Long XLR's: PAD Venustas versus Mogami

I use PAD Venustas systemwide. Using all Purist cabling (and of a single model -- mostly) makes the synergy obtained with a single cable solution a REAL and AMAZING EXPERIENCE! This phenomenon is often raised, but I never heard it so well demonstrated as with the Purist products Other brands I've tried this way (single cable solution) include MIT, Straightwire, and Levinson GEL cabling. So that's my first comment.

It's easy to obtain electrical specifications/characteristics on any Purist products. Some products have their specs published online; other products you'll have to call. But c'mon . . . . if you're really seriously interested in ANY specific brand of audio gear, it only makes sense to establish at least a telephone relationship with the manufacturer; and I encourage you to do that with Purist. The owner's name is Jim Aud. He's soft-spoken and understated -- a REAL ENGINEER who knows his stuff, and not one of those "trial-and-error" gasbag, used-car cablemakers (think Virtual Dynamics ;--) The other "equivalent" product line (yes, even better than Siltech!) with some real engineering chops behind it, is Aural Symphonics in Phoenix. Tommy Dzurak, owner. (I use his AT&T glass fiber optical cable for my Wadia stuff ;--)

Back to Purist. Their Venustas line represents the MOST value-per-dollar of any cabling (including other Purist models) out there. Especially when you take the time, as I did (at first, just out of curiosity) to compare other excellent products with closely similar specs on a price per foot basis.

OK, I already mentioned power cords. As for your speakers: with those Wilsons, you need low INDUCTANCE speaker cables. The Proteus line is Purist's (only) SOLID conductor line, and therefore exhibits solid conductors' characteristic low CAPACITANCE -- an important quality (in a speaker cable) if you were driving electrostats. However, the Venustas line also has very low inductance AND capacitance; and should be fine with your Wilsons (and your other gear as well.) I DID break away from the Venustas line and used PAD's (very expensive) Dominus line power cords, simply because with my amp and power regenerator, the difference was huge, and obvious! However, I knew if I wanted an "all-PAD" system, I would have to be fiscally realistic ;--)) So I went for the Venustas. Interestingly my first PAD cables were Jim Aud's 'personal' Venustas tonearm cable and a pair of Venustas RCA IC's (phono preamp to preamp) he sold me for half-price when I wandered into his room at CES 6 years ago! He knew a customer whan he saw one!!

As for long runs of interconnect, don't worry about anything under 16 meters or 50 feet. And if you're using balanced IC's between pre and amp, you can go 100 feet or more. Purist Audio Design's single most important "claim to fame", and the first thing you notice, is that all their cable products have the quietist blackest backgrounds of any cable you've heard.

What strikes me about your system, is you paid a premium for all that that expensive Wilson engineering, based of course on properly mass-coupling a loudspeaker to the ground, and there they are -- on CASTERS?!!! That means that everything else up stream (expensive amps and sources) represent a tragic loss of great sound, not to mention their cost and all your effort. SURELY, you can find a more creative way to solve your HT + 2-CH issue?? And gosh, you'd get so much better/cleaner bass out of those great single channel tube amps, if you'd get each one right next to its respective speaker in order to get the most out of the tube amps' limited damping.

Anyway, putting cable selection aside for a minute, I see you've acquired some beautiful high performance gear which could provide some REALLY AMAZING 2-channel audio experiences, if only you'd think more critically about how it should be arranged and connected. Instead, you seem to be consumed with trying to have the best of both worlds! And it's simply NOT possible, no matter what anyone says -- and from what i see, it appears that most of your money is on 2-channel -- so that's where I'd focus, if it were my stuff ;--)
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Hi all; and wishing you a reflective Memorial Day. This is no place for politics, but I would encourage everyone to watch Adm. Mullen's comments this morning, essentially the same remarks, on all three networks!

First, I want to make a general comment about something so CLEARLY illustrated in this thread: and that is for most of these forums/discussions/threads to be a source of MEANINGFUL information for both the original poster AND the respondents, it is SO IMPORTANT I think, for AudiogoNers to post their systems -- AND, to keep them UP TO DATE!! For without ACCURATE contextual information, most of these forum discussions amount to a pointless waste of time and thought -- in fact I will usually pass on some otherwise interesting topic, because I see that the OP has not provided a link to a 'System Page'.

Everyone here (so far ;--) has a System page and that's great (even though one of them apparently needs a little updating? ;--))

to John (Frech): You have the good fortune to have climbed all the way to the top of 'PAD Mountain', a view I will never get to see in this life, unfortunately. I remember that John and I started out with all Venustas systems -- and it should say something to the rest of you about PAD cable, that John always seemed to do his (system wide) cable upgrades using PAD products, even though it would have been so easy (system wide) for him to switch manufacturers; but he didn't!

