I need your expert advise


I am relatively new in the high end stuff. In fact, I am really probably more in the mid-high end with my gear. Being a novice makes deciding on speaker cables a real challenge. There are so many, all with those glowing reviews. My current system is PSB Stratus Goldi speakers, NAD Silver S100 Preamp with companion S200 amp. I currently have a NAD 515 CD player (my next upgrade). What I need is your expert advise on speaker cables. I am searching for a 10ft external bi-wire set up. I am currently using Monster Z2. They are fair but I'm sure I am missing something by not having better speaker cable. Room size is very large with cathedral ceilings. Speaker cable budget is $500-$600. I am more than willing to buy bulk cable and terminate it myself to save some $. When you are new to this hobby and don't have all the years of trial and error experience on cables, it can really be tough to make a selection. My musical taste is mostly jazz: Pat Metheny, John Coltrane, Eric Alexander etc. I like a warm but dynamic sound with deep punchy bass, smooth mid and crisp highs. I can't handle a bright, sharp or edgy sound. I play it loud. I'm thinking perhaps Geortz M1 2, Analysis Plus, MIT t2, DH Labs Q10 but I am wide open to advise from those who have been there. Any suggestions for my set up would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
boski

Showing 2 responses by tacs

Why are you sure you are missing something by using the Monster? Have you tried other cables and found the Monster wanting? The reason I ask is that one can have a vague feeling that something is wrong ONLY because a component doesn't cost all that much, and then fixate on that idea, and that leads to a lot of $$ spent unecessarily. What exactly is wrong with the cable's performance?
The chances are, if you are unhappy at all with your sound, it has more to do with the speakers voicing, or the treatment of the room, or the speaker room interation. Mixing and matching cables for tuning the sonics will be very expensive and time consuming and the time is better spent in my opinion.
It just turns out that other choices tend to be more rewarding, i.e., subwoofers, room treatment to even out the response, etc.
Except in a very limited sense, cable is pretty much cable and spending more than say $100 on speaker cable is, all things considered, not worth it when other avenues pay more dividends for the $.
Basically, if you can't handle bright edgy sound, don't listen to edgy recordings... the amount of brightness introduced by a cable pales in relation to the amount of edginess already present in the recording and the preceding electronics.
I would not spend $600 on cables until you see what a good subwoofer can do for the sound in a big room. Consider the Hsu VTF-2 for instance. Less than $500.
I think Natalie's advice is good, if by "good source" s/he means good recordings. Good recordings sound good even on cheap CD players these days, expensive CD players never make bad recordings sound good and will barely scrape anything new out of good ones that your NAD won't. Cheers!