Initial disappointment with 1st set of “expensive’ IC’s...
I’ve been slow working my way to equipping my rig with all Cardas as I’ve been fan of their quality/sound signature an for a long time. I just received 2 sets of Clear Light IC’s which I’m using DAC to Pre and Pre to Amp. up until now all other Cardas cables that I have were obtained used and sounded great from day 1. The Clear Light however are brand new..when I sat down to give them a listen I was surprised not to hear any improvement...I was actually disappointed to hear what I can describe as a fatter bass and subdued upper end. My prior IC’s were Shirokazu Yazaki Belden 8402. I admittedly do not have golden ears but the difference was obvious. I’m interested to hear what other Cardas owners have to say about how their cables sounded when 1st installed.
They are like all interconnects, they need a hundred hours or more to get broken in. Fuzzy or flabby bass is typical before breakin... although unfortunately typically they get a bit softer in the upper frequencies during breakin.
I used Cardas when I had a system that was too trebly and harsh. Their signature is warm. Personally... my audio guy keeps letting me try new incarnations and the always tip the balance too warm with my equipment. But, I would cross my fingers and run them for a week or two 24 x 7 and then judge.
I agree with @ghdprentice Be patient. I run Cardas myself. Used, it seems to take a few days undisturbed and a good (20-50 hours?) of playing time before they settle in. New, more like 100-200 hours of playing. Even when moving wire already in the system, it seems like a day or two before things "settle in". To my ears/with my equipment, and with new wire in particular, break in always seems to involve the sound opening up (more air, space, depth) which I suppose could well be due to a little more high end extension developing.
Having said that, once sufficient time has passed, I (obviously) can't guarantee you'll like sound with the Clear Lights. Regarding the bass, however, if it persists in being "fat", consider moving your speakers a bit if you are able. In addition, if you are single-wiring to bi-wireable speakers and use jumpers, try Nordost's method of diagonal connection (i.e., Black (-) to the upper post, Red (+) to lower with jumpers connected as you normally would). To me this method of connection (vs Audioquest diagonal which is the opposite...Red up/Black down) provides a little more high frequency energy.
It’s a lot easier if you buy a pre-amp with tone controls. Then you don’t have this fishing expedition of which cable is going to change the sound of my system. Something that they were never meant to do .
It’s a lot easier if you buy a pre-amp with tone controls. Then you don’t have this fishing expedition of which cable is going to change the sound of my system. Something that they were never meant to do .
I've had cables that continue to improve up to 400 hours of playing
Typically I put them on my streamer 24/7 for at least 150 hours before any serious assessment.
The burn-in process is different from cable to cable - some save their best performance until the end - other will give you an initial taste, only to degrade and then get much better
I've never tried Cardas, so I do not know how they will progress.
@williewonka@ghdprentice@ghosthouse Thanks for the insight gents. I was apprehensive about spending what I did on these so my immediate expectations were perhaps too high. I’ll leave them running for the weekend then take another listen...they are keepers for a good while so It will be interesting to hear how they settle in.
@ghosthouse My Sonus Farber Concertinos are bi-wire and I’m using jumpers, I’ll definitely play with the configuration (didn’t know that was a tweak!).
@steakster Right now all my power cords are upgraded and I’m using a PS Audio Power Center (with plans for a Sunyata at some point).
@raysmtb1 The Prima Luna is here to stay brother, everything else I like is out of range for now.
I’ve love music my entire life. I had an accident 3 1/2 years ago on my mountain bike and became a quadriplegic. I spent all day listening to music and over the past year I have put together a $60,000 Macintosh system. I have never heard speaker wires or inner K’NEX change.I listen to a lot of the same music at least eight hours a day and I couldn’t tell you from day to day if anything is changed. I’ll never understand what are you guys here that I don’t
@raysmtb1I fully believe that there is a point of diminishing returns...with the resolution of a $60K rig, I can’t see how changing any piece of gear in that tier could make an audible difference. But with a system such as mine why wouldn’t an upgrade be audible? Makes sense no?
Sidebar- I went toe 2 toe with cancer and won. Stay strong and keep fighting the good fight brother.
Well, returning them is not an option (private sale) Cardas is a top notch manufacturer and while it’s possible that the QC could be off on one or both sets of the cables I’d say it’s most likely not the issue. It could very well be that the Cardas just sound like crap in my rig. I’m kicking around the idea of doing a A/B test by having a friend swap the cables (or not) with my Shirokazu Yazaki Belden 8402’s and see If I can tell the difference. I think I could easily detect the difference right now so I’d want more time with the Cardas before I do that just to see if it changes or appears to have changed...So if it’s a crap sounding cable then it should continue to sound that way and I should be able to detect it’s offensiveness compared to the Belden a week or month from now. Correct?
Burn in is real. Huge difference. BUT nothing ever goes from crap to magic. Does not happen. What does happen, stuff that sounds really good right from the first minute opens up and fills out and sounds way better as time goes by, sometimes even continuing to improve well into a hundred hours or more.
By and large though people saying you need to wait 100 hours are blowing smoke. Like I said, it sounds good right out of the box, or it doesn’t. The sow’s ear never does become a silk purse.
