Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit

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

Hey Smilemakr,The OTA sounds great.I should say that I also stuck in a 47 Labs Gaincard along with the OTA so it is not really a "controlled" situation regarding my following opinions.I probably should have left the Levinson in and proceeded in that manner.Oh well. I spoke with Yoshi at Sakura about speaker cable length and his advice was to keep 'em short.I mentioned Mapleshade speaker cables and the 8' length they like to keep as a minimum and he didnt budge on his advice.
My speaker cables are 5'long.Interconnects are 1'long.I am running only OTA.
I didnt determine directionality.I would like to know if it actually is directional also.
My understanding of this is if a wire runs a certain direction for a long enough than that is the direction that it ends up going.The directionality has been created by signal flow.I'm no technician(can you tell?)I didnt want to post until my break in was over but these things are starting to sound so good at 70 Hours I just couldnt hold back.Thanks Bwhite for the great deal btw!The OTA sounds wonderful.
This stuff has a WILD break in.It has been all over the place.Some evenings have been just great.I have also gone to bed scratching my head wondering where the "sound" would end up.A cooker would be nice.Be patient.You will be rewarded.I've heard the break in is 200 hours on interconnects.Not sure on that.The first pair of interconnects that I made didnt work.I didnt follow the example closely enough.I was freaking out.It sounded like I was using a puddle of spit for wire.My wife and dog left the room.Looking back it's funny to me now(not so funny then!).
I am not bi-wiring the OTA.The set of speaker cables that I pulled off were a bi-wired set(DH Labs Q10,woo hoo)I did make a jumper out of the OTA.I like the sound better now.I might try bi-wiring and replacing the internal wire on my Triangles later,who knows.
I apologize for the lack of adjectives regarding sound quality.How can this be described(by me anyway!),I mean really.It just sounds right.It's open ,finely detailed(incredible bass),micro this ,macro that;Its a joy to listen to.Or put it this way,I'm not looking for cable anymore.I appreciate the enormous amount of experience and knowledge that you guys have made available.It sure saved me a lot of time and money!I'm a happy camper.
I think it is a good idea to stick all of the OTA on at the same time.I wish I would have done my interior wiring on my speakers right away but now find myself hesitant to do anything that will slow down the break in process.Sorry for the long wind.

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!

Hi OTA owners. I bought the OTA kit about six weeks ago and have been enjoying the cables since. I have three questions though.

I've found initial impressions good, certainly for the price. However, I still find that my old set up of Nordost SPM interconnects (RCA) and FIM Gold speaker cables were far better. I found the soundsage fuller, greater seperation of instruments and more transparency with my old cable set-up. This is not to say OTA has not been a great purchase - it's at least excellent value for the price compared to my old cable set-up. What I'm wondering is whether the cables will get that much better as they burn-in, compared to what I'm hearing now. I guess my OTA set curretnly has about 70 hours or so on them so far. I know for some people the cable search has ended with OTA - I can't say I feel that way just yet.

Also, I find that recently I'm hearing some noise from my system that wasn't there before. I turned my preamp and source off and the noise is still there - so I guess it's isolated to amps and possibly from the OTA speaker cables. I also find that the noise is only there in the evening. So, my second question is whether other OTA users have experienced anything similar. It could be because I recently sold my PS Audio 300 Powerplant and maybe the noise appeared after it's absense, so OTA's not to fault, or something else happened with the power in my house.

Finally, does it matter if the positive and negative sections of one channel of an OTA interconnect are an inch or so longer/shorter than their respective positive or negative counterpart? I've had to recut a couple of interconnects a couple of times, so part of the interconnect is a little longer than the other, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, I'd welcome any insights on OTA related noise issues, whether the cables really do shine given more burn-in and any potential issues with slight length differences for a given interconnect. I can be patient on the burn-in - I am just curious about other folks' experience. Thanks folks. By the way my system is as follows:
YBA CD1a Blue Laser CD Player (with 2 YBA diamond PCs)
Sonic Frontiers Line 3 Preamp (Shunyata Sidewinder PC)
Blue Circle BC2 Hybrid mono amps (Shunyata Sidewinder PCs)
Audio Physic Virgo II Speakers.
All cables are OTA.

Thanks!

...does it matter if the positive and negative sections of one channel of an OTA interconnect are an inch or so longer/shorter than their respective positive or negative counterpart?

*I* don't think it matters and I don't think it's possible to get them the exact same length. As long as you keep it close, everything should be okay.