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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 rcprince

rcprince
3,061 posts
 
I think you can also get RFI stoppers at Radio Shack, called ferrite clamps. Cheap and effective for RFI rich environments, such as the NYC area.
rcprince
3,061 posts
 
The Radio Shack clamps are pretty cheap, as I recall. In the NYC area we have a lot of RFI problems, although I really haven't had too many. I use shielded cables, mostly, and haven't noticed too much difference with the clamps on them. However, my JP80MC has a lot of gain in the phono section for the moving coil stage, and when I bought it Victor Goldstein had just replaced the cabling in that portion with some Cardas wiring, as he was doing at the time. VERY short piece of wire. When I was listening to records, at times it would sound as if Niagra Falls was coming through my left speaker; it almost took out tubes in my amps, and you never knew when it would happen. I thought it was bad tubes, but as it was explained to me it turned out, after Victor and Frank Garbie took a look at it, that the Cardas either was not shielded or had been left with its shielding removed and was picking up RFI and magnifying it with 60db of gain, or thereabouts. The fix was that they put in a couple of the Radio Shack blockers; haven't had the problem since in 7 years.
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