Need a very neutral interconnect-

"The blacks are stunning..."

What do you mean by that Bo? You mention it alot in your posts along with your love of the 3D presentation of music. I remember when I bought my first CD player back in '87. It's what stood out, how quiet the background was. I felt that something was missing. Maybe because of the increased dynamic range of digital over my vinyl rig at the time? I hear people talk about "the blacks" but am clueless what that means. I personally find the lower the noise floor the more ambient information I hear and the better the cabling, faster transients and timing cues, the more I hear the musical information and ambient noise from the venue. To the contrary, my experience is better cabling doesn't make it blacker.

Zd it seems your definition and Bo's are a bit at odds, I guess this just adds to the confusion. Bo seems to be saying, and I certainly get this point, that it allows us to hear greater separation of voice and instruments, a greater palpaple sense of their place in the recording which would certainly contribute to a more dimensional illusion providing it's on the recording. Certainly I can hear this effect to a greater degree by changing to a better ic and speaker cable. Your description is a bit more focused on dynamic range and a clean top end, could you explain a bit what you mean in how it relates to "blacks" or as Bo describes separating instruments rather than the sound being more congealed?

For the most part I think many probably the vast majority of cables are purposely designed to sound a specific way in line with what the designer likes that probably have little to do with neutrality. So far as the neutrality of cables, it seems the ones I like best have smaller conducters. I don't want a "warmer, richer" sound but more accurate and natural presentation of the recording. You can't know which one is best for your application without listening to many. The best I've heard to date that offer a coherency and separation and more realistic tonal rendition of instruments and voices are the Omega Micro line particularly when used as a system. Unfortunately they are fragile and as you move up the line, thinner ribbons and less dialectric, they get more expensive but better still, the less is more approach and it is clearly audible even to cynics. THESE are very natural and have the effect in a system of a major component upgrade, at least the 4 systems I've heard them in.

Well by Milhorn and Soix's definition of black, which I understand through their descriptions and have heard in some systems over the years including my first real hi-fi system from the mid 80's with a CJ pre-amp that was really good at this, a darker presentation. It seems to me that such systems are obscuring musical and ambient information with greater focus of the instrument's fundamental tone which would also obscure harmonics, decay and ambient cues of the venue. To me this is clearly less resolving therefore less accurate. Not that it's a bad thing, just a matter of choice, certainly not mine. I have never heard this effect in live music only on hi-fi systems.

So it seems, at least to me, there are different meanings of "the blacks" to different listeners'.