Purist or Kubala-which to buy for entire system

Steve,

First of all I wholeheartedly agree with Drubin.

Interestingly enough, I am now a Purist owner. After hearing my system sound like never before when it was fully cabled by K-S Emotion, I had the opportunity to try a few Dominus cables in my system before I had to return the K-S cables. I was sold on the K-S Emotion and wanted to hear the Dominus before I would start commiting to purchases to replace the hodge-podge of cables I had assembled here.

After hearing the Dominus in my system, I was pretty sure the final outcome would be a mix of these two products with a few Purist to just bring on that added involvement to the music without losing the phenomenol resolution and black background of the K-S. Joe Kubala more than anyone else made it very clear to me the importance of staying with one cable brand throughout. And the more I became familiar with the K-S strengths, the more I could relate to this. I have come to agree with this at about 90%.

The cables I had here (NBS Statement, MIT 350 EVO, Coincident TRS) all had serious non-linear flaws when compared directly to the K-S. Trying to mix and match these would simply not work in the final analysis after hearing the fully-loaded K-S system. However, I quickly learned that this same conclusion did not apply to mixing with the Dominus. Notice I wrote Dominus, not Purist.

With the system fully loaded up with K-S Emotion (except speaker cables), when I switched the K-S IC to Dominus-B from Callisto to CAT JL-3s, I got a new layer of midrange textures, bottom octave coverage and dynamics....but I gave up a little bit of the ultimate in top-end openness and air. For me, the Dominus benefits here outweighed the K-S so I kept the Dominus. I was able to borrow the K-S speaker cables one final night and the results were the same....I prefered the Dominus IC from the line stage to amps.

With the fully loaded K-S system, I also tried 2 Dominus-C and 1 Dominus-B power cable one at a time on various front-end components with a K-S->Dominus->K-S swap. Each and every time the differences between the two models was the same sonic result as with the IC comparison. It's a tradeoff of DynamicContrasts/Low-end-extension/HarmonicTextures of the Dominus vs. the awesome resolution and see-through nature of the K-S Emotion. These two models are consistent in any link like no other cables I have tried here. This alone says much about their design.

I would have expected that the Dominus strengths would become too much of a good thing. But each and everytime I tried another, I kept it. Perhaps the Dominus-B IC if changed to a C would bring on a little more of the top-end extension of the K-S, but as it stands now, I have no desire to change this.

By the time I had to return the K-S set back to the factory, I had borrowed 2 Dominus ICs and 3 PCs and I ultimately kept them all. I have since borrowed 2 more Dominus PCs and another IC and had the luxury of borrowing K-S ICs and speaker cables from Jadem6 [JD] (also a huge fan of K-S). As much as I like the K-S, I still find myself drawn to the Dominus. I still need 4 more power cables and 2 ICs, so when I am ready, I will repeat this process with Dominus B and C vs. the K-S Emotion.

I have since tried Venustas RCA as a tonearm cable and was able to directly compare to JD's K-S Emotion....and later the Dominus RCA IC. The Venustas had the Dominus signature of dynamics but it indeed fell a bit short of the K-S resolution. I also tried the Venustas as an IC from DAC and Io phono stage vs. the K-S and the differences are consistent. The Venustas simply does not portray the fullness and dimensionality of the Dominus nor does it have the resolution of the K-S....but the Venustas is an awesome value.

And I have since gone with the Purist Opis speaker cable as this too was affordable until I get the opportunity to try the K-S vs Dominus. The Aqueous Anniv speaker cables were way too non-linear in my system with having too forward and unnatural midrange. This may work fine to compensate elsewhere in the system like I used to do with a mix of MIT and Coincident, but ultimately the AA would not be acceptable for me. It is way off the track of the levels brought on by the Dominus and K-S and the Opis for that matter. I still have an AA IC which seems to be not so "wild" like the speaker cables so it will be interesting how this fairs up with the Dominus XLR when I can try one of these. The AA appears to be a little bit of a shift from the Dominus/Venustas/Opis house sound.

Over the course of the above cable trials, I did take over many of these Dominus cables to JD's home and we experienced the exact sonic differences. His system sounds outstanding with a mix of the K-S Emotion and Dominus. It was too analytical when it was all K-S and too fat when all Dominus. It comes down to fine tuning to one's own preferences giving up the strengths I described above for another....just like we do with any other component in the system.

