Opinions on speaker cable upgrade

Bander - You are looking at the right church, just in the wrong pew. I would take a hard look at the Purist Anniversary Aqueous speaker cables (bi-wire), which will fit your budget easily as long as the length you need isn't unusually long. Here's a secret - Purist measures the "fat" part of the cable for the length, so if you order a 1.5M cable, you really get a 1.9M cable end-to-end. The PAD AA cabes are better at the frequency extremes than the Venustas and really work well with the VSR's and are also a great choice with any tube amps. Good Luck!

Nsgarch - I have had the opportunity to try all of the PAD cables in the same system here at work and also had the opportunity to try Venustas vs Aqueous Anniversary in particular in my home system (Magnepan 3.6R, Bat Vk200 monos, Vac Renaissance pre, etc) over a two week period. Since nothing else in the system changed during this time, I had a wonderful opportunity to judge the relative strengths and weaknesses of both AA and Venustas in a known system, with the same music, the same acoustics, and the same ears - MINE. While I enjoy listening to the Venustas, the Aq Anniversary is far more detailed at both frequency extremes - it actually comes close to the Dominus in this regard. With the planar/ribbon speakers this is a relatively easy characteristic to judge as long as nothing else in the system changes. Did I double-blind test it?? Nope, but I was making a careful evaluation of a new product (the Aq Anniv) vs a known older product (Venustas) in a known and familiar system. Yes, there are other sonic characteristics that Venustas "scored" better than Anniv AQ, but detail, articulation, and clarity at the high and low frequency extremes were clearly in favor of the AQ Anniversary. I hope this answers the question you had. John

Tony, The AQ Anniv sound good right out of the box, but they will take 120-200 hours to reach their absolute best - at least they did in my system. Where the break in is obviously needed is in the depth of the soundstage and the imaging. Once broken in, the soundstage goes well past my back wall and they image extremely well. Balance and ease of listening is decent from the get go - not a lot of sibilance or having the bass be too hazy like with some cables. BTW - I run the bi-wire version which has twice the conductors as the non b/w version. John