Reasonable but not outragious interconnects

Save your money.

There is no guarantee that changing cables will change, let alone improve, your system one iota and there is an even chance that it will be worse!!!

DO NOT BUY ANYTHING RECOMMENDED BY ANYONE HERE UNLESS THEY HAVE AN IDENTICAL SYSTEM IN AN IDENTICAL ROOM AND LISTEN TO THE SAME PROGRAM MATERIAL!!!

Anything you try must be 100%RNQA: 100% Returnable No Questions Asked.

Please see http://ielogical.com/Audio/CableSnakeOil.php for a bit of information on the cable scam

For the past 15 years, I've used Transparent Music Link interconnects. They sounded fine with every amplifier every tried, be it tube or SS.

Recently auditioned of a pair of tube monoblocks. Sound was just awful. No stage, harsh, grating, no air, unlistenable.

Since the amplifier is well regarded, I replaced cables with some mid 80's Monster Pro prototypes from the bin. Much better. Better still were some Hitachi star quad test cables from the same era.

How much better? These amplifiers maybe the best KT-88 amplifier I've ever heard, besting customized Citation II, Michael Fraser custom KT-88, PrimaLuna PL5, a few I can't recall and every AR bottle rocket owned or auditioned. The sound is gorgeous. Effortless, expansive, detailed, liquid, etc.

Currently building up some silver star-quad PTFE which sh/could be even better.

Anyone who says that a particular cable will perform identically well in all systems is sadly mistaken. Either inexperienced or malicious. In the first, either lacking an understanding of basic electronics or having only limited exposure to altering system sonics via interconnects. In the second, a Snake Oil Peddler.

There could be a third possibility. Inability to hear differences.

easy, millercarbon. What’s your beef?

There is no relation to the quotes leaving out the intervening paragraphs. Other listeners may have turfed out the Music Links on first listen to alternate electronics. "sounded fine" means only they did not cross any particular threshold of irritation. With the tube monoblocks, they did.

Your position that a particular cable will always sound good with all electronics means that cable parameters do not interact with electronics’ parameters. In that case all cables should sound the same. I think we agree that they don’t.

If cable and electronics’ parameters interact, then cables with different parameters must interact differently with different electronics’ parameters. As shown in Cable Snake Oil Antidote, cables do interact differently when electronics’ parameters change.

Surely you’re not saying that frequency and phase response are inaudible? If that were true, every system would sound alike.

If you are using balanced connections, the screen should be lifted at the destination end.
If you use single end termination at the destination, it forms low-pass filters for common-mode noise resulting in degraded CMRR at higher frequencies.

Unbalanced cables using more than 1 center conductor, i.e. twin screen or star-quad should also have the screen lifted at the destination end.

For the purpose of this conversation, I was telling a long time audiophile friend of mine I am surprised these take away from the midrange considering I was running the cheap monoprice interconnects. Figured they would be at least as good in that regard. Of course there is burn in and I have only played them for a few hours but can definitely hear the difference.  

Bingo. Burn in is C.S.O.

EVERY cable will affect a different part of the frequency range depending on the connected components.

We become conditioned to how something sounds. When evaluating, take your time. Initially impressive can become annoyingly fatiguing. Listen to a wide variety of material. Adjust the gain up & down.

The naming of cables after a dangerous black snake is pure marketing hype designed to suck you in. Read the 'story' of the Mamba II genesis here https://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=AQBMII Pure marketing baloney.

AND there is absolutely ZERO reason to use the same cables throughout. Devices differ. Cables should as well. Use the best cable you can find in the place where IT and IT ALONE sounds best.

Subwoofer cables are a bucket of C.S.O. The range in which they operate is well below where cable artifacts are most prevalent. Beefy connectors are pure marketing hype. They are delivering the identical voltage and current at 20Hz as a main amp cable is at 2KHz. They have limited need of transient response as the harmonics are outside of the frequency range they carry.

It also does not make sense to put cables on equipment where the cable are worth more than the equipment.

This is bad advice Price equates little with performance.

If $3k speaker cables make $1.5k speakers sound better than $0.5k cables and $5k speakers, it makes little sense to do otherwise.

The audiophile market is a gigantic shell game.