Analysis Plus Oval 9 Black Vs Acoustic Zen Saori

I found that the newer Analysis Plus Oval 9 Black Mesh speaker cables on balance overall bested my Acoustic Zen Satori in my system. In the midrange, the Oval 9 sounded a little richer and warmer and slightly more natural and organic to me. Both have impressive bass, and I am not sure which win's out there.

As you all probably know, there is always a trade off. The Oval 9 lost just a little in dynamics over all and also lost a smidge of shimmer in the highs compared to the Satori which overall sounded slightly more alive. However, the Oval nine managed to also sound open and alive and maintained a nicely balanced presence with slightly more delicate sounding highs.

The Oval 9 synergistically complemented the Zu Druid speakers in my system by adding a smidge more overall system warmth and rich naturalness, particularly in the midrange.

The best cable of course, is the one that balances the sound in your system and totality of all the components just right, and the Satori is still one of best cables around and may easily sound better in other systems.

As far as other cables that I have heard goes, the Satori to me sounded a smidge warmer than the fast relatively less warm sounding Anti-Cables. However, both the Oval 9 and Satori sound much more open than some lower rung MIT cables that I once owned (which seemed to deaden the sound a bit).

A friend who also owns ultra expensive Transparent Ultra XL cables feels that the newer Oval 9 comes very close to sounding as good as them, and that the higher cost of the transparent, to him anyway, doesn't justify the slight increase in performance.