Dan and John and Floyd use speakers with drivers that produce strong reactive loads; so it's important to use cables that don't add induction. In fact, the easiest way to eliminate BOTH capacitance AND induction is to separate the cable runs, a la Virtual Dynamics, PAD Provectus, and (don't laugh!) Speltz Anti-Cables, to name just three. As for clean-bass-with-tube amps, keep speaker cable length under 8 feet -- the shorter the better -- and use the biggest wire size available in your favorite make/model -- but at least 10 AWG, 9 AWG, or even larger depending on speaker power handling capacity and amp power. Also, if anyone wants to take a second and look up the specs ;--) you will see that Mogami 3104 in quad config. (their 'biggest' speaker cable) has a capacitance of 38.7 pF per ft. and a maximum conductor size of only 12 AWG. Compare just THOSE TWO parameters to Venustas: around 18 pF per foot (11 for Provectus) and 9 AWG and you'll understand why Mogami could sound glary with many speakers; and with just 12 AWG of conductor 'meat' in the Mogamis, good luck getting much energy transfer (i.e. -- bass!) which is going make your system sound (relatively) even more treble-ey! Mogami is NOT a neutral sounding cable, and its reputation goes back to the old days when power was low and speakers very efficient. Not so today.

Really any power cord with minimum 9 AWG conductors will provide good energy transfer for amps, power re-processors/regenerators, and for (I still don't know why ;--) dacs and digital stuff in general. Shielding is nice, but really only mandatory on digital equipment. Mechanical isolation (like the Ferox or Fluid jacketing on PAD PC's) seems to make a huge difference.

. . . . and to Floyd (last, but so not least -- it's your thread after all -- and you asked the question!) OK, at least with respect to mounting and placement of speakers (that is, putting aside associated gear and cables for a moment) for best/cleanest bass output, and MOST accurate/articulate transient response, ALL LOUDSPEAKERS should be lag-bolted to a concrete slab, or, to a 1.5" double-thick plywood sub floor! Can't manage that? OK, spikes are second best (and not second by too much really, but read on.) Spikes should first of all be VERY SECURELY ATTACHED to the bottom of the speaker. And if the speaker weighs over 100#, use 4 spikes; 3 puts too much stress on the contact point with the floor. If you have a joisted wood floor, there are certain rules and strategies for locating the spikes relative to the joists underneath in order to minimize rocking or swaying. If you have carpet + pad, the spikes' sharp points must PUNCTURE THROUGH the carpet + pad, and BITE INTO the concrete slab or wood sub floor underneath. Even the heaviest Wilson or other Mega-Boom-Buck loudspeaker, placed on the THINNEST carpet, is going to ROCK BACK AND FORTH in the opposite direction of the drivers' travel. YOU MIGHT NOT SEE IT, but it WILL MOVE!, and the speaker's performance (as anticipated by the speaker's designer, anyway) will never be realized. A loudspeaker enclosure MUST NOT MOVE. All the energy from the movement of the drivers MUST TRANSFER DIRECTLY TO THE AIR!! All the gear-swapping you can afford will never improve your loudspeaker's poor performance if it's due to poor speaker mounting technique; and what's worse is most folks go for years (or FOREVER!) without realizing how much better their speakers could sound. SO TAKE CARE OF THAT FIRST! And if you CAN'T take care of it first, then you'll have to (temporarily) PUNT: once you SORT OF KNOW (within a couple feet) where they will go, place the ALREADY SPIKED loudspeakers on 1.25" (kitchen counter thickness) by 2ft. (+/--) plywood squares, with short, looped pile, outdoor carpet (slides best on the floor) GLUED to the bottom of the plywood -- or use four small casters if you really want to make life easy ;--) When you think you know where you want the speakers, have a friend help you take them off the dolly and onto the floor. Set the spike points TEMPORARILY, on floor protectors. If you have a really heavy speaker, set the metal floor protectors inside nylon piano leg protectors, so you can still slide the speaker around a little bit. Eventually though, you must let the spike points bite into the floor -- you can only forgive yourself for NOT doing this if you have a pristine polished marble or parquet floor and you don't own the house!!

Floyd, you have been madly (and expensively) beating around the bush, and I feel truly sorry for you about that. Almost ANY piece of the gear you mentioned you owned or borrowed I could use as the cornerstone of an EXCELLENT and SONICALLY SATISFYING audio system; but not if I approached the project as you have done so far! So FIRST, find out where those Sashas REALLY WANT TO BE for the best 2-channel reproduction. All you need to know right now is where you want to sit so that you can figure out where to place your front end equipment most conveniently (to the SIDE, of course ;--) Things like room acoustics, the final choice of all other gear and cabling are all lower priorities right now and can be refined as time goes on. Your SECOND PRIORITY should be discovering an amplifier that sounds the best to you with the Sashas. YOU CAN USE ANYTHING FOR A SOURCE, the crappy-er the better, and hook up the amp and speakers with crap too! -- 18 AWG lamp cord will do fine. I'm serious. Using junk associated equipment won't change the winner of your amp contest (I promise!), and things will only get better, right!? Your THIRD PRIORITY should be the speaker cable. You will probably want to make a short list, but they should ALL have certain things in common: Low strand count. Large conductor size, >10 AWG total size for each run, pos and neg. Good mechanical isolation (a fat outer jacket ;--) SIMPLE INTERNAL GEOMETRY. Simple internal arrangement of the conductors, combined with a low strand count (under 6 strands per conductor) USUALLY insures good (meaning low) capacitance and inductance characteristics (but check out the actual specs with the manufacturer.) "Good" means capacitance under 20pF (picofarads) per foot, and inductance under 0.4µH/Ft (millihenries) per ft. This will insure your speaker cables aren't secretly operating under the radar as TONE CONTROLS!

