My first Ali-E experience was after reading a thread on Agon. The experience was very positive, and the prices were so incredibly cheap compared to the rather expensive WW Ag Eclipses that were gifted to me; matching XLR and speaker cable. What could I expect? Curiosity killed the cat, so I decided to stick my toe in the water buying a fake Nordost Odin 2 coax cable, which at < 1/4 the price of my Pangea coax, it a carbon copy spec-wise of the considerably more expensive DHL. It took a month to arrive to S Florida, but wow Wow WOW, and that without any break in. That experience lead me to then replace my very expensive WW Ag Silver Eclipse XLR, followed by my speaker cable (gifts or I would never could have afforded them), and later most of my power cords. While the Odin 2 coax, XLR and speaker cables provided much more information, collectively, they were on the dry side in my all SS system (probably great for tubes though). Further research and I replaced the WW with Odin 2 Gold, except for the coax, which was not available then. Finally, someone on another thread had bought the Odin 2 Gold, after some searching I found it, and 25 days later (4 days ago) I inserted it and although in need of break in it was clear that it was what I needed. The next day I used a burn-in disc on repeat for some 14 hours while I was out. That helped a ton. Last night it was sounding really good on Wilson Phillips Greatest hits which always sounded shrill, but with the Odin 2 Gold was quite listenable with a greater sense of separation. I followed them up with Ray LaMontagne Till the Sun Turns Black a very good sounding disc, but now on another level
HTH