Cardas vs NBS?

I am a user of NBS Signature II interconnects and had also owned NBS King Serpent II interconnects . I personally find NBS on the bright side, but not harsh or unpleasant. They have a big mid-bass and are EXTREMELY dynamic. They are a little rolled off in the extreme highs and deep bass. They can be a little rough and unrefined but I personally like the Signature for the upper midrange lift it gives to female vocals, the bloom it gives to well-recorded piano and the bite it gives to horns all which my Pass Aleph 4 can use. I have never heard the Cardas Golden Reference interconnects or speaker cable, but I did once own the Cardas Golden Cross interconnects which I found so dark and undynamic that it was unusable. I have heard that the Golden Reference was much more neutral. A friend of mine, who has the Golden Reference on loan from a dealer, has used them to tame the highs on an extremely bright sounding CD player. This suggests that the Golden Reference is still on the dark side, but then again, I have no personal experience. I know the NBS Signature interconnect to be one of the better, if not one of the best cables around and I doubt the Golden Reference is one of the worst. Which one to use, if either, will depend on the characteristics of your system and what you would like to change about those characteristics in order to improve the sound. Perhaps you could re-post with the equipment and speakers with which you are intending to match these cables?

Another much more moderate cable which you might try is the old, now discontinued, JPS Superconductor. This cable is very neutral and compares well with some very expensive cables which I have tried. My experience with the $1500 + cables is that I haven't yet found one which is clearly better than all or many of the moderately priced ones for all applications. I haven't tried everything, since I am cheap and won't pay those megabuck prices for the cables with the huge reputations (and price tags). The most I'll pay is about $700 for an interconnect. It seems to me that there are good cables at every price point from $70 to $3000 and that no cable is perfectly neutral or does everything well. Most importantly, you cannot drop any cable, no matter how good the reputation, in any system and expect to get the best sound possible. As far as pricing goes, you may or you may not get more for your money as you buy more expensive cable.