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Need Good Advice - Speaker Cable

I have an Audio Refinement Complete driving Soliloquy 5.0 monitors and a Rotel 855 CDP. I've had them a year hooked up with well seasoned original Monster Cables. The last couple of months, I've been auditioning speaker cables to get rid of some grime in the highs and some thinness to some vocals.

The system with my Monsters is actually quite pleasureable. It has a vibrant, room filling, holographic kind of quality that is very exciting even at low levels. Bass is very good and the midrange can really be wonderful with terrific tone and color to the music. Highs can be very transparent also.

I've now tried in my system Transparent Audio The Wave 100 (lifeless and veiled sounding), Analysis Plus Oval 12 (pretty good resolution and good purity, but too rolled off sounding, not exciting), Mapleshade Golden Helix (amazing stuff really, very pure high end, a bit too bright, some sibilance and some nasality to vocals). Just received and now listening to Monster Cable Z-1 (it has the expansive Monster sound that I'm used too, fair resolution, decent bass, but some grime in the midrange so far).

Almost everything has a cleaner high end than my old Monster's, but nothing is as exciting, enjoyable and colorful as they are. I was thinking of trying a low to mid priced Nordost cable next.

This business of testing cables is still fun, but I'm not sure when/where it will end. Can someone who is familiar with my experiences give me some direction?

Thanks,
Chris
ssglx
timrhu
2,779 posts
 
Hello,
I agree with Pcs. I have tried cables from several respected makers and the cables that seemed to make the most significant difference were Audioquest. Crystal IIs and Slate come to mind as the cables that seemed to provide clean open sound for me. Another favorite is Canare 4S11, what a bargain. Good luck.
jallen
502 posts
 
The AQ cable is a good cable, but I would lean to the Cardas Neutral Reference as that cable has sounded so right in so many systems I think anyone looking for cable should at least hear it. Jeff's Sound Values frequently has some used/demo cable at reasonable prices as do other dealers...none of which I am affiliated with. Jallen
dragon1952
181 posts
 
Check out Olympus Audio ... www.olympusaudio.com ....they have an ad here for the Athena, their top of the line, that comes with a 40 day money back guarantee. I have tried something very similar to their new Apollo, which is right below the Athena, and it is sweet, sweet, sweet. They are rather heavy though so it's best to tie them up to relieve some of the weight. I use tie straps. A very heavy 6 gauge cable with very low capacitance. This was the last missing link in my system. If you call or email I'm sure you could cut a better deal than their listed prices. Very friendly people.
dragon1952
181 posts
 
Also wondering how long you burned the cables in that you were testing before deciding you didn't like them?
ssglx OP
203 posts
 
Lack of adequate burn-in is a possibility with a couple of them, but they were either demos or I ran all in my system for a few days before trying to draw conclusions. The differences between them were stark, with definite characteristics defining how they sounded. I don't have the time or patience to wait out any minor changes to the sound characteristics.

BTW, I just switched back to my original Monsters from the Monster Z-1's and it was immediately apparent that I enjoy the old cables more. The Z-1's were certainly more refined in all frequencies, but the old cables were punchy, very open and live sounding and incredibly solid. Definitely some upper midrange hash, but not unpleasantly so.
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