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

Are you sure the Purist Aniv. are silver???? I think they are a combination of different metals.......... Then again I haven't done a lot of reading on the new Purist stuff. I have Purist Venustas throughout my system and really like the sound......... Can't say how they would work with CAT stuff though.

Agone member Jfox has a CAT/Purist combination if I remember right....... Maybe he will chime in....... In the end, my advise would be to do a cable lend from the Cable Co. to see what works best for you first hand.

Chris

I have a CAT SL1 Ultimate pre, and I think I know where the fear of silver comes from. The CATs are very revealing, as you know, and often what is revealed is all the high requency hash. Silver cables tend to reveal more of the high frequency stuff too, and so the combination of the two can be a little frightening. Some silver cables are not very well balanced as well, and the problem gets worse. In my system, I use my own cables, which use a blend of metals, including a high proportion of silver, and sound just about right. I also own Siltech SQ 88 and SQ 110-- to my ear, they are one of the best sounding cables around-- not neutral, but really good and definately worth a try. They are a blend of gold and silver. I also like Cardas Golden Reference for a slightly warmer sound. Cardas gets a bad rap sometimes, for sounding mushy or soft, but the trick with their cables is to plug them in and leave them alone, and to let them break in for a good long time. It makes a big difference. If you keep moving them around, you'll never hear their true characteristics. The reason? Each tiny strand of copper that goes into their cable is insulated, so there is quite a bit of dialectric static or charge to discharge. Everytime you move the cable, say, plug in a different cable, you upset the dialectric charge balance (or whatever we call it). Anywy, if you treat the Cadras cables well, they will sound detailed and smooth.

As far as I know, there aren't any electrical issues with CAT and silver cables-- like impedance or capacitance.

Try some Siltech. I think you'll be amazed.

Hope this helps,

Mark
Ciao Audio

Thanks Chris and Mark. When I talked with Ken Stevens, his objection to silver was that it rings and he thought it wasn't as musical as copper. But I guess the application is important as is the material. Acoustice Zen Matrix Reference was another recommendation (not from Ken). I know CAT has demo'd with Virtual Dynamics but I was told that you really need to cable your whole system with VD to realize the benefits - a single IC won't get you much. But it's all heresay to me at this point because I haven't tried them.

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.