Audioquest Firebird Zero


I've tried several speaker cables over the past year; Shunyata Alpha and Sigma, Wireworld Silver Eclipse series 7, Audioquest Oak and Redwood, Audience Au24 SX, and I own Clarus Crimson speaker cables. I prefer the Clarus over all of the aforementioned speaker cables. I've had the Audioquest Firebird Zero speaker cables on loan for three days. My initial thoughts were everything is a little clearer through them compared to my Clarus Crimson. Not a night and day difference, but definitely clearer. The Clarus are slightly more 3-dimensional to my ears. My wife on the other hand just keeps saying the AQ sounds sharper, clearer, there are less impurities in the music. I'm not sure what she means by impurities, but she keeps repeating it. Maybe she means a darker background? My plan was to have a home audition of the Thunderbird Zero speaker cables, but they had banana plugs on the amplifier end and I can't use them. I took the Firebirds with the logic that if I can't hear a difference between them and my current cables I didn't need to have a home audition of the Thunderbirds. $14K for an eight foot pair of speaker cables is freaking crazy and sad! It would be easy for me to dismiss it  because there isn't a night and day difference, but once you hear the difference it's very hard to ignore. Financially I just can't justify spending $14K on speaker cables and hope to hear the AQ Thunderbirds sometime next week. Once again I'm reminded that absolutely everything makes a difference. For those that can easily afford $14K, $20K or more speaker cables I understand, because cables can be equivalent to a component change. Does it ever end?
ricred1

Showing 8 responses by markush

Oh thank you very much - very interesting! Thee seems though to be quite little review stuff and talk about the Zero speaker cables out there yet. Which is quite strange as they provide such a great value and performance.
I heard that Robin Hood and William Tell should be absolutely outstanding in price/performance ratio. And when going for a Zero&Bass combo/bi-wiring version it should be a major upgrade in addition. Has anyone auditioned, compared them?
The bi-wire combo (Zero & Bass) shall be amazing. I just wonder how much of a deference there is to Rocket 88 or Castle Rock. 
Yes I believe to make a wording connection with the technologies incorporated in the power cables already. But seems there are hardly any reviews of speaker cables of folk heroes or mystical creatures in magazines so far, which is sad. 
Great! But what about the difference between bi-wire combo of Robin Hood vs William Tell. Really big difference in price but cannot think about such a big performance difference. Any experiences ?
I am using a Devialet 440 Pro on a B&W 803 D3 with Roon (MQA, lossless formats). So a high resolving setup. And it’s really incredible to see what impact the different loud speaker cables can have on the sound.
Eager to get my setup upgrade consisting of Furutech Rhodium wall socket, Thunder High Current cables for Niagara 5000 and both mono amps (Devialet 440 Pro with Coax Coffee digital cable) and Robin Hood Zero/Bass bi-wiring cable. This all together should get it to another level :))