HomeGrown Audio Impressions


By now, I think enough of us have had the time to gauge the performance of this cable to be able to offer concrete opinions. I am curious as to the impressions of others on this cable. In my system(tubes and silk dome tweeters), I am shielded from the nasty things a silver cable can engender in some systems. They would be brightness, harshness, and irritating distortion. The negatives I have found with this unshielded cable are a significant raising of the noise floor(which you forget about when you start to play music), and a big dose of RFI when using the cable on my tuner. RFI stoppers sent to me by Eldragon(thanks so much) have done a great job cleaning things up. Otherwise, I cannot knock the cable on any level. In fact, I am able to hear farther into the music than with any copper cable I have ever tried. The sound is full, extended, and detailed. Bass response is excellent. I A/B the cable against Coincident. The Coincident has the advantage of not having RFI problems. But the HomeGrown lets me hear things the Coincident doesn't pass through. The fact that this cable is only $70 makes me think it has to be the best kept secret in wire. Better performance than Kimber KCAG, for less than the price of PBJ. Of course, it will not work for everyone. But, I am wondering how everyone else is perceiving this product. Please share with us your opinions of performance in your systems. I cannot say it is the best, because I am now using a cable that has redefined what I have gotten from wire. Just burning it in on my tuner now. Will switch to the CD player over the holiday. If performance transfers, this will be the best cable, BY FAR, I have ever used. Will report then. Thanks to everyone for your impressions.
trelja

Showing 2 responses by mezmo

I upgraded the entire systems worth of interconnects to the HG silver and was absolutely tickled by the improvements across the boards. However, I was upgrading form a whole assortment of interconnects that retailed about the $100 mark each, so the HG's were hardly up against stiff competition. My only beef with them is, as voiced by many, their tendency to lend a little sillibance, especially to female vocals. Even that, however, has significantly mellowed over time -- though it is still far from ideal. For the price, they can't be beat. As the last word in interconnects, I believe one might have to look further. I might eventually do so myself, but for the time being I am quite content.
All this talk about RFI stoppers got me going and I went downstairs and picked up a pair of the Radio Shack ferrite clamps for lunch. Is it technically sound to place them at a latter stage in the chain (between preamp and amp) with the thought that, to the exent that there is interference to stop, getting it later would clean up anything that had entered the chain at earlier stages--or is effectiveness simply going to come down to the old trial and error trick? I tried'em out on the computer speakers here in the office (where RFI is REALLY bad) and they didn't do a darn thing. Not entirely encouraging....