Good, Neutral, Reasonably Priced Cables?

Good answer Drubin. I'll try not to type / think when i'm asleep next time. Or this time : ) Sean
>

Sean, I think you mean to say "interface." Interphase is a term from cell biology.

Mprime: I can't give you any specifics about interconnects. As i've stated before, "interconnects are a mystery" as far as component to component interphases go. That's because the spec's from component to component vary so widely.

What i will say is that i hope to start doing some testing in this area sometime shortly. I've finally got all the equipment that i need to really look at this subject in-depth. I do have some ideas as to why some designs are better than others, but at this point in time, they are stricly theories. Obviously, the use of high quality conductors, materials with low DA ( Dielectric absorption ), geometries that are lower in capacitance, etc... I could add a few more criteria that i personally think are important, but i'll save it for later : )

Other than that, much of what we hear has to do with the stability of the circuit loading into the cable. The more stable the circuit, the less variance from cable to cable and mating component. One thing though. Common electronics theory states that you don't want the output impedance of a device feeding into another device that is lower in impedance. This "loads down" the circuit due to increased current draw and can play games with bandwidth, tonality, transient response, etc...

With that in mind, a device with a very low output impedance is much more likely to be more "versatile" / open to variations amongst cables than other devices with higher output impedances. After all, most interconnects will have a nominal impedance that is 50 ohms or higher. I picked 50 ohms as that is a common impedance used for standard coaxial designs. Obviously, a source component or preamp ( tubed most likely ) with an output impedance of 200 - 600 ohms can be quite finicky when you introduce a cable with a low nominal impedance as part of the load that it sees. The end result of such a situation is typically high end roll-off ( lack of "air" and "shimmering highs"), congestion in the midrange and muddy, ill-defined low frequencies. This is what happens when there's not enough current to get the job done.

The opposite can be said of low impedances trying to load into very high impedances i.e. a lack of bass and warmth, loss of dynamics, etc.. but this situation is typically not nearly as degrading as the other way around. That's because current flow is choked and you can't load up as much voltage as might be needed.

Maximum power transfer and optimum transient response occur when all the impedances i.e. output from the source, cables carrying the signals and input to the loads are all equal. There's only one manufacturer that i know of that builds a system like this though and that gear probably isn't real compatible with other brands of gear.

Flex: Some manufacturers of "esoteric" wire have told me that you can have cables built to identical spec's from different manufacturers and they will all sound different. This is true even though they might measure identically. This tells us that there is obviously something more going on inside the conductors / dielectric than just impedances, etc... John Curl posted some info about the "non-solid" parts of metal conductors varying with current flow i.e. conductors actually change shape ( and probably conductivity too ) as various levels of energy are fed through them.

As far as "backwards" cabling goes, that would be speaker cables that are highly inductive, interconnects that are highly capacitive, cables that use very low grade conductors, cables using very lossy dielectrics or dielectrics that don't protect the conductors from pitting / oxidation / corrosion, poor geometries that are highly susceptable to RFI / EMI, cables that have nominal impedances that aren't good matches for the component interphase that they are involved with, etc...

I will only comment on one of your listed. That is, mechanically damped cabling. I've had some cabling here that is PHENOMENALLY microphonic i.e. it is VERY susceptible to both air-borne and floor-borne vibrations. Most of this is due to the type of conductors and geometry used, making the cable very rigid. If the vibrations are strong enough and the cable is coupled to the devices quite sturdily, it's possible to resonate the chassis of the components that are connected to this cable. Given that some designs, such as precision devices like turntables, CD players / transports and even tube gear can be affected by such things, i wouldn't want ANY cabling like that in my system. While not as common, even SS line level and amplification gear can be microphonic / highly sensitive to vibrations. Much of this could be related to brittle solder connections and / or defective capacitors, especially on older gear exposed to high heat levels.

Roofus: Great suggestions. I agree whole-heartedly with your recommendations and the order suggested.

