Cables for CAT JL2 - is Purist non-silver enough?


The prevailing wisdom (including from Ken Stevens) is that silver cables don't match well with CAT amps. I've heard that the new Purist cables (maybe the old ones too) like the Aqueous Anniv. sound nothing like stereotypical silver. Does anybody have experience using Purist with CAT gear or have other recommendations for ICs and speaker cables? Apparently many people use Transparent - I was advised by a knowlegeable person that they didn't think a network cable on a CAT was a great idea. Seems like there are some CAT afficionados out there, I was hoping someone had done serious experimenting.
System is Calypso, Modwright 3910, Shahinian Obelisk, analog soon.
Thanks
samcclark

Showing 1 response by nsgarch

If you go to the Purist website and download the PDF catalog which includes all specifications for each cable they make, you will see that all of their interconnects use a silver/gold alloy + copper in all their ICs -- even the least expensive models. No pure silver or silver-clad copper is used, which can sometimes cause the brightness or high frequency grain often attributed to silver.

Alloys also have another advantage. They are much less sucseptable to corrosion/oxidation at the conductor/dielectric interface.

Only a handful of manufacturers use proprietary alloys for their conductors. Magnan (bronze,) Purist, Van den Hul (I think) Siltech (I think) and maybe a couple of others. In any case, this represents a high material cost to the manufacturer since it is a custom material produced in (relatively) small quantity.

I use all Purist, and if you look at my system components, you might think it would sound bright or analytical, but it doesn't.