I auditioned a single-biwire 8’ Redwood in my system a couple years ago. Nice cable, but I tuned them down to stick with my biwire of Mont Blanc (prior series; like half an Oak) on bottom and KE-4 up top -- which has slightly less metal overall, but slightly more PSS silver. As expected, the Redwood had slightly better smoothness and coherence overall, whereas my biwire had a touch more treble sparkle and maybe detail. It was quite close overall, which is why I didn’t drop a ton of cash for the Redwood. I would’ve upgraded if it were significant. I recently replaced the KE-4 with a Kilimanjaro (like half a WEL in PSS content), which when biwired with Mont Blanc makes for a cable almost identical in geometry and awg to the tree series, and with overall PSS/PSC+ metal content that places it between the Redwood and Wild Wood. I’m going off memory but I’d say it’s at least incrementally better than a Redwood. The KE-4 is now making for a great dedicated supertweeter cable, too. I think you’d want a Wild if you’re concerned with getting close to the very top performance, but the list prices are stratospheric. A good used deal is bound to come up. The Redwood is really nice sounding but I think it should be priced lower for what it offers ($8800 list for an 8’ pair is too much for a mostly PSC+ cable). One thing about the newer AQ tree series -- cosmetically, they’re on another level beyond the prior counter-spiral series. I’ve also been upgrading my interconnects to Wind/Sky/Wild level, and those have been fruitful upgrades so far -- the resolution difference between the Colorado and a good PSS silver IC are fairly striking. |
I have both the redwoods and wild speaker cables. The redwoods are a bit slimmer than the wild. The Wild has more resolution but the redwoods are excellent. Difference is not so much. They share the same effortless musical reproduction. wild is better in midrange and highs, redwoods still excellent presentation. |
Nice 8ft pairs of WildWoods started coming up for relatively cheap the past few months (low 2K's versus 17K MSRP), so I bought a couple pairs and replaced all ends with brand new 1007 spades. I double biwire with the 2 pairs. I REALLY like these cables. Nice balance between warmth of copper and detail of silver. Absolutely gorgeous tonality, especially with tube amps. My memory on Redwood is hazy but I think it had a similar natural tone, coherence, and ease to it. It's really system dependent whether you'd benefit from more silver (more detail, lose a bit of warmth) or less silver than a Wildwood, but It think it hits a nice balance for most. I'd previously tried an all-copper Thunderbird Zero (no biwire) from the new line, and it just fell flat in my system. Think I just gotta have a good bit of silver in my cables. Before getting these WildWoods, I sold my double Kilimanjaro (with 1007 spades) to a friend and I still don't know why the hell I did that. Those were all-silver and detailed as hell but didn't go over the top with it; somehow they still had a touch of natural warmth / sweetness to them. The WildWoods are a little less detailed but a little sweeter sounding. It's a VERY close call between the two. I still regret selling the Kilis, though. Configuration on the double Kilis is the same as one WEL Signature, btw. |
@joey_v Definitely not! The new Zero tech’s "magic" didn’t reveal itself sonically in Thunderbird Zeros, at least for me. I still heard "too much copper, I want some silver" there. I think the crux of the new "Zero" tech, after you cut through marketing fluff, is simply that the + and - groups are individually shielded from each other to eliminate inductance. That’s it. I hear some difference with the power cables, and it’s good, but that’s also moving a lot more power than a speaker cable (or certainly an interconnect!). The bad news is that the current top Audioquest copper cables now cost more than their top pure silver cables from a couple generations ago. And the new silver cables might was well be priced for pure gold :( |