Tommywall: While i thought i was going to hate that website, i actually liked it. Their testing showed the Goertz cables as having the widest bandwidth with the lowest inductance and least skin effect ( yellow charts at top of page ). These are all points / design advantages that i've been preaching about for years and i'm glad to see that a "third party" actually verified this. Having said that, i would have said "neutral third party", but i do agree that these guys have an agenda. Then again, i'm no "fan" of the high end cable market as a general rule either : )

If we look at the Goertz MI-2's without the Zobel attached in figure 5 ( no far end termination ), you can see that the response at the amplifier and at the speaker are perfectly in phase out to appr 1.8 MHz. Obviously, this is WAY beyond our audible range. Above this point, there are phase shifts that take place and at appr 10 MHz, there is a huge resonance / phase shift at the end of the speaker cable. As such, using this cable without the Zobel creates a high frequency oscillation. This is what i've warned people about when using Goertz or other VERY high capacitance cables ( like Chris VH's 27 pair CAT 5 design or Polk "Cobra Cables" ). I'm sure that many of you will recall me stating that these cables SHOULD NOT be used without Zobels. Now you know why and can see it on the graph. It should be noted that this is SOOO high in frequency that most amps would never notice though, due to their limited bandwidth. Some of you will also recall that i'm a fan of "fast" amps that are "wide bandwidth", so that's why i'm overly cautious about this when recommending this cable.

If we look at this same cable with the proper terminations at the speaker end i.e. Zobel network with the right values used as in figure 6, the output of the amp is identical / remains in-phase with the signal at the speaker. As such, you can't get much better than this. In fact, the output of the amp and the signal at the speaker remain in-phase out to FOURTY MEGAHERTZ!!! Whether or not any of this is audible is a moot point. The fact of the matter is, no other cable comes close to the wide-bandwidth & linearity that this cable delivers while retaining low series resistance.

If we look at this same cable using the factory supplied Zobel's or "impedance compensation networks" that Goertz includes with their cables in figure 7, we can see that the signal at the amp and the signal at the speaker remain in-phase with each other out to appr 2 - 2.5 MHz or so. Between appr 2.5 MHz and 15 MHz, the signal at the end of the speaker cable is slightly out of phase with the signal at the amp. At appr 15 MHz, the output of the speaker cable and the signal at the amp begin to track relatively closely again out to appr 40 MHz or so.

Needless to say, most all of their "complaints" about this cable on Audioholics are gibberish / not applicable to response within or anywhere near the audio passband. The only valid comment that is correct and "negative" about this cable is that the high capacitance per foot can cause some amps to get "squirrely". The use of a Zobel pretty much takes care of that though. The point about Goertz nominal rating of 2.5 ohms for this cable and Audioholic's figure of 8 ohms ( which is still WAY, WAY better than most other cables ) is also addressed in the text. That is, they said "Using classic SQRT(L/C) (which isn’t exactly correct, but this topic goes beyond the scope of this article) we calculate about 8 ohms while Goertz calculated about 2.51 ohms".

As one can see, Audioholics aka the "cable naysayers" basically confirmed what i've been telling you folks for several years now. That is, Goertz speaker cables are the widest bandwidth / most linear speaker cable on the market. That's why i said that if you didn't like how your system sounded with Goertz installed ( WITH the Zobel's of course ), you better start looking at your system, not the cable itself. Just remember, they tested the "old" Goertz cable using the original dielectric, not the newer design that is using a higher grade dielectric ( Teflon ).

Rooze: It is my opinion that price and cable quality have little correlation. While it is true that higher grade materials ( purer conductors, better dielectrics, higher grade / nicer to work with connectors, etc... ) do cost more, some cables that are less expensive actually use better materials than "sky's the limit" type cabling.

As far as interconnect selection goes, see my response above. Yes, it is pretty much "hit or miss" from component to component and system to system. As i've stated before though, choosing cables that take advantage of good materials and decent electrical designs puts you miles closer than if starting off with cabling using random designs and materials.

As to cable reviews being worth anything more than "entertainment", don't make me laugh.

Tommywall: IAR ( International Audio Review ) aka J. Peter Moncrieff did testing of speaker cables many moons ago. Moncrieff provided some rudimentary charts with subjective listening results. His observations were that cables using a very high capacitance / low inductance design both measured AND sounded the best. Like i've said before, spec's can reveal sonics IF the spec's / test results were properly obtained.

