Gabriel Gold vs Marigo vs NBS

I am really thankful for all your responses. I had the system played overnight, assuming the previous owner did not use it a while and thus requires break-in. This morning, it got a little better, but not at a level that I wish for. There is no loose part, nothing broken.

I don't know the original MSRP on GG cables. For $400 I paid, it's right below at the performance of the Audioquest Opal x3 ($100 for 1m).

As there are many members here rave about GG cables in other threads, may be they would jump on mine's when I list them. I certainly hope that way.

Last but not least, my wife came by my setup last night, and she asked if something is broken in my setup. Well, knowing her is legally tone deaf, that pretty summarize how the GG cables sound in my system.

:-(

P.S. I noticed that MIT Magnum / Shotgun cables have some kind of impedance adjustment switches. May be my GG Revelation 2 has an impedance mismatch? But then again, with numerous cables I used before (Nordost, Cardas, NBS, Wireworld, Pure Note, Audioquest, Ohelback, Kimber, Marigo, MIT, etc etc) none has issue like I have now.

Bsimpson. Has your wife considered reviewing for audio? We could use her!

used Gabriel Gold (the higher-end Rapture and Reflection) sell very quickly on the used market here- and they are not cheap- that should tell you something. I have tried them in several systems- they are quite good. I have not yet compared with Jade Audio Hybrid Gold, which I am also curious about- I have a couple pairs of GG Reflection- anyone with Jade cables want to do a listgening session swap for fun?

Bsimpson: As I read your latest post here, I have to wonder if you are making the same mistake that I was making a few years ago. For a short time I was using a long pair of MIT ICs from line stage to amp and a pair of Coincident speaker cables. All the rest of the cabling was still NBS Statement.

I had the pleasure of Joe Kubala and JD, who would later start Jade Audio, visit my home. One by one, we replaced every PC, IC and speaker cable with K-S Emotion. It was quite an amazing experience to hear the system come alive with each cable change. When we got to changing the MIT IC cable, something went VERY wrong. Tonality was not right at all in the mids. But we continued on with the process and changed the speaker cable as well. And tonality was back in check. The bottom line: we discovered that the MIT cable and the Coincident cable had complimentary flaws and were tonally "correcting" each other. The MIT has a very distinctive valley in the mids and I had managed to find a speaker cable that had a peak in the same range. This is often what people refer to as synergy but the bottom line: it was one big bandaid. I learned a lot from these two knowledgeable audio guys. I wonder if this is what is going on for you as I read that the GG cables were "warm" for you.

Once I discover that a component has a serious peak or valley in the frequency band, particularly in the middle, it has to be dismissed or I run the risk of compensating the system for its tonal flaw with another tonal flaw. And this only leads to problems later on. I just don't buy into this synergy stuff when it comes to tonality.

The K-S was my entry point into tonally coherent cables. The Stealth continued on for me here, and the Jade Hybrid being very close with only a pinch of top-end extension softened a bit. As reported, the GG Revelation was also very tonally coherent.

There is often discussion about keeping the same cable manufacturer throughout your system. This only works for a tonally neutral cable. And even then, many products within a company have very different tonality. So there is still no guarantee. A few products out there just nail it when it comes to follow-on harmonics, ambience and decays. But only a few of these nail it with tonal coherency. It takes a long time to get a system to perform well here and only one bad cable, most notably from line stage to amp, to destroy all that you had achieved up to that point.

So Bsimpson, I suggest you investigate the remainder of your system to determine to neutrality of each component before you tag a component as too warm or not. I made that mistake and it's an easy trap to fall into.

Rtn1: I have been dieing to try a DS Epic GOld but was never able to find one on the used market for a reasonable price. The DS Lucid was very tonally incoherent in all my electronics with too much emphasis in the lower frequencies. But it was absolutely magic on the Sound Lab speakers to bring on more authority in the bass and not botch up the rest of the band like it did everywhere else. The Dream Catcher turns out to be a killer PC throughout the system except the CD player where it does not have the finesse as the Veridical cable does at this location. The Veridical did not work any other place in my system, perhaps because it is not designed for higher-current components such as the tube preamps and amps in my system.

Sutts: My Minneapolis system is now torn down as I make the transition from MN to So Cal. I have two pairs of Jade Hybrid in RCA (24" and 30"), one 1m in XLR and two 1m pairs of the Ref Gold/Platinum ICs in RCA. I could send you a pair of the Hybrids and see how that works for you. The Ref IC would likely knock your socks off and at the price, might be to painful to hear. But maybe we can work that out too. Send me an email and we can discuss this. I am now in San Clemente, CA. It would be of great value to read a report on how the Jade cables compare to the new higher-performance GG cables which I never heard.

Hi Jafox, I found the Epic Gold to sound a bit thick in my system, with insufficient top-end extension. I thought it was OK, nothing special to my ears. Tonality was fine.

I agree with what you say in that some people use 'synergy' to cover flaws and deficiencies. They don't like their tweeters, so they look for something to mute the upper frequencies.

But there is a synergy in combining strengths. For instance, the clarity, momentum, extension, and dynamics of the power cords I use mate very well with the midrange magic of the Jade interconnects. Neither have any flaws to my ears. Unfortunately, this type of synergy is not intuitive, but only comes through direct experimentation. I have also heard cables that should have sounded good together, but when combined, nullified the best qualities of each.