Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit


Has anyone tried this "minimalist" cable kit? After receiving a recommendation from someone with similar musical values to myself, and whose ears I trust, I could not resist ordering one. I will report on how they sound in a few weeks, but am interested in others' opinions too.

For those that have not heard about them look at www.sakurasystems.com for an interesting read. The cable sounds as if it is very close to the specification of the conductors in Belden Cat5. So I may have spent around 100 times what the kit is worth. We shall see.

If you have not heard this cable, please don't bother posting your opinions of how it MUST sound here. Nor am I that interested in hearing how stupid I must be to order this kit - it's my money and you are free to make different decisions with yours. Sorry for this condition, but I am bored with those that have nothing positive to offer on this site, and post their opinions based on deductive logic rather than actual experience.
redkiwi

Showing 2 responses by smilemakr

I recently discovered this thread, and, drawn to the enthusiasm shown by the various parties and desiring to end my quest for the perfect cable, I've plunged in and ordered the $600 Ota kit. And I really do desire to end my quest here, so I don't want to botch things up now that the kit has arrived. Perforce, some questions:

1. Has anyone found that the length of the cables makes any real difference? Folks talk about resistance, capacitance, and so on, and I'm wondering if I need to strive to keep ICs and speaker cables as short as possible.

2. I don't have a Cable Cooker or similar, and I wonder if I can break in the entire 50 meter length of cable most quickly by hooking up the entire length of it to one of my speakers (or half of it to each of my two speakers), before cutting it into appropriate lengths for ICs and speaker cables.

3. Is there directionality to the wire, i.e., should the signal run in the direction of the printing on the wire, or does it matter?

4. I'm still not clear on whether or not the Ota wire is desirable to use as a speaker cable for all frequencies when bi-wired, or if it should be used on the mid/tweeter only, with more of a garden-hose wire handling the woofer. Any well-formed opinions?

I appreciate the knowledge of many in this thread, and I look forward to responses!

Mark
Dave,

Thanks for the info. After running the Purist Audio Design system break-in CD to one of my speakers for 40 hours or so with the entire 50 meters of Ota wire as the positive leg of the speaker cable, I went ahead and created speaker cables and interconnects. By the way, a 50-meter long speaker cable sounds awful, as you might expect! But cut into more reasonable lengths (about 10 feet long going from my EDGE solid-state amp to the woofers and 2 feet long from my Kora tube monoblocks to the mid and tweeter) the sound is already wonderful. The presentation is far more open, detailed and relaxing than the Tice cables I was using before. I changed the preamp to amp interconnects over to the Ota wire at the same time, so I'm sure that some of the improvement is due to the interconnects as well. I'm running out of the RCA plugs so I'll need to purchase more to complete the change-over.

Who would think that such a wimpy-looking wire (it hardly seems right to call it a cable) could produce such delight relative to the more impressive-looking stuff that is out there! What a find!