Other than that, Nelson Pass also conducted similar tests and the article that he wrote about the subject can be found in the Pass Labs website under the name of "Speaker cables: Science or Snake Oil". Nelson commented that the radical speaker loads that send less than stable amps into oscillation can be "tamed" by playing with speaker cables. In this respect, the cables that worked best were actually those that measured worst. That's because their poor electrical performance masked the problems due to high levels of loss / specific types of reactance between the cable and speaker nullifying each other. In effect, Nelson's article verified that speaker cables could be used as "band-aids" for improperly matched equipment almost 25 years ago. Once again, i knew that there was a reason that i love this guy and the products that he designs. That is, he's years ahead of most of his competition : ) Sean
>

Here's the root of the problem: entertainment. To me, an audio review in a magazine is not entertainment. It is a published account of a listening experience. Now, 'gentleman's entertainment' IS entertainment...

Mprime,

Agreed- there's an agenda at Audioholics. I tried to be politic about 'objective' perspectives and finesse the issue by referring to their data as being objective... As long as the experiment is done right, data is always objective. It's the interpretation that gets complicated ;-)

FWIW, Audioholics takes pains to at least give the appearance of doing proper controls- not being an EE, I can't meaningfully judge how good their methodologies are.

Looking at it from another perspective, I think they deserve some praise for actually doing, and talking about, cable measurements. I've certainly never seen Stereophile, Absolute Sound, or any other high-end rag carry out rudimentary, much less standard and routine, measurements of cable properties. Instead, they provide hearing evaluations and sometimes comparisons, which, as we all know by now, are highly specific to system interactions, etc. etc. and may have little if any broad applicability. If I'm going to toss around the 'agenda' word when discussing Audioholics, I should probably be fair and recognize that this approach is similarly 'agenda-driven'. I should probably run for cover at this point before the impending flame-war engulfs us...

Getting superior sound for listening enjoyment is probably the overarching goal of all this (but who can say- some folks seem to like the process of getting there more than the goal...) In getting to that goal, it seems to me that both subjective and objective approaches should be useful, and could be complementary, if folks could be motivated to work together.

Oops. Ending soapbox session now...

Sean, assuming that a cable meets a reasonable level of design integrity, is it your opinion that the process of evaluating the different designs (sonic evaluation) becomes random and unpredictable?

Would you agree that design integrity could be of a high standard in a $500 I/C, just as high as say a $2500 I/C?
If so, it should then be possible that the less expensive cable could sound better than the more expensive cable, given a sympathetic set of electrical (impedance) properties in system components?
I'm going through cable changes in my system right now, and I'm experiencing a wide range of sonic differences between cable, that seem totally unrelated to price. I won't get into specifics at this point, but it seems to me that spending big bucks on cables does not guarantee any kind of performance advantage over lower cost cables, and that basically it's all about system synergy and finding a cable with the right electrical properties that 'just happens' to compliment the properties of the components to which it connects.
Various things strike me from all of this, foremost is that any written review of audio cables is to be treated almost as a source of entertainment, rather than any kind of resource or reference. Unless you have the exact same setup as the reviewer (impossible, since at the very least, his/her AC will be different) the results of the review are totally system dependant and therefore of little or no relevance outside of that specific system.
A bit too 'black and white' but you get my drift.

Rooze

Interesting, Tommy.

I must say this site (have never run across it before) appears to have an axe to grind. For example, they slam the Goertz speaker cables for introducing a large phase shift; the problem is it's out of the audio band and therefore irrelevant. In fact, when you assess their data on the cable, it's quite flat in the audio range.

Seems hard to get an "objective" opinion.

Re. objective characteristics of cable behavior, I've found the audioholics site to be worthwile food for thought:

audioholics site

They seem to be pretty far toward the 'objectivist' end of the spectrum of thought re. cable performance, which some will find more appealing than others. The hard data they provide is valuable regardless of its interpretation and eventual shoehorning into electronics theory (which gets very esoteric very fast, at least for me.)

If one can make use of it, perhaps the data can aid in choosing cable evaluation candidates, and perhaps in understanding cable placement differences as well. (impedance matching, capacitance, etc...)

There have also been a couple of articles in Stereophile re. cable theory, at least one of them was by Herve Delatraz, who makes the DarTzeel amp, if I recall correctly. I couldn't find them on the website- perhaps they are only available in print, or I wasn't looking in the right places online.

Fun thread!

