Cardas Neutral Reference vs AQ Caldera

John 1, it's interesting that over the course of many years of upgrading one component at a time (due primarily to budget constraints), increased transparency has been a double edged sword. By that I mean that sometimes you hear things from associated components you wish you hadn't- like "grain" for example. How many of us have been down this road before??? I'll try the Nordost cables and keep my fingers crossed! Thanks for the feedback.

I found nordost red dawn spkr and inteconn to be a great match for the magneplanar 1.6 with vt100 and pass labs pre. It's quickness and transparency really let the magneplanar show its strengths (quickness and transparency). It's transparency lets you hear more of the tube amps natural harmonics, and it's emphasized treble helps put forward a tube amps strong midrange. I haven't used many other cables. I tried a mid level tara, and you could hear the relative loss of transparency.

JC, I also have the LS-16. All my cabling is Cardas Golden Hexlink 5C- rich, warm, huge soundstage- beautiful. Tried Neutral Ref- didn't like it- to lean IMO, but depends of course on type of 'sound' you are after. Good luck!

Rigby- No I don't think so. However, it's sometimes helpful to know the system context. Most serious review articles list associated equipment for just this reason. If the rest of my gear was from RS, the question would be irrelevant.

Do you really think there's someone out there who keeps track of all your stuff?