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Cables for a high-school newbie

Im on an extreemly tight budget. My goal for cables is simply to open up my current system, tighten the bass, and sharpen immaging, i dont want to color the sound at all (well, maybe a tad bit darker to counter the metal dome tweeters on my speakers). I have a sony cd player, Onkyo Tx 8211 reciever and a pair of NHT SB-3s (best speakers under $1k i've heard... and they're only $400 new if you shop around). are cables worth the dough at this level or not, and if so what brands should i be looking at? I need both interconnects and speaker cables. I listen to rock, small group jazz, metal (too bad metalheads can't figure out how to make a decent recording), and classical in that order.
thanks for the help
dk89
stehno
1,453 posts
 
I second the Paul Spetlz Anti-cable ($60 for 6ft pair) and Anti-ic (about $60 for 1m RCA pair and $100 for 1m XLR pair).

Some of the best cables you may ever hear. The Anti-cables were slightly better than my highly rated $1800 (retail) bi-wired cables and the Anti-ics made my old $4700 (retail) ics sound bloated and veiled in comparison.

I'm not using the Anti-cables anymore but I keep a complete set of Anti-cables for backups. Which were just loaned out to one who is now ordering his own complete set.

Thus far, these are the second best cable I've heard, they require zero burn-in time and the ics easily outperformed some Signal silver sig ics I've tried.

-IMO
burnzy
1 posts
 
For speaker cables and interconnect I got mine from Zebra Cables. They are reasonably priced for your budget. Check them out if you have the chance.
dk89 OP
6 posts
 
Thanks for all the help guys, I cant see spending much more than $100 on cables (my entire system costs $700). With that in mind i'll look into all of the ideas. The isolation pads are an interesting idea, but how much difference can they really make?
Thanks again -Dan
bdgregory
1,710 posts
 
on your budget I would go with Dopogues recommendation. I've made the extension chord cables and they're clearly the best deal around. I went with the 12 guage. Same goes for the interconnects from Starlink. They can't be beat much more money, and they are cheap. If you want to spend more money - I like the Bluejeans cables too.
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