Cardas GoldenCross vs. NBS Statement or Monitor 0?

I have experimented extensively over the past year with the Cardas Golden Cross, the Neutral Reference, FIM Gold, NBS Statement and Valhalla along with another 20 or so cables.

My opinion is you Cardas are the warmer of the group but also the least raveling. I found the FIM, NBS and Valhalla to have a far lower noise floor, reducing the amount of high frequency "hash" and producing a less fatiguing presentation.

If you want a warm clean sound the FIM are a place to start. The NBS and Valhalla are so similar it's a toss up to me. The Vallhala might be a bit more open and reveling, this may or may not cause you problems.

In my opinion the Cardas are excellent mid-fi cables, but any of the other three will take you to a new level. The lack of "hash" may sound to you as warmer, you must try a few to know.

Also for me I found the interconnects to have a larger impact on my system than the speaker cable so I would suggest working with some other interconnects and stick with your Cardas speaker cables for now.

J.D.

I have owned cardas golden cross and neutral reference.
Both excellent cables, the golden cross had an overall
warmth that suited my system at the time(avalon ascents and
gryphon electronics)Since several equipment changes I have
now changed from Valhalla's to NBS Statment Extremes.
My previous statment 3's outperformed the Valhalla's
and by a significant margin, contrary to the experience of
Audio2us.Cables are system dependant. However I have just
received the new Statement Extremes(same technology as the
Omega series) and they are a significant musical upgrade on the Statement 3.Tighter and more articulate bass, superb
dynamics and detail, and extended natural highs.I tried
my old Valhalla speaker cable against the new extremes , and
invited some audiophile friends to see their reactions.
No comparison, the extremes are in a different class to the
Valhalla's (at least in my system).So whatever Walter has done to his new cables he has certainly left Nordost out in the cold.

i am quite familiar with your system components. i also have eidolons, which i drive with a modified jeff rowland 8ti through a boulder 1012 pre/dac. recently, i've been comparing in my audio dealer's main listening room, various amps on eidolons and the new eidolon diamonds. my experience is that the diamonds love the boulder 1060 but the eidolons sound a touch too sterile with that amp. the best amp i've heard driving eidolons, besides my own, is the accuphase a-50v. a pair is even better. as to cables, i've found tara, "the one" to be superior in my setup to anything else i've tried, which included fim silver and gold, cardas neutral reference and golden cross and nbs monitor 1. if the cardas you now use doesn't give you a "rich" or "warm" sound, i doubt very much the nbs will. BTW, you have a very nice system. -cfb

Your system may be neutral overall, but I can pretty much guarantee you that the Golden Cross are warmer and smoother than neutral. I've compared them to Coincident, regular Cardas Cross, Z-Cable, JPS SUperconductors, etc. and the Cardas Golden Cross definitely have warm mids and lows. It's nothing drastic...they're great musical cables, but that warmer feel is why they named them "Golden". That may mean that your system is a little thinner than neautral and if you were to replace the Golden Cross with neutral cables you may miss their warming effect.

I recently had the opportunity to audition the NBS statement, Monitor O series, FIM gold series & Valhalla speaker cables. The process took me approx. 3 weeks listening for a full day on each occasion, all cables were broken-in. The Valhalla was the best in my system, however, the FIM gold series was closely behind in second followed by the Monitor and then Statement series cables. I chose the FIM Gold Series, basically on price and what I could afford, about half off retail, the soundstage both depth and width, dynamics, resolution and separation is what sold me on the FIM, the cost factor also helped make my decision, my quest is over, I hope for at least awhile. Good luck.