When I first built the system I still have (twenty-five + years ago) Fatwyre was a cable lending company. I tried about 10 or 12 different speaker cables, and about the same amount of interconnects finding out what worked best with the components I have. At the time my cap was $1K for an 8 foot pair of speaker cables and $400 for a 2 meter pair of interconnects. After all was said and done on speaker cables a friend loaned me a pair of Straightwire Maestro cables. Turns out they were the charm and I bought them from him. Turns out Monster Interlink 800 worked the best for interconnects (then) and I had a pair custom terminated since my amps use double single ended to connect balanced. Those pairs started to fall apart after 25 + years and I ran across a 25 foot single Straightwire Maestro balanced interconnect on eBay and bought it. FWIW, the Straightire facility is about 15 miles away from me and they are GREAT guys and re-terminated that piece of cable into 4 "jumper", 1.5' balanced female XLR to double male single ended cables and a 3 meter balanced pair. I had already partially converted to Straightwire Maestro balanced and this finished it except for the Straightwire silver cable (forget the name, maybe Creshendo) from the XA5400 ES SACD player to the ARC pre.
Cable Survey
The idea for this thread came from @sautan 904 op titled “Who thinks $ Speaker cable really better than generic 14awg cable?
My reply:
From op:
SO WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK? OR I AM THE LAST PERSON TO FIND OUT THAT EXPENSIVE CABLE JUST A RIP OFF?
Some are, some are definitely not. It really is a matter of discovering what brands out there (and there a lot) offer the best performance for your money. Some are really worth the money and clearly they offer a big increase in sound quality. It seems the dealers you used were not very discriminating about what brands they carry. This does not surprise me since I have found many are not well informed. You really need to seek out somebody who has compared different makes of cable and really believes in what they are selling.
So I thought it a good idea to pool knowledge on this subject and make a list of what people are using and why. This is my current preferences:
Speaker: Hi Diamond 7
IC XLR: Hi Diamond XLR 3
USB: Vovox
Ethernet: AQVOX, Vovox
Power: Belden
The Hi Diamond speaker cable was so much better than other cables I have tried to date. The increase in musicality, depth and detail in bass, increased sound stage and cleaner more detailed top where some of the benefits I had with this cable. The same can be said of their XLR interconnect.
The Vovox I have only been able to compare with some generic cables, and it is much clearer than those. I intend trying some other brands in the near future and I will post my findings.
Ethernet cables I find make a difference and I am currently using both Vovox and AQVOX, compared to various generic makes and the blue Meicord these are both much preferred, opening the sound stage and lowering the noise floor.
Power cables I haven’t so far experimented with a great deal, I’m using heavy Belden cables that are part of a dedicated mains spur arrangement, so that each individual piece of equipment has its own spur. In order to test cable types I will need to introduce a mains block (Shunyata?).
My reply:
From op:
SO WHAT DO YOU ALL THINK? OR I AM THE LAST PERSON TO FIND OUT THAT EXPENSIVE CABLE JUST A RIP OFF?
Some are, some are definitely not. It really is a matter of discovering what brands out there (and there a lot) offer the best performance for your money. Some are really worth the money and clearly they offer a big increase in sound quality. It seems the dealers you used were not very discriminating about what brands they carry. This does not surprise me since I have found many are not well informed. You really need to seek out somebody who has compared different makes of cable and really believes in what they are selling.
So I thought it a good idea to pool knowledge on this subject and make a list of what people are using and why. This is my current preferences:
Speaker: Hi Diamond 7
IC XLR: Hi Diamond XLR 3
USB: Vovox
Ethernet: AQVOX, Vovox
Power: Belden
The Hi Diamond speaker cable was so much better than other cables I have tried to date. The increase in musicality, depth and detail in bass, increased sound stage and cleaner more detailed top where some of the benefits I had with this cable. The same can be said of their XLR interconnect.
The Vovox I have only been able to compare with some generic cables, and it is much clearer than those. I intend trying some other brands in the near future and I will post my findings.
Ethernet cables I find make a difference and I am currently using both Vovox and AQVOX, compared to various generic makes and the blue Meicord these are both much preferred, opening the sound stage and lowering the noise floor.
Power cables I haven’t so far experimented with a great deal, I’m using heavy Belden cables that are part of a dedicated mains spur arrangement, so that each individual piece of equipment has its own spur. In order to test cable types I will need to introduce a mains block (Shunyata?).