PAD Venustas

Tony, Those that were specific preferred Venustas tonal balance, no mention of resolution or imaging differences.

Venustas supposedly delivered better bass, or perhaps "more" bass in relationship to the level of the midrange and highs. I believe our perception of tonal balance is linked to many things including imaging position of the mid and high frequencies in relation to the bass. I know I'm extremely sensitive in that regard.

I think Aqueous Anniversary is more likely to perform poorly prior to reaching maximum break in. Venustas errors by omission before maximum sound is reached, making it easier to live with before it maximizes. So, perhaps the Europeans are more patient than those of us in the USA where everything is better if it's instant.

Again, these are just guesses based on limited information. I should point out that customers that chose Aqueous said it was superior to the Venustas.

That's the way this hobby works :^).

Kharmapolice, RE: Venustas and Aqueous Anniversary.

These two cables have similarities and differences, it seems to matter a great deal where in the system the comparison is made. Dominus is such a world beater it almost doesn't matter where it's placed, it is generally preferred.

Oddly enough, Europe seems to favor Aqueous Anniversary and the USA seems to favor Venustas. Differences? I would call the Venustas fuller in the bass and less forward in the midrange than Venustas. Venustas worked a miracle between phono cartridge and RIAA stage, actually beating my Dominus in that (one) position.

Since then I swapped all interconnect and speaker cables to the new top of the line Purist Anniversary. I judge them (about) half again the improvement Dominus is over Aqueous Anniversary.

I installed the new Purist Anniversary AC cables two weeks ago and am just now getting them broken in. These new AC cables surpass even the Auctorita (German Dominus) that was my previous standard.

Tony, I honestly don't know.

The owner of Purist says Sweden and Germany are going absolutely crazy over Aqueous Anniversary, but of the guys here in the USA that have borrowed both from me, over half preferred Venustas.

Perhaps USA customers have significantly different taste in sound and/or music, or maybe it's something else, like overall effect on their stereo PLUS their surround sound. It's just wild guess at this point, maybe we can determine over time :^).

Thomas, to my knowledge the only difference is the addition of a flexible link plus DIN or whatever plug fits your tonearm. The purpose of the flexible link is to reduce interference with the suspension of the turntable.

My Walker table had RCA outputs on a plate (from the factory) so when I was testing I had no problem using several brands of interconnects that were factory terminated with common RCA to RCA termination.

I loved the Venustas RCA interconnect in the phono position (Walker to Aesthetix Io), but admit I never got around to testing the Aqueous there.