It was with my ears, my particular components, my records, my preferences and in my room that I recently compared the Fidelium speaker cables with the Cardas Clear - and chose the Fidelium. I had selected Cardas as the comparator because in my stream of things that company's Clear XLR interconnects are everywhere from my phono stage forward. Since "looms" are in vogue now I thought, what the hell? While I love the interconnects, my determination was that the Fidelis teased out a little more timbre from cellos, reproduced the piano scale with a bit more wood in place and at higher volumes held the soundstage together more completely than the Cardas.
Everyone has her or his "definitive" recordings with which to test cables, and mine were Coltrane's "Africa" (I could easily follow Tyner's piano into the maelstrom), Takas Quartet's performance of Bartok's string quartet cycle (high violin never smeared or fatigued, viola was distinct and timing was impeccable), and choral works aplenty (voice placement was wonderful and there was never a sonic halo).
I'm not going to tell anyone to choose as I have and I'm not going to diss anything. In my little opinion, however, I believe anyone with full-range hearing and a passion for that miracle we call music should at least plug a test pair of Fidelium speaker cables into her or his system. If you like them, you have a great and surprisingly affordable speaker cable; if not, then you have a great and surprisingly affordable reference point moving forward.