The irony in the cable game relative to Sean's post is in trying to get from his paragraph 4 to paragraph 5. (no intent to pick on Sean). It's the fact that cables do change from placement to placement that causes people to spend so much money buying, trying, then selling at half price. If there is any way around this trap, I'd be most interested in hearing it. With a lot of experience, you can characterize how your system reacts with a variety of cable designs, but reducing it to a set of rules that will actually help in avoiding making the same mistakes again is something that escapes me. In power cords, for example, I can take 4 similarly constructed cables used in the same position, and they all sound quite significantly different from one another.
So far, the best method I've found is listening to characterizations by other people. If enough people who are theoretically free of outside influence ... post opinions on a cable's character, you get a reasonable picture of how it usually performs across a fair spectrum of equipment.
Also, can we get a definition of what is electrically backwards in the cable world? Undoubtedly yes, but for starters, would anyone venture a guess as to whether any of the following are electrically forwards or backwards:
- networks and network boxes
- magnets
- padding with rice paper, cotton, ers cloth, etc.
- mechanical resonance controls
- wildly improbable conductor materials
- the need for amorphous non-crystalline metal structure, assuming the conductor is made out of metal
- dc current added to the shield
- water or other jackets for novel shielding

And that's just a start on the list of novel approaches to defeating a list of transmission line issues, real or theoretical or purely imaginary. So as a practical matter, how do you, the user, sort out what a cable will do without a lot of trying ($$$$) :^)

try Goertz MI1 or MI2 speaker cables: http://www.alphacore.com/mispeaker.html
or Kimber 4TC 0r 8TC (not as good as Goertz} and more expensive.

Sean,

It would be nice is to understand the objective characteristics which lead to these subjective differences we hear with interconnects, as opposed to speaker cables. It seams to me (this is offered as a straw-man) that interconnects are suppose to offere a voltage signal to the various components where speaker cables are suppose to deliver current to their load; the hypothesis is that the amp upstream equipment (connected by interconnects) is more susceptible to the voltage/current differences than the amp is. The analog is a circuit designed to measure/deliver voltage is quite different than that to measure current.

Perhaps this is what you've been saying all along?

Best,

Threads like this really amaze me, regardless of who contributes to them and how much or little they've spent on their systems and cables.

Having said that, there's obviously a LOT of different concerns regarding cable selection being voiced in this specific thread with sound quality and design integrity only being a small part of them. Brand recognition, resale value, status amongst audiophile peers, etc... are also raising their heads. While nobody wants to "lose their shirt" when buying / selling gear, selecting products that are properly designed in the first place typically negates many of the problems associated with having to worry about resale value.

Smart people realize that interconnects can change "flavours" when you change their positions within the same system. As such, the cable itself doesn't have a "flavour" or measure of "neutrality", it becomes part of the component to component interphase. What you hear is the result of that specific synergy / summation of complex impedances and how the specific components react / load up / transfer power into those specific impedances.

If a cable maintains the same sound in every system in every component to component interphase, it is doing something so wrong that nothing else will overcome that colouration / design flaw. I'm not saying that a cable can't display similar characteristics when mating various component configurations, but that those characteristics may vary in intensity somewhat due to the specific combo's used.

Hopefully, some of you folks will learn this sooner rather than later i.e. before you go broke and are very unhappy with your systems. I know that some get the basic idea as i can see it in their posts. Having said that, speaker cables are another story. There are specific electro-mechanical design characteristics that allow some cables to work more universally than others in well designed systems. Systems that are less than well designed / put together may require lesser cables to act as an "electrical band-aid". Sean
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PS... How does a cable achieve "greatness"? Is it by the manufacturer providing a bunch of freebies to reviewers and getting them to list them in their "reference system" in glossy mag reviews? Or is it achieved by building up a bunch of hype on the net via on-line reviews and end user commentaries? I've tried a bit from all three camps and quite honestly, some of them are horrid sounding AND so electrically backwards that its' not funny.

My experience is that "great" cables come with "great" price tags. That's because someone has to pay for all the freebies / discounted cables that the manufacturer went through just to gain the public notoriety that they've achieved. Just remember that the grass is always greener on the other side and there's always a "better" / "most amazing" cable that will be available next month or the month after that.

Compare profit margins between cables and components and you'll see why there's SOOOO much hype surrounding this part of the market. This isn't to say that there isn't a difference in cables, only that much of the differences are in the component to component interphase, not the cables themselves.

