Gabriel Gold vs Marigo vs NBS

Bsimpson: You are pretty much the only other person here, other than myself, that was disappointed with GG cables. I took a lot of flack in the GG thread but it did not matter. In my system, I heard what I heard, and I described it in detail. And the 150 hours burn-in achieved nothing.

As for needing to move up to another GG level, I don't buy it. The original poster of the GG thread claimed the Revelation far out-performed the Stealth Indra. My experience with the Stealth, Purist Dominus, K-S Emotion and Jade Audio Hybrid, all indicated the GG Revelation was quite a step behind in performance in the key area to me: portrayal of space. However, I did find the GG to have good tonal coherency so I am puzzled with your findings here.

As for cables that cause haze and blurring, the NBS very much reign supreme in this regard. My system was fully loaded with NBS Statement for many years until a friend and a visit by a cable maker made me realize how poorly-performing the NBS cables are. They were gone and resolution and clarity were in.....and the great dimensionality that I liked about the NBS was there with these later cables.

Yoby: When my system was loaded with NBS Statement back in 2005, I very much liked the Kubala-Sosna Emotions but ultimately I went with the Purist Dominus throughout except for speaker cables, Purist Opus. The Purist cables had incredible dynamic contrasts, authority in the bass, and midrange bloom to die for. But the K-S were a bit more tonally coherent, greater clarity and extension on the top. At that time, I made a compromise to my own tastes.

A year later, based on a recommendation from a friend, I tried the Stealth M5000 and then the Dream PCs which quickly displaced the Dominus. These Stealth cables beat the Dominus in its own game, and at a cheaper cost! I played briefly with the Stealth Indra ICs which had the bloom of the Dominus but also the extension on the top like the K-S Emotion. But then Jade Audio came along and the Jade Hybrid ICs and speaker cable became my reference. I have since updated with the Jade Ref ICs made of SOLID gold and platinum core wires. This redefines clarity like nothing I have heard before....but at a price! I also replaced all Stealth Dream PCs with Dream State Dream Catcher PCs and one Veridical for the CD player and two Lucid for the SoundLab A1 speakers. The Dream State takes the dynamic contrasts up yet another level. All along, no cable that flattened the 3D of the music would ever be tolerated; and too many cables do just this.

The /Aria WV5/CAT JL-3/SoundLab A1/ system works well with the Dream State/Jade cable products. But Stealth is a great product line as well. Oh, I also discovered the Silent Source Signature and Reference ICs. These are outstanding in resolution! I use a pair here from the rebuilt Counterpoint SA-2 headamp to the WV5.

Bsimpson: As I read your latest post here, I have to wonder if you are making the same mistake that I was making a few years ago. For a short time I was using a long pair of MIT ICs from line stage to amp and a pair of Coincident speaker cables. All the rest of the cabling was still NBS Statement.

I had the pleasure of Joe Kubala and JD, who would later start Jade Audio, visit my home. One by one, we replaced every PC, IC and speaker cable with K-S Emotion. It was quite an amazing experience to hear the system come alive with each cable change. When we got to changing the MIT IC cable, something went VERY wrong. Tonality was not right at all in the mids. But we continued on with the process and changed the speaker cable as well. And tonality was back in check. The bottom line: we discovered that the MIT cable and the Coincident cable had complimentary flaws and were tonally "correcting" each other. The MIT has a very distinctive valley in the mids and I had managed to find a speaker cable that had a peak in the same range. This is often what people refer to as synergy but the bottom line: it was one big bandaid. I learned a lot from these two knowledgeable audio guys. I wonder if this is what is going on for you as I read that the GG cables were "warm" for you.

Once I discover that a component has a serious peak or valley in the frequency band, particularly in the middle, it has to be dismissed or I run the risk of compensating the system for its tonal flaw with another tonal flaw. And this only leads to problems later on. I just don't buy into this synergy stuff when it comes to tonality.

The K-S was my entry point into tonally coherent cables. The Stealth continued on for me here, and the Jade Hybrid being very close with only a pinch of top-end extension softened a bit. As reported, the GG Revelation was also very tonally coherent.

There is often discussion about keeping the same cable manufacturer throughout your system. This only works for a tonally neutral cable. And even then, many products within a company have very different tonality. So there is still no guarantee. A few products out there just nail it when it comes to follow-on harmonics, ambience and decays. But only a few of these nail it with tonal coherency. It takes a long time to get a system to perform well here and only one bad cable, most notably from line stage to amp, to destroy all that you had achieved up to that point.

So Bsimpson, I suggest you investigate the remainder of your system to determine to neutrality of each component before you tag a component as too warm or not. I made that mistake and it's an easy trap to fall into.

Rtn1: I have been dieing to try a DS Epic GOld but was never able to find one on the used market for a reasonable price. The DS Lucid was very tonally incoherent in all my electronics with too much emphasis in the lower frequencies. But it was absolutely magic on the Sound Lab speakers to bring on more authority in the bass and not botch up the rest of the band like it did everywhere else. The Dream Catcher turns out to be a killer PC throughout the system except the CD player where it does not have the finesse as the Veridical cable does at this location. The Veridical did not work any other place in my system, perhaps because it is not designed for higher-current components such as the tube preamps and amps in my system.

Sutts: My Minneapolis system is now torn down as I make the transition from MN to So Cal. I have two pairs of Jade Hybrid in RCA (24" and 30"), one 1m in XLR and two 1m pairs of the Ref Gold/Platinum ICs in RCA. I could send you a pair of the Hybrids and see how that works for you. The Ref IC would likely knock your socks off and at the price, might be to painful to hear. But maybe we can work that out too. Send me an email and we can discuss this. I am now in San Clemente, CA. It would be of great value to read a report on how the Jade cables compare to the new higher-performance GG cables which I never heard.

Rtn1: Stunning system you have. Absolutely beautiful to see the match with the speakers and rack. And great picture of Scott and Steve. I always enjoy getting together with JD and Scott to discuss our latest audio news. Much much fun.

And thank you for the report on the DS Epic Gold. It sounds very similar to my findings with the Lucid. I find the DS Dream Catchers and the JD Ref ICs to be that same magic that you described. Direct experimentation indeed. A lot of cables come and go until we find something that locks in like this.