Acoustic Zen Matrix..for me???

You win the '02 Fife award for devastating insults.

I'm just trying to contribute based on what I have tried and what I have heard. I've own a very similar system to rwd and I've gone through over a dozen cables with it.

I owned both of these cables for a few weeks and listened to each in a very similar system. They're both in the 'a little dull on top with decent harmonics and above average transparency' club. They both have a very small touch of silver harshness. The az has better harmonics, and is a little less harsh. I agree that the az silver ref is a little better, but not for the price difference on a 15 foot run. Ever notice how people buy and sell $500 az silver refs ? I was the third owner of mine and the guy I sold it to sold it in a week. Another friend bought one and kept it a couple weeks. He concurs with my opinion on it relative to the ht pro-silway and quattro-fil. Cables are easy to squabble about since they are based on a gazillion factors, including personal preferences.

XLR sounds better with my arc amp. No doubt about it. I would guess much better with a 15 foot cable. I think that is reasonable and correct advice.

AS for Elif, he never mentioned the Satori.

If only all our belts could be so high.....

You might want to go with a balanced cable. I've tried both rca and xlr with my arc amp and found the xlr was noticably better. ARC recommends this as well. I use a vt100m2 and a bat vk-5i. I've also used/owned the arc ref1 and the ls5mkII with this amp.

I tried the az silver ref ic and thought it was one of the better ic's I've heard. Great harmonic content, no silver harshness, very good transparency and easy to listen to. I did however feel that it was overpriced for it's level of performance.

I didn't hear them a/b, but I did compare both to the same reference cables, and I felt the az and the ht pro silway II were about the same distance off. I would personally just buy an ht pro silway II. If you can find one cheap, you might also try some ARC linklitz cable. Those lose out a little on the transparency, but they are very warm and have a great midrange with arc electronics.

The satori speaker cables are excellent and imho the audio buy of the century. Unless you want to pay for a 3000+ retail speaker cable, I would go no further. I found them to be very close to the best speaker cables out there.

So, buy some ht prosilway II, and some satori's !

The idea behind that advice is that running balanced end to end will lower the noise floor overall. This is probably true with all components that are designed as balanced circuits from end to end.

Most of the time I really don't hear that much of an improvment of balanced verses single ended. I usually try both when I have a choice. Balanced verses single ended really is component dependent. Sometimes I hear an improvement, but most times the difference is too small to be concerned with.

I've used a variety of preamps and cables with the vt100m2, and I do hear a marked improvmement running a balanced cable from pre to amp. A long ic is also better served with a balanced cable because of it's noise cancelling characteristics.