Psychicanimal, you're right -- I'm branching out into both a left and right brainer! ;-) Perhaps I'm being a bit too objective. There is more that I don't know than that I do.

Looking at things from a different perspective, many audiophiles have heard differences in cable performance from one system to the next. While that, plus the scientific differences I referenced, points to many cables being systems dependent, that does not prove that all cables are so systems dependent that they will be neutral in one but not another. Thanks for the continued challenge to my reasoning Psychicanimal.

Allow me to rephrase: MANY cables may sound neutral in one system but not another; ALL cables will influence their systems to some degree; SOME cables may sound neutral in most systems. That's what I love about this forum -- it's a great learning opportunity for me so long as I listen.

Cheers

....makes Salma Hayek look quite a few notches lower.

sounds high maintaince to me :))))

i actually prefer when they ask for my number.

you know what i mean...

mike

Mike, I went out with a Mexican model that makes Salma Hayek look quite a few notches lower. Unfortunately, she is nowhere near as *famous*. Perhaps that's one of the reasons she gave me her phone number.

Get my drift?

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Dodgealum,

For what it is worth, I agree with previous comments that system synergy is much more important than name brand appeal when finding cabling.

The best advice I can give is to read a lot, find the closest analogies you can to your own system, either in reviews or on boards here or other sites (audio asylum, etc.), buy a few sets, and audition them for a while.

I recently did this myself- it definitely costs money, but if you buy used, it isn't as painful as it could be, and you don't need to spend time breaking in cables. Afterwards, you can re-sell the 'rejects', for lack of a better word, for minimal losses.

In my case, I started in your general price range, but ended up drinking the Koolaid and going upscale- it was worth it in terms of sonic improvements. Your mileage may vary...

I posted here a while back-

Agon cable comment

Good Luck,

time tells all....lets see if the vdh or ridge street rise to audio cable fame.

dont get me wrong, there are ALOT of great cables out there. but there is generally a direct relationship with the cost vs. performance of most of them. some are offer more perfomance for the buck than others.

most cables dont do everythng for under the $450 range. i used to say takes AT LEAST $750 to $1000 to have a great well rounded player (bass, imaging, dynamics, tonal color, musicality) untill i have tried the audience au-24. it hs closed the gap to $500 retail for a well rounder player.

i think the audience offers the biggest bang for the buck going (new or used). i have tried alot of cables up to the $2k price point and the audience is what works well in my system (i sold all my straightwire crescendo ic's for it)

looking at the original thread, the guy asked about a neutral ic for $100 - $150...well guess what...IT DOESNT EXIST -if it does please send me a 2 pairs ( 1 meter rca and a 2 meter xlr).

all i suggestd was to spend a little more and get a great sounding cable that if it doesnt work out, he can sell it for what he has into it or close. YOU CANT DO THAT WITH A VH DIY or a new ridge street. at least with the audience it is a "recognized" refernece quality cable that is in demand.

also unless he has heard a reference quality cable, there is nothing to compare it to.

please note this is my opinion....

Mikesinger: there are cables under $500 that are neutral and will outperform Audience: Ridge Street Audio and VenHaus DIY silver (they both are cotton insulated). Here's a testimonial of someone who has AU24 and built the VenHaus:

http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/viewtopic.php?p=108426#108426

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Sean: it is not *my* theory--and I offered to send you my cables. The offer still stands, since I'm moving and won't be setting up my stereo for who knows how long. You REALLY need to experience these cables. It will be a paradigm shift. I have two (1m) sets of MSE Gen I & three of Gen II, two (30 inch) sets , one (1m) set.

Again, I hold strongly that cables go first. If I would have known what I know now, my system would have been simpler and with even better cables. The current mini monitor/stereo subwoofers/electronic x-over system takes up quite a bit of space. I should have had a Rowland Concentra integrated with a standalone, modded belt drive CD player + Creature on Steroids and a couple decent three way monitor speakers with Poiema cabling throughout. It's too late for that now. I'll have to stay complex.

Deano says, "Never pass up an audition.".

