Analysis Plus Silver Apex Speaker cable

Thanks for the recommendations all. I'll keep you all posted though the burn in for me will take awhile. Joe

It does take an AA Audiophile Anonymous support group to help each other through the ridiculous 300hr wait time on these cables. :)

Would have never believed it myself, even called the cable designer and the owner of the company to pester them about this claim. Thousands of customers and musicians report the same to them, oddly enough.

The interconnects and ICs don’t like to be moved much. Similar to some of the older and more dense cables from Cardas too. After 3-4 weeks of setting and letting the cable unbind and relax helps too, new or used.

I kinda joke about it now with friends and we say, "you want to be the 3rd owner of any pair of AP cables", let the 1st and 2nd owner take the purchase hit, burn it in for you 70% of the way". Buy them at less cost, save time and money! Love them or hate them, they are interesting cables to say the least. The AP OCC Crystal Solos and Silvers are kinda similar to Cardas Clear and Clear Beyond in some ways.

I agree with Decooney.I have AP speaker cables also and they take a very long time to settle in.In the past if I didn't like a cable after 25-50 hrs I gave up and moved on.These things are completely different and were worth the wait.Hopefully they'll work out for , and be  good match.

Thanks Decooney and I am looking forward to how they sound with more hours!

@grk
Your Super Nines run Paper-in-Oil caps in the crossovers, smaller 3/4" textile tweeters with paper woofers at 91db in the sweet spot and would not expect them to be overly forward or edgy or bright. Sounds like a good match for the AP Silvers. Wait till you get 300hrs on the cables, should smooth out a little more with time. Sounds like you hit a good balance, all about matching and finding that complimentary synergy. Nice!

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Home Audio cabling is more like a side business for AP. In addition to prior R&D Designs already paid for years ago with government funded projects (with patents) AP sells pro audio cabling to musicians all over the world.
"if it aint broke, don’t fix it", their patented hardware cabling designs work. No need to redesign it every few years if it works well. Analysis Plus cabling works good with neutral sounding sources and amplifiers. If you try them with overly bright sources or forward sounding speakers, the cables are just revealing what’s already "there". They tend to hide nothing, just passes it through, and they are not veiled over cables nor are the designed to work as tone controls to filter out harshness or detail. You will hear all of it with AP cables good or bad.  

I  own them and I think they are wonderful! They have  around 80-100 hours on them I have not heard any brightness through my DeVore Super Nine speakers, so it could indeed be your speakers or you need more hours on them. The cables use a solid copper core with a coating of silver. Te Absolute Sound review of the cables I think is spot on and gave me the incentive to take a leap of faith and purchase them unheard.

As far as AP being a mostly a " marketing company"...huh? They just don't come out with a new model every couple of years like so many other companies do. The triple oval design is their newest  in a number of years. Also, a number of musicians and NASA use their cables, so they must be doing something right.

HI Joe- give the Silver Apex cables at LEAST 150 hours to fully break in.  The top end is lively, but not out of proportion with the rest of the frequency spectrum.  Your patience will be rewarded!

As for Erik's comments- the Silver Apex IS a new design and Analysis Plus is no more of a marketing company than any other cable manufacturer.  Their hollow oval design is unique and well engineered.

@jnovak

As you noted, yes, the silvers are kind of known for being forward and detailed, in just about every review I’ve come across where someone jumps from richer sounding copper, or OCC Crystal Solo to "Silver". Particularly in some cases when combined with brighter sounding systems and speakers. Same for X1 vs. XP20 or XP20 vs XP32. I run the AP Crystal Solo Coppers, some consider them warm, even they are more forward, transparent, and more detailed than most other coppers. There may be another quick test to try.

Also, that particular tweeter in the Snell Type B looks familiar, maybe the same Vifa D25AG aluminum dome tweeter [definitely brighter] I used for number of years in my former custom speakers. Worked great with vinyl or the old FM Radio days with Snell Bs. Not so much for today’s hi-res streaming content, too edgy. A friend acquired a set of those custom speakers from me years ago. Last year when he went to Silver interconnects and Silver speaker cables, it was not a good match but he wanted to keep the cables and tune "elsewhere". I had to swap out that same 1" 25mm Aluminum dome tweeter for him - we went to a soft [fabric] dome D25 TG-05 type tweeter to take the edge off. Same chassis. Big difference, helped smooth it out notably. Maybe a low cost $45-$60 experiment for you. Doing some checking saw a few on the fleabay auction site. Cheaper than reselling those APs or buying a warmer new XP32 or older X1 preamp to take the detail/forward sound now exposed by the "silvers", fwiw. Caps in the x-overs may help, but I’d replace those tweeters, I always felt they were kinda grainy and edgy, even with a damped down x-over. Good luck.

I have to say, I'm a little surprised AP is still in business.  I too liked their cables, but as far as i could tell, they haven't done any R&D in many years. 

They seemed to me like a pure marketing, manufacturing company.

Have they released any interesting new designs lately??

Which cables did you end up listening too? Joe

I had a pair of Von Schweikert speakers that were wired internally with Analysis plus cable and I don’t know if that was the problem but I found them quite tipped up in the treble region.  They were the VR33 speakers with all the extra bells and whistles. I found myself not listening to that system and after a year and a half, unloaded them here.  Some people swear by those cables but after that, I never had a desire to try them.   I did hear that silver cables need a lot of break in so maybe that is the case with you.