Right now you are listening and paying attention to some tiny little subset of a very long list of audio attributes. When you have heard a couple dozen, or hundred, things burn in, to the point you are able to see the pattern, get back to us then.
There is no such thing as diminishing returns. The grain of truth that confuses and misleads people is that sometimes you can find one thing that is so good it costs a freaking fortune to get even a tiny little bit better. Townshend F1 cables for example, or Herron VTPH2A phono stage. There are any number of examples like this, and at just about any price level too.
But saying that is to miss the forest for the trees. There is also rubber bands that will isolate cables and improve sound and cost zero. So where are the diminishing returns? If you see diminishing returns, all that is telling you is you are looking in the wrong place.
@jl1ny, 25+ year Cardas cable owner of several generations. None of my brand new (coiled-up-in box or bag with mechanical tension) Interconnects sounded good at first, ever. Most sounded kinda strange new. Same situation with my better Cardas and my Analysis Plus OCC cables. Set ’em up, and let them rest and RELAX in place for 14-30 days, with no movement at all. None. Use and play them as much as you can while waiting.
Report back in 30 days to let us know if you hear any changes or not. When you get frustrated passing time, read this link below.
You have two paths, as an unlimited spender (all evidence I've seen from your posts point to this being your reality). Either you accept the idea of diminishing returns, where the difference between a $1 cable and a $100 cable is far greater than the difference between a $1K cable and a $50K cable, or at some point you have to admit to yourself that this is all placebo effect.
Burn-in on cables is nonsense. Period. The only thing copper does over time is corrode. It doesn't get better, it gets worse. What does happen, however, is your brain acclimates to the specific tonality of what it's hearing out of your system. No matter how subtle the initial difference between one wire and another, the longer you listen to the replacement, the more accustomed to its response you get. And when you make a major investment in something expecting results, "burn-in" makes you more comfortable with your purchase as whatever differences you detected the first time you heard it become imprinted in how you perceive your system. You WANT it to sound better, therefore as you become more comfortable with how it DOES sound, you convince yourself that, indeed, it sounds better.
The only thing that burns in is your ears. The difference between cables should be obvious the moment you swap one for another. I've said elsewhere on this forum that I've done blind listening tests, and I can certainly detect those differences. Without burn-in.
And I've also said elsewhere on this forum that the biggest bitch about cables is that every manufacturer trades off one problem for a different problem, so the "best" cable for any given situation is going to depend on a LOT of factors, biggest one being length, because length changes priorities in the R/C/I puzzle.
@millercarbon Diminishing returns is the point where I can not detect any improvement with a more expensive piece of gear. I’ve listened to systems that have absolutely jaw dropping resolution and other than pointing out an obvious sound signature, I couldn’t tell you the difference between two different sets of speaker cables. No way. How audiophiles are able to pick out micro nuances at such a high level of resolution and realism remains a mystery to me...I’m not saying it’s impossible, I’m just saying that I’m not capable of it at that level.
Well OP at least your honest with yourself and others. Some would have us believe their word is gospel. It’s not. If you can’t distinguish between different cables, join the crowd. A LOT of the old zips and off the spool cabling were OK.. BUT a sonic difference?.. More like ear plugs in your ears..
Things have changed..
Cables BREAK IN, they don’t burn in, for the 10,000th time.. Things BURN UP, they don’t burn in. The exception is a "24 hour burn in" on valves (tubes). Everything BREAKS IN.
Copper if it’s assembled correctly by LOOKING at the way it was put through the dyes, assembled, and conditioned (cooked), makes all the difference in the world. From plug in, to rout and play. It takes about 24 hours and up to 100 hours or so with copper. Silver and silver clads.. hundreds of hours..
The CRAP people say... 1940s crap from some long lost dead guy’s quote from Mcintosh... or something.. EVEN Mcintosh change their tune about cabling.. Took long enough.. Over 15 years NOW...
Blind testing cables is worthless, just worthless... No reason to do or advocate it. We are not trying to please the masses, just ourselves. What part of ME not YOU don’t folks understand.. Stereo ism, is not the same as McDonald ism. Quit lumping toaster repair standards in with listening to a stereo and it’s cabling.. Different comes to mind...
Must be tough not to be able to LEARN with a SEA of information to the contrary. Just amazing.. I know we are the only one’s in the the whole universe too.. Look up for God sakes...
Wake up CAVE MEN and WOMEN. It’s quite all right to admit your wrong.. But argue cable DON’T make a difference or they BURN IN. At least act like you’re smart.. Quit showing you’re DUMB. Mouth shut, ears open... what a concept..."It’s like teaching Klingons". (Grand Nagus Zek, Star Trek, SD9).
Semi Regards... A 5 out of 10 on the regards scale...
I wonder if anybody has ever put together two identical systems except for the cables and done listening tests? Seems like the only way to get around the qualifiers that you can’t move a cable and it Has to burn/break in for hundreds of hours. Any dealers out there who have tried this?
