Cardas Golden Referance XLR/IC's w/SS equipment

The Cardas Golden Reference XLR/IC work great with solid state. I have used them extensively with Pass equipment. I used them with the Aleph 02 amps driven by a Wadia 861 player. Sound was beautiful and warm w/o losing detail or dynamics. They also worked very well with the X series amplifiers such as the x5, x250 and x600.

The Golden Reference are much more neutral than the warmer Golden Cross IC. There is a clear family character in both lines of Cardas. They are all a bit forgiving but extremely musical.

The tonal character of the Golden Reference is about half way between the Golden Cross and the Neutral Reference.

Hope this helps

But you also have to take Electrostaticman's speakers in account. Not very many people understand the needs of ESL, if they themselves do not own elecrostatic speakers.
The Cardas is a fine cable, but it seems to be too slow for ESL. In my system, my ML Prodigy never came alive with Cardas. One of the best cables for the Prodigy are the Valhalla, a super fast cable, maybe lacking a bit body.

George Cardas uses planar speakers as his personal reference. They are quite fast. Another cable that I have recently auditioned and that I consider to be super fast is the Acoustic Zen Silver Reference. It is also in the same price class as the Cardas Golden Reference.

Have both AZ silver and golden reference both are excellent AZ more extended high GR is better I think with fuller midrange was using both cable with ML 332 and BW speaker prefered cardas, also remember system matching is important. Also using GR bi-wire speaker cable, one thing i disliked about AZ is they have so many different version and they charge you everytime if you want to upgrade to their current version, that telling me that their product is not very reliable just my opinion.

I tried it (1m balanced) between my Rowland Synergy IIi and Model 10. I found it to be quite colored, with a significant boost in the bass and midbass. In my system the Neutral Reference works much better. I think this is because my speakers (Soliloquy 6.5s) have extended bass response (-2dB @ 22Hz) and, coupled with the room gain, any emphasis in bass is quite noticable. The speaker cables are Kimber Bifocal XL, which are quite fast and neutral. If you have speakers that roll off at 40Hz you probably wouldn't notice this effect.