Once you've covered these fundamentals Floyd, you can evaluate/refine everything else and pretty much in any order you like (with certain exceptions.) In the meantime, if you like the Sashas as your loudspeakers, then you need to put them (horses) in FRONT of all those other little carts, or you will NEVER make any satisfying progress. Like I said, I could put together an incredibly satisfying system out of the stuff you (still?) have on hand. But I already have a great system, and I'm going to go listen to it right now! And so should the rest of you. And IF you're NOT HAPPY WITH YOUR SYSTEM, then for God's sake get to work! But work smart; and TAKE CARE OF THE BASICS FIRST! THEY ARE: both in order of importance and deployment:

1. SOLID SPEAKER-TO-FLOOR MOUNTING TECHNIQUE AND CAREFUL CHOICE OF (PERMANENT) SPEAKER PLACEMENT.
2. EVALUATING THE AMP YOU LIKE BEST WITH YOUR SPEAKERS -- REGARDLESS OF HOOK-UP WIRE
3. SELECT A SPEAKER CABLE THAT IMPROVES THE SYNERGY ACHIEVED IN No. 2 BY AT LEAST TENFOLD!

If carried out in an orderly way (after selecting a loudpeaker you really like;--) these three PRIMARY decisions/solutions/purchases should not have to be repeated for a LONG time!
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For those of you interested the speaker/floor interface, there are already many threads on the subject, this forum is about cables.

Stringreen, your remarks (about your experiences with the Anti-Cables) is a perfect illustration of why I think it's SO IMPORTANT for people to post their systems!!

Just imagine me reading your post at face value -- which is what we all do first, of course. But your post as presented is (probably) interchangable with a dozen others just like it, maybe even word for word! As such, it can not, and does not tell me anything useful with respect to my own audiophile life/understanding/experiences/equipment etc.

Why should I believe you actually tried all the "top line stuff" you mention? And what difference would it make anyway? And the remark about "no best cable"? Yeah, right! We've all been treated to THAT "unique and profound insight" a few hundred times! So what? A flair for the obvious? Not very helpful . . . .

BUT WAIT! This person has posted his SYSTEM! OK, maybe he's put his money where his mouth is (literally, this time!) Let's see . . . .

OK. Nice lineup of stuff. Cost a few bucks. Solid manufacturers with good performance track records. Appears to understand the notion of synergy between certain kinds and makes of components. Nothing megabuck, but everything is at a similar level of (very good) quality. Perhaps he's working from an overall 'vision' of a system he imagines he will create or refine as he goes along. He doesn't appear to have selected anything out of expedience; that is, no budget/midfi gear (from the Advisor or Crutch catalogs ;--) just to "fill out" the "lineup" ;--) He's frugal, but has the 'scratch' to try/buy something he believes worthwhile; (so he probably really DID audition those fancy cables ;--) still, he sees no reason to have the 'latest version' of most things. Willing to wait patiently until something he really wants comes up on the used market perhaps. Someone with an intelligent measured approach to creating a system.

Does he know a lot of "audio science"? Maybe; maybe not. A hard thing to evaluate by just looking at a person's system choices, and no further discussion with them. Do I believe his remarks about the Anti-Cable? Yes, I do! Specifically when he says how he loves them with HIS components. I can fully understand the authenticity of that remark, simply because I know from my own experience, that the "top line stuff" he mentions, if installed in his current system, would very likely NOT improve its performance over what he now enjoys using Anti-Cables. The AC's have VERY low inductance-and-capacitance, which IMO is sufficient to fully optimize the performance of the components and speakers he has right now. His whole system, as currently constituted, is in an almost perfect state of balance; with no component/element 'out-classing' any other. The "bad news" about such a situation, is that if he makes a significant upgrade, especially to amp or speakers, then every element in the system will have to be reconsidered one by one, and probably also improved, including all the cable paths. At that point, the Anti-Cables themselves will NOT have all the attributes necessary to support a more refined system -- they will only hold it back from performing its best.

Stringreen's is the kind of system I used to put together myself when I was (much ;--) younger. I really took a lot of pride in what I achieved, and should have quit right there and gone on to stamp collecting ;--)) But there's no end to sonic improvements; until one day you realize, as I have, that your system has improved while your hearing has deteriorated, and it's time to stop.
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Al, my assumption (in the case of the AC's) is that the user keeps the two runs a reasonable (like 4" or more) distance apart.

Al, maybe I had it reversed?