@oldhvy With respect, can you explain why people getting the terms “break” and “burn” conflated sets you off? I am asking dispassionately. What is it about that misuse of language that mangles the logic of the topic? You don’t seem the sort of guy to nitpick, so I’m honestly seeking your clarification.
"
The difference between cables should be obvious the moment you swap one for another."
Not true, that is why A-B tests are flawed. Many times I have been listening to familiar music and heard sound clues I had never heard before, weeks or month later. That brush stroke, fingers rubbing on guitar strings, increased or diminished depth or width, background sounds created by the musician touching the instruments, decay, pitch, vocals becoming more clear or smeared, etc.
If one hears a difference in a A-B comparison in an instant, how can one know it is better or worse, long term?
@dill I too have heard differences only after some period of time has passed. What’s hard for me is that I cannot tell if that is due to the equipment or to my own ability --or changed interest -- to notice later details, later. I’ve looked at (for example) the Mona Lisa painting many times, but I only really noticed the color shades of the mountains and river as compared with her figure later on. Was that because I got a new monitor? Or was it due to the way attention shifts based on interest? I take it a similar type of ambiguity is part of listening and some may simply be impossible to get clear about.
I have been using various Cardas cables for many years. They always need a very long break in, usually a couple of hundred hours to sound their best. If you have a burn in cd like XLO, that will speed things up. Even if I unplug cables and move them around after break in they will have to settle in for a while again but not as long as the initial burn in, so just keep playing music and evaluate them after a couple of hundred hours. Good luck. I recently bought a demo pair of Clear Cygnus ICs for my turntable and I had to burn those in for a while too before they sounded right.
"
When we change something we are normally critically listening for the first time in a long time. To that end, we may pick up on things that are not right (and probably were not before either), or we notice things we did not notice before, even though they were clearly there before and they are unchanged. It's like Where's Waldo. Waldo does not suddenly appear. He was always there. You just were not looking for him."
- Is this artistic privilege or creative license? You seem to be speaking for the collective "we". I know I am not part of your way of thinking. Maybe speaking for yourself will serve you better and not present the air of arrogance.
My experience has been if the original sound is unpleasant - time can't make it better. I attempted speaker cable try-outs comparing Canare 4S11, Rocket 44 and new set of Kimber 12 TCs speaker cables and the high's were harsh and the bass was muffled. Since I owned the others and it was the first real difference I heard I then tried the Kimber Bifocals and I liked the sound difference. After about 100 hours I have had several 'wow' moments with music having delicate details and dynamic shifts.
Interconnects I used another method - let them play in the background and not actively listen for a week or so. (My dog gets to listen to music when I'm not home). Then I listened and there have been several 'I didn't notice that moments' on some well known songs.
Part of me wonders is it the improved cables and part of me realizes I didn't notice and I have had guests comment on the sound quality and how the song sounds so much bigger.
Bottom line - if the IC sounds bad to you I wouldn't waste my time, If it doesn't sound 'better' let it play a bit and then re-evaluate.
@jetter @robert53 The seller was honest and the cables came with the Cardas cert card...I’m gonna give them a call regardless. I’ll see if they can tell me if the cert # jives with the cable type.
I also looked online at the counterfeits...if you look closely they aren’t 1:1
Cables take a while to sound their best. I don't know what the science behind it is, and I don't really care. I have experienced this phenomenon so many times that I know it's true.
Just be patient. It will settle after a while.
Resistors, capacitors, vacuum tubes, regulators etc. also take a little time to settle, so it's not unique to cables.
You can call it burn in.You can call it break-in.A good quality copper conductor is...a good quality copper conductor.There is nothing to burn in or break in, no moving parts, or structural or chemical changes possible.The only area I know of, where the electrical characteristics of the conductor has a truly measurable effect on the intended performance of the product, is with grain oriented vs. non-grain oriented electrical motor lamination's, i.e. where the quality of and the internal structure of the lamination is internally different. A commercially pure copper conductor with quality connectors will give most people what their systems are capable of providing. Every extra cent you spend on flash, color, brand and reputation is wasted.
Cables take awhile to run in and i have to agree that cardas makes some great cables but you want to go with the clear reflectrion line because they are wound in his original ways and almost always will sound better on most systems.
@dletch2 So if the Cardas wire is so good and superior, why does it need an authenticity card? Shouldn’t it be obvious? :-)
"Superior", that’s up to your ears. No, not "obvious" to an untrained eye and unknowing buyer. It’s an actual serial numbered cable and registered library with Cardas for repairs, warranty, and re-termination of ends if necessary. Some owners keep them for 20+ years, and buyers want to know they are authentic too. Send them back to Cardas to authenticate if someone is uncertain and needs help. :-(
FAKE COUNTERFEIT imposter cables are out there. Watch out! Idiots make them and uninformed people buy them thinking they got a deal. And, yes, it becomes very "obvious" when fakes sound like crap. Buyer Beware! They are one of the most counterfeited cables out there. See all the links and articles with photos below.
As someone who lives in reality, I don't want to be lumped in with your asinine assertions.
Really should learn to speak for yourself. Quite an arrogant assumption that anyone, especially all those who live in the place known as reality, would want you to speak for them.
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