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I'VE USED MANY CABLES RANGING IN COST FROM $25/METER TO THOUSANDS/METER. RCA & XLR. ALL ARE ALTERING FREQUENCY RESPONSE IN SOME WAY TO ACHIEVE STATED CLAIMS.
PRESENTLY, I'M USING SYNERGISTIC RESEARCH DESIGNER SERIES,
THAT SAID, MY BASELINE REFERENCE FOR ANY CABLE COMPARISON IS THE MOGAMI CABLES. IT IS RIDICULUOLY CHEAP (I PURCHASED CUSTOM MADE PAIRS (1M & 3M OF AES/EBU 110 OHM GOLD -IT HAS LOWER CAPACITANCE THAN THEIR MICROPHONE CABLE.
IT OFFERS A CLEAR VIEW OF THE ACOUSTIC & DURING EVALUATIONS REVEALS WHAT OTHER CABLES ARE DOING. THIS CABLE , ALONG W/THE MOGAMI MICROPHONE CABLES ARE IN RECORDING STUDIOS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD.
MOGAMI AND REDCO HAVE INTERNET SITES.

i would strongly suggest staying with a "mainstream" know used cable. if it doesnt work in your system, you can always sell it for what you have into it.

i dont mean to sound pompus, but i have yet to hear a well rounded, neutral cable for less than $500 retail. i thing the audio world is waiting for a killer $200 - $300 retail cable that is neutral, but i am not holding my breath.

if a manufacture has one, i am very interested and would write a honest review (check my feedback here and on ebay- over 225 positive transactions). i would love to run across a reasonably priced neutral cable, but they dont exist- small cable manufactures please accept this a gentle challenge and prove me wrong. btw, i consider my system to be a "real world " system:

Audio physic libra's
classe cam mono 350's
pse hl-1 signature / bat vki-30
marantz sa-8260

the au-24 is the $500 retail cable that is reference quality that i have run across and i have heard it in all audience wired system ( audience has a very generous auditon policy) it has been compared to the vahalla and other cables costing 2x-4x the cost in both written and online reviewers and found the reviews to be spot on. btw, the audience power cords are friggin amazing.

there are other neutral cables out there, but they cost alot...even used. the xlo signature II and the upper end synergistic line come to mind.

hope that helps.

best regards,

mike

Psychic: I don't what to say about your theory of building a system around a series of passive components ( cables ). In fact, i think that someone joked about this in a thread a while back i.e. "I have Brand X cables. What components and speakers would go good with them?". While I can understand how / why someone would joke about something like that, i truly can't understand how someone could consider wire more important than the active components within a system. This is especially true when you have hundreds of traces / solder connections / pieces of wire running inside of each component.

Sounds like a planned trip to hi-fi hell.... Sean
>

You asked about specific cables, so i'll share my thoughts on them in the order you listed them.

To me, Kimber's silver cabling has all of the "bad" connotations that one reads about silver. That is, it comes across as being lean, bright and edgy. Even with months worth of burning, i can't tame these cables. Having said that, their Copper / Teflon cables are quite respectable in most cases.

I am not a fan of the sonics of AP cables or their design at all. As such, i would pass on them. I don't think that they would be a good match for your system anyhow.

I think that the Cardas could work well with your specific system.

I'm not familiar with the Wireworld stuff, so i'll shut my mouth here.

Outside of those and with the components that you have listed, i would probably shoot for Pulsar's as IC's and Goertz MI-2 Veracity speaker cabling. I don't know how much you've played with the tubes in your gear, but if they are basically stock, you should be in good shape with this combo. If the Pulsar's don't do it for you, try looking for some used Music Metre interconnects. Using the Pulsar between the CD & Preamp and a set of Music Metre Calibre's between the Preamp & Amp ( or vice-versa ) might work well also. Sean
>

Oz, you're starting to sound like Sean! I have changed...I've learned at the very last minute that my system must revolve around the cables, not the other way around. Robert Schult of Ridge Street Audio was the person that got me thinking like that.

Dodge, you're setting yourself up for a trip to Hi Fi hell...

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A 2nd vote for Tara Labs prism cables or the rsc versions, ELF custom cables also are a best buy.

I have tried the first 3 cables on your list. The best value would be the Kimber Hero. The retail price falls withing your budged. As for the speaker cables I would go with Kimber's 8-TC, also withing your budged.

