The Cardas is a safe bet, but it is a bit pricey. The Nordost is a little zippy in the upper midrange and treble, and requires VERY careful system/room matching. The Harmonic Tech. cables are a over rated and over priced in my opinion. Permit me to throw another hat in the ring. The Analysis Plus cables are (in each of their respective price catagories) very nicely balanced and don't require careful system matching. They are very detailed yet very musical. I think the the Silver Oval outperforms the Cardas and would be a little less expensive. Their Oval Nine would be comparable to the Cardas, and would be quite a bit less expensive.
Cables:Harmonic/Nordost/Cardas
I'm new to this high end stuff. After buying a Conrad Johnson PV-11, with a CJ MF2300 SS amp, fed by a Thule CD100, all driving a set of Audio Physics Virgo's; I find out I need to get speaker cables. So now for round 2 in the lets get educuted/serious confusion, about music. I need at a 12' because of the funky space that I'm in (ie read to achieve marital bliss with all this big stuff in the living room). Right now I have 15 year old, first generation monster cable. My guy who got me the CJ stuff has a 14' run of Cardas Cross ($850). Originally I was going to get Nordost Red Dawn from him, but it was to short. I have since found some for $850 that would work. I have also found some great reviews about the Harmonic Tech Pro 9. I did'nt find the pro 9, but I can get the Pro 11 for $500. I'm sure it will all sound better, but what do I get? Secondly, it seems that buying used cable will get me over the burn in period. Any thoughts? Luc