I gave them a shot a few months ago. Don't know what all the hype is. I wasn't impressed. They seemed to be cut off at the high end. He must be making a lot of money off them. You can purchase the magnet wire for less the .25 a foot. And the connectors are very cheap also. I would stick with what you have, or try something else if you want too. But to me, I wouldn't waste me time and money. |
Didn't compare directly against the CC89259, but did against:
Cardas Cross
Xindak FS-1
Kimber 4TC
Goertz MI2
All cables were 3m, except the Goertz which is a little longer (11 ft).
In every case, the Speltz was the loser, even against my old Kimber. The tonal qualities were good, nice detail, good highs and lows, but the soundstage was smashed together, no soundstage depth at all. Zero. No space around singers or instruments. I tried them apart and twisted, but ultimately couldn't wait to get them out of my system.
But it only cost me $10 to compare, so try 'em - maybe these are the most system specific cables in the world, since so many seem to absolutely love them, and maybe they'll work for you. Didn't for me.
Enjoy!
James |
Thanks for the responses. That's what I kind of thought. The "raves" usually get posted easily and frequently. The less than stellar results sometimes don't get posted at all (i.e. if you don't have something nice to say ...).
All in all, probably not worth the spend on my part since I have nowhere to unload them if I don't like them.
Bob |
Try a length of the bulk cable with unterminated ends...I've been using the Anti-cables for 2 yrs now and love them, they replaced cryo'd Belden CAT5 wire from takefiveaudio.com and simply blew them away. I have a 10' pair that cost me $44...you really can't beat that. Anti-cables take a few weeks to burn in too. I also have anti-IC's in my sytem, which are really a,mazing interconnects. There may be synergy there to help out the speaker cables. I have gobs of articulate bass, great 3-D imaging and killer voicing...and couldn't have had any of that without paul's cables. |
Mine didn't impress me that much until I cut off the standard spades, and connected the bare cables. They are far better now. I don't think the standard spades are very good, at least when I got mine, which was over a year ago. |
I think more of the raves are for the Speltz interconnects than the speaker cable. The speaker cable is very inexpensive and holds a lot of appeal to value seekers. I had 8TC, replaced it with Speltz and enjoyed Speltz and its more tranparent HF response, better detail and image. I also tried VH Audio CHeLA cable and found it very similar to Speltz but put back the Speltz. Speltz is a third to a fifth the cost of those others. I find speaker cable has less impact on sound than interconnects, which have less impact than power cables. In my setup to my ears anyway. Also a big 3D image is very important to me and nothing has ever opened it up as wide or deep as the Speltz interconnects. I compared much higher priced interconnects ($500-$1200/pr) to the Speltz interconnect and it won by a long shot. I was shocked....in a good way. I am happy with the tonal balance of my system. Once I found a power cable that properly reproduced digital and HF nicely I have concentrated on soundstage and image. These things make the biggest difference to the image:
not in order of importance because I don't know that
1)PS Audio P-300 on source components set @120HZ output
2)Speltz interconnects
3)Bi-wiring and less so bi-amping (and I do a passive horizontal biamp*) bi-wire made a bigger difference than biamp but I had two amps that are the same brand-sensativity-impedence, a perfect setup for passive bi-amp which does help. It just had less impact than bi-wiring....in my setup
4)Good power cords
* on my speakers that allow for it |
The Anticables take forever to break in. The web site says they don't but I'm afraid they do, but once they finally break watch out! They are amazing, it's like a pillow was removed from in front of my speakers. The anticables sound like crap at first so you have to be patient. It will pay off I promise. |
Mtrot,you are dead right.Cutting the spades of the anti cables takes everything up a notch,especially voices which seem more in the room.
Sunsetsuperman,you are dead right too,these cables take around 500 hours of music through them to finally find their feet.Told Paul Speltz about this and he said a few of his customers had the same findings.Well worth the wait though. |
I have to agree with Matcecil, and Nortberg. The Anti-cables were better than my old Kimbers right out of the box. I did notice a soft bloated bass, mids to die for, and a rolled off top.
Patience is a virtue. Now, after months of use, I have a deep defined bass, and airy highs. I do have their interconnects as well. Be sure to mate the two for the best synergy.
I will try the bare wire connection on the speaker. Thanks for the tip Mtrot. |
When you go bare wire with them, do you need to scrape off the insulation coating and clean the copper? |
I sanded the insulation off,cleaned with caig deoxit and then treated with walker sst. |
i'm still at a loss as to why people are paying $10 per foot for 12 guage magnet wire that retails for about $3-4 per pound. a 10 foot pair costing $200 is about 10x what you would pay for an entire spool of this stuff, which has 100 feet or better. there's no magic here, it's just magnet wire. sure it works and sounds great, but people need to do their homework and save some serious money. those isoblocks sold for $25 to $50 for a set are the same ones you can get at a furniture store or appliance store for about $1 each or less. and no, they are not "specially tuned" or formulated in any way by the resellers. |
Stvncar,
Before I bought my AntiCables I searched the Internet looking for 12ga magnet wire and came up empty. Do you have a source for this wire? If so, please share it with us.
David |
I researched magnet wire and found there are hundreds of different types. You have to know their insulation qualities to make an educated guess which one to buy. Speltz has done the homework. His transformers broke new ground from what I read. The particular wire he uses might. have something to do with the sound. Speltz interconnects are just as awesome, but they are not a long run wire, but are tightly coiled. |
armstrod, if you have anyplace local that repairs electric motors, go there first. they should have an abundance of magnet wire in any guage you want, and will probably sell you as much as you want pretty cheaply. if you have no luck, email me and i'll see if i can obtain some for you.
steve |
muralman1,
speltz says it is a red enamel coating, nothing more. most of the enamel coatings are the same, but they do come in different colors. that's really all you need to look for.
steve |
I am just reporting my experience when I went on the net to get my own
magnet wire. There were a myriad of different substance coatings. There
were 24 insulation types available at one site, enamel being just one. |
A while ago I remember looking at the Magico website. I think the Mini's have a few different guage leads leading from the driver to the crossover, all magnet wire. Has anyone experimented with a few different guages bundled together for their speaker wire?.
How close should the positive and negative be together?.
Inductance and capacitance will be affected by various seperation distances. Any engineer's out there?. |
Question: Would it severely affect the sound of the anti-cables if:
- I ran them lying on top of a relatively cheap wall-to-wall carpet, and also for some part of the run placed them between a wool (or maybe wool/silk) oriental carpet and the wall-to-wall?
- I had severely unequal runs, one being 6' and the other being 25'? Or could this even hurt my amp? |
