Thanks
Whoa, you weren't kidding that the Double Crown was thick.
I forgot about the SPX-800, but you probably don't have any of those either do you, just the Signtaure stuff? |
Bvdiman, do you own any of the Ruby Hills or Ruby Mountains? If so what are the cable circumferences? I just measured my Kimber PK-10 Gold and it's appx. 5.5cm or 2 1/4". I was just curious how those Siltech's compare. |
I was just talking with my dealer and he does not have any specifics about cable gauge and Siltech will not provide this information. He has tried and they have responded to my e-mails saying they won't disclose that information.
My dealer has both the 330L and 770L speaker cables and oddly enough they are the same thickness. He didn't have the 770L's on hand when I was by as they were lent out but he said the odd thing was even looking at the termination ends the cable thickness of the 2 models even appeared the same. So there is no difference in appearance but he said a definitive difference in sound.
He doesn't have any of the Royal Signature cables on hand but