Speaker cables for Ayre gear with KEF speakers


My setup is Ayre DX-5 disc player, QX-5 Twenty DAC, AX-5 Twenty integrated amp with KEF Reference 1 speakers.  I'm looking for 12' cables.  Charley Hansen recommended Cardas Clear Sky for use with his amps.  Is that still a good choice?

dbphd

many cables will work well... cardas kimber aq ww audience, i personally still like older straightwires and also purist

soix

I'm using cables I bought from a fellow who has since died.  I don't recall the name, but we talked on the phone a number of times.  He used twists of multiple wires with lots of silver in each cable.  I love the sound with them, I biwired them from JC-1 monoblocks that sat next to the speakers.  

After my wife died I moved to a life care community with apartments that are well sound proofed -- concrete walls furred out to wall board, and downsized my audio setup.  I currently use three of the cables pieced together with tape to run from the stereo amp to far speaker and the fourth piece to the near speaker.  It seems a bit kludgy, but sounds good

A very experienced listener and I agreed we preferred the sound of this setup to that of my KEF LS60 with KC92 subs.

What’s your budget, and what specific improvements/sound characteristics are you looking for?

As previously mentioned, Ayre Acoustics voices their components using Cardas cables, so going with Cardas speaker cables for an Ayre Acoustics amp/integrated amp would be a no-brainer for me.  I also have one of the absolutely incredible Ayre Acoustics QX-5 Twenty Streaming DACs, paired with a Hegel H590 integrated amp, powering a pair of Revel salon 2 speakers.  With my set-up, I use a pair of speaker cables that’s been with me for over 15 years now, JPS Labs Superconductor 3 speaker cables.  Over the past 15 years or so, all cabling in my audio system have been replaced and upgraded (some several times over), except for my good old faithful (superb) JPS Labs Superconductor 3 speaker cables, which I have no intentions of ever replacing (they’re just that good).  Happy listening.