Simply trying a single cable in the chain and claiming we have great resolution or tonality, etc., does not work when you get to the level of the Dominus and K-S Emotion. Once you start replacing your cables with these, you quickly learn how flawed your cables were all this time and going back to them is impossible.

By the time I am done with this cabling project in the next few months, what I would really really like is to see Joe again and drop in the whole K-S set in one shot. The differences would be HUGE with each performance being so impressive. I think only then would I truly know the full capability of these two statement product lines.

If these lines are too rich for your blood, my gut feeling is that the next level down from K-S Emotion vs. the Purist Opis and/or Venustas would be a fascinating cable challenge.

So Steve, just go for both and take advantage of a listening opportunity that few if any others will ever have.

I'd like to ad one final note: until I got the Audio Magic PLC, cable differences were not at all to this level. I recommend that anyone first work to clean up their power before they go on the long cable journey. Dedicated lines are nice, but I have three of these for my system and still the PLC cleaned up so much and brough the noise floor way down which allows me to now hear such differences.

John

Steve: I too have wanted to hear the SoundApplication PLCs after reading one great thing after another about these. I went out on a limb with the Audio Magic based on a lot of reading of PLCs and a recommendation by a local audiophile, Artg. When I dropped it in the system, it was phenomenol across the board. Other units like the SA, IsoClean, etc., may take the system further, but for now, what the AM has done impresses me greatly enough to be content in the PLC dept.

I am pretty sure I sent a response to another A'gon member on the differences between the Dominus B and C PCs. But it looks like that email has long since been deleted. And I do not remember the exact details so I will not even try to guess which cable rendered what sonic attribute compared to the other. I will borrow another pair of Dominus B PCs soon to try on the SoundLab A1 speakers. Before I try this, I will play the B vs. C game on the front-end again and report on this then if you are interested. Keep in mind, the Dominus B fluid cables are no longer in production.

Sirspeedy: Thanks for the support. I ramble on a lot on A'gon and have tried to do this less and less but when I saw this thread I wanted to share all that I had gone through with these two lines. Hopefully JD will see this and chime in as he would be able to provide much value to how these two chalk up to each other.

Rgs: I can fully agree with your sonic report. The CAT amps have loads and loads of energy on the top so this is perhaps why the Dominus B IC locked in so well. The K-S Emotion was not at all forward or bright here, and in fact was also wonderful. I simply loved that added weight of the initial piano note with the Dominus besides the explosive dynamic contrasts. A bit colored indeed, but oh so nice. 8-)

As for syrupy sound, this was exactly the word I used to describe the AA speaker cables when I returned them to the dealer. No other speaker cables I auditioned ever had such a fatiguing midrange hump like these. But in a system even "hotter" than mine, they too might just lock in.

John

Sirspeedy: Kubala-Sosna cables do not come in a "phono" or "tonearm" design. When Joe Kubala visited my home last year, I asked this question and he told me his RCA cables would work just fine for this application. And since my Clearaudio tonearm has RCA connectors, it was easy for me to try out the K-S Emotion RCA cables. Did they work here? OH YES! No noise, no hum, no radio-station pickup, etc. The same thing goes for using regular Venustas and Dominus RCA-RCA cables into the Io phono stage. Works mighty fine!
John

Bobgates - How can your opinion so radically shift just a day after your post? You lived with the cables an extra day and this leads to the "After having lived with these cables for a while I now have somewhat of a different perspective"? Long term listening (several weeks and months) can indeed make the pros/cons more clear, and often lead to us keeping what he had, but only a day to make a 180?

Bob I mentioned this as I wondered if the nanotecs would benefit from a burn-in time? If they changed so quickly for the worse, could they change back for the better? Maybe you could run them in the small system for a week and or two and then try them again before permanently sending them out to pasture.

What we need is to find an affordable IC that does not cost $2-3k or more. And from the sound of 711smilin, this sounds like it has great potential. I have already found a crazy priced PC that outperforms the competition like nothing I could have ever imagined. Getting a break on IC or speaker cables would be nice for a change.