Acoustic Zen Absolute. How good they are?

Elduendel4, take a look at my review here on the GON for the details regarding why the AZ Absolute IC's and speaker wires are quite good in their performance. I surpassed their performance with Stealth IC's ( Indra/metacarbons) and Petite Dream speaker wire at a much higher cost. The Absolute IC's are a step above the Silver reference II, however, if you can get at a good price a pair of Stealth Metacarbons, which give you almost 80% of the sonics of Indra, that would give a great bang for the buck. I also wrote a review on the Metacarbons, so take a look at it for details regarding its sonics.

Stealth is in higher league-performance compared to A.Zen.

Kops, could you give us some details why Stealth are superior, what are differences, in what areas AZ cables are lacking? Unfortunately many of us don't have possibility to compare until we buy them so your observations will be very helpful.

I had both the valhalla and the az absolutes at the same time. I preferred the az to the valhalla. To me, they were more natural sounding and are much fuller. Resolution wise, I'd go with the Valhalla's. If you have to live with them day to day then I'd go with the absolutes which are still very very detailed just not as harsh. I also compared them both to the pranawire nataraja and neither is in the same league.

In my system, the Absolutes created an almost "acid" type sound which I enjoyed but i'm not sure it was altogether real. There is possibly some overemphasis (slightly boomy but still very fast) on the lower notes. They do not sound digital, the valhallas on the other hand did make my system sound compressed, too focused, analytical and ultimately, not engaging.

I have a cable cooker and while I think it is an amazing product and has worked as marketed on everything I have owned, I could not make the valhalla sound good. But, to each his own.....

I cannot comment on the stealth although I just picked up the DREAM PC's for my integrated and CD and they are quite nice.

I upgraded my IC AZ Matrix II and Silver Ref to Absolute and I couldn't be happier. Absolute are more revealing and at the same time smoother and fuller. The instruments have more body and the listening is less aggressive. At the end of the day, I think you just come closer to listen to real music.

I have AZ digital and AZ silver absolute IC, they are wonderful cables which will stay with me

Tuan