Dodgealum,

From my personal experience I'd recommend that you stay away from the Kimber Hero. The sound from this cable is bloated in the bass & rolled off in the highs. The mids are average (the best represented in this cable). There were many times when I felt that the upper bass/lower midrange was thick & a bit congested. I still own the Hero but it is now in my HT system where, I feel, that it does much less damage! I have heard the Silver Streak too for a long period of time & I find that it is too harsh at the high freq extremes. Maybe it's the fact that they use silver for the signal cable & copper for the return? There is something about this cable that is not sonically right. Personally, I feel that Kimber's good cables start from the KCAG & higher. The KCAG is not cheap tho!
No experience with the other 2 cables: AP & WW.
I have heard the Cardas Neutral or Golden Cross (I can't remember I'm afraid) with Piega speakers. Can't say that I like what I heard.

New or used cables I'd recommend are:
TARA Labs Decade or Master Gen II
TARA Labs Prism 5500i
DH Labs Air Matrix
VdH The First Ultimate
Discovery Plus
Straightwire - Rhapsody II from their category 3
or VirtuosoR from their category 4

Some of these are harder to find used than others. Additionally, some of them might blow your budget. However, they are all are very good performance cables (my opinion, of course!) & you could be a long-term owner of them. FWIW. YMMV.

Audio Purist, contact Used Cable 1 800 fat-wyre and ask them for a demo.

Psychicanimal, I agree that neutral is neutral from an observational or judging perspective. However, for cables or individual components, I'd propose that "neutral in a system is neutral in a system".

Cables have differing inductance, resistance and capacitance characteristics so, from a listener point of view, they may not behave exactly the same in every system. Cables can impact different systems in different ways.

I second the VH Audio Pulsar ic's.
I would also recommend the VH Audio Flavor 4 pc.
Very good products at a good price.

For IC'sChris VH Pulsar $150.00 new.

For spkr. cable, Luminous Audio Renaissance There's a ten foot set on A-gon for $145.00

Oz, neutral is neutral.

I too usually recommend Audience AU24 ICs but for your price you may want to try the less expensive Conductor series of Audience. They are supposed to offer similar tone but not at quite the refined level the AU24 has. BTW in my system the AU24 is very close to neutral, more so than any other cable IMO. Also Acoustic Zen Mat Ref MKI go for about $150 and is a very good cable for that price.

Also I am under the impression the Hero IC is a little warm but who knows? Also I am not very impressed with Cardas, too slow and sleepy for me as tried in a few different systems.

For speaker cables I usually recommend Acoustic Zen Satori or Hologram in your price range. Also Alpha Core Goertz MI2 speaker cable is terrific with beautiful tone. I think it is impossible to get totally neutral and all these cables have a tone of their own, just ones that I like.

all the best,

Phil

One of the challenges in this hobby is that everything is systems dependent. A cable that is neutral in one system may not be in another. For example, Mikesinger reports outstanding findings with the au-24 and I don't doubt him. Many have reported great results from that cable. In my system, the au-24 rolled off the highs -- not a ton, but enough to make me switch out.

My experience with lower priced cables led me to conclude that the Sound Quest Pro Series Zero Point Reference Interconnect is outstanding for the money -- nothing but the music in the three systems where I used them. I have not experienced their speaker cable so cannot comment on that.

Dodgealum, I'd suggest that, whatever cable grabs your attention from what I hope will be many recommendations, you try before you buy. Get that 14-30 day trial period that many dealers and manufacturers offer. If you go to used cables to save some money, be prepared to resell and reship. I hope you get lucky with your first attempt, but you may not. That's OK -- it's all part of the fun ;-)

if you can stretch your budget a little ( i would reccomend it looking at gear). you will be really missing out on your source, amp, and preamp if dont kick it up a notch on the ic budget (also power cords have a "profound" effect on a high resolution system)

the audience au-24 ic and speaker cable is a giant killer - well reviwed online, mags, and fourms. it is one of the few cables that can do a whole system ( it is THAT neutral). the used ic's will go for $250 meter and the speaker cable is $375 to $425.

btw, you wont believe the differnce when you upgrade the power cords - in fact you may want to start there first so you can really hear your gear.

mike

I've had great success with RS Cables Illume`, a silver cable in teflon insulation terminated with Eichmann Silver Bullet Plugs. It's really a remarkably transparent, neutral cable and it retails for $149 with a money back gaurantee. It replaced a set of Kimber KCAG in my system without looking back. Whatever you ended up choosing good luck.