstage Detail and Clairity - Yup, Everywhere in spades.

So with all that said, I can say with 100% certainty that I'm writing the check. After hearing what these cables did for my system there is just no going going back no matter how painful the price tag is.

As they say ignorance is bliss. In my case if I didn't take a chance and swallow my pride then I would still probably be oblivious to how much more my system had to offer.

Any other Cardas Clear users hear? What are your findings?

Thanks


eniac26

Showing 8 responses by eniac26

eniac26 OP
97 posts
 
Doh... Seems I had a spelling error in the title...Can't edit title. Shakes Head :(
eniac26 OP
97 posts
 
Stringreen..I would be very interested in hearing about which Cardas cables you tried that made you feel they were the worst you've heard in your system and what you are using now that you feel bettered them?

As you say cables are very system dependent. But with that said and based on what I heard while using these Cardas Clear cables I just can't imagine how anyone could consider them the worst in any system no matter what caliber the gear.

I can certainly agree that the sound of the various Cardas cables available is quite different from one another based on my experience but it seems the Clear line changes things a bit. They don't seem to try and highlight any area in particular like some of the other Cardas flavors offered. Instead, they just seem to get out of the way and let the rest of the gear and source music's sonic signature shine thru unhindered.

I'm using the Clear with a combo of Magico, Hypex NCore1200, Meitner and Classe gear as a point of reference.

eniac26 OP
97 posts
 
jmcgrogan2..Thanks for your response. Yes if you ever have the opportunity to take a listen to the Clear speaker cables I don't think you will be disappointed.

As another point...I think the beauty of the Cable Co lending library is that it allows one to evaluate a very expensive cable like this Cardas Clear with no real risk and because of that the cable can be reviewed in an honest and unbiased way since a large sum of money hasn't been exchanged yet.

We've all heard and seen the biased/unbiased review flag wavers here and elsewhere who talk about people feeling obligated to post a glowing review of a product because they just spent 4-5 figures on it. Well, in this case that doesn't really apply because the cables can just as easily be returned if they don't offer the return on investment that you were expecting.

Its a great service that I wish more companies offered
eniac26 OP
97 posts
 
Cables are system dependent; therefore you can't get upset when someone doesn't like them. I too tried Cardas Clear in my system and found them dark, without detail. If they're great in your system, simple enjoy them.

Not sure if this was for me or not? If so, I don't see any previous response of mine that should lead someone to believe that I am "upset" that someone else has a different opinion of these cables then myself.

Only a fool would post in a cable forum and expect that everyone who responds will feel the same way about the cable being discussed.

In any case, I'm not usually one to post reviews (or much of anything for that matter given my 60 total posts in this forum since 2009), especially about cables, but in my system and to my ears there was something pretty remarkable about what these Clear speaker cables did at first and continued to do right up until I had to box them up and send them back.

Dunno, maybe this post will motivate other cable skeptics to give them a listen also if they have the means to do so. After all, they certainly changed my mind.
eniac26 OP
97 posts
 

A point that may be relevant is that Cardas Clear has a capacitance of 278 pf/foot, which is considerably higher than the capacitance of most other speaker cables. Mogami 2921 is more like 30 pf/foot. And by any chance was the Cardas Clear you tried significantly longer than the 2 foot length of your Mogami 2921? 
In any event, enjoy! Regards,
-- Al

Hello Al,

Yes the Cardas Clear that I demo'd where longer. In this case the Cardas were 8ft longer then the Mogami for reasons that require to much motivation to list in this thread.

In any case I don't know why but there was an undeniable increase in the amount of musical information they conveyed. It wasn't even remotely subtle either. It was a true WTF moment each time I listened to them.

I believe my speakers (Magico S3) would indeed fit the bill you describe in terms of low Impedence nominal and even lower as the Freq increases.

One of the many reasons I like Cardas is because they as a company seem far more transparent about what goes into making there cables, especially in terms of having the guts to list actual measurement specs of the specific cable in question. Clearly most other cable brands are far less brave which is very aggravating. Other brands would rather try and Wow you with fancy scientific terms and various other Voodo methods that don't really tell you anything useful. If everyone posted specs and detail on cable layout design it would possibly help better explain why some cables sound so much different than others make shopping much quicker and easier. 

I wish I knew how having such a high capacitence and low inductance allowed the cable to present so much more information in my system compared to other cables I've heard but then again maybe the reason has nothing to do with either and more to do with how the wire is constructed.


eniac26 OP
97 posts
 
@almarg

Thanks for the detailed response Al. The increasing capacitance value does somewhat concern me in that when I go to purchase these cables I will actually need a 4m length in my setup. I borrowed the 3m length due to its immediate availability and just to get a taste of what they sounded like in my system.

In cases like my own is where knowing other cable brands capacitance value for the same length of cable would come in handy. If Brand X had a significantly lower capacitance and similar Inductance value as the Clear cables for the same 4m length it would certainly prompt me to give those a try as well before making a final decision to see how those lower values effect the sound.

There problem here is that I only know of 1 other brands who I would consider of the similar quality to the Clear who post actual cable specs (Nordst) but they aren't sold by the CableCo so demoing them wouldn't be an option. At these prices, that is not a gamble I am willing to take.

So I guess I can only cross my fingers that the additional 3ft of Cardas Clear that I need wont cause the SQ I heard with the shorter cable to decrease by a noticeable margin. I would like to believe that the added length wont make much of a difference compared to what I heard before.

Thanks
eniac26 OP
97 posts
 
I'm not a fan of adding another box or doodad directly in the signal path between my amp and the speaker. There are plenty of those doodads in the amp and speaker already.

Besides that, after seeing pics of what's inside that MIT box I quickly lost my appetite. Just one more thing to break or slowly degrade the sound over time IMO.
eniac26 OP
97 posts
 
@russ75 I have no doubts that if I were to audition the Clear Beyond cables I might be setting myself up for financial suicide. Thanks but No Thanks :) I'll just have to learn to live with my cheap bog standard Clear's instead ;)

@davidpritchard 
Looks like I'm in luck here on this one, my amp came already equipped with a Synergystic R fuse of some flavor so I'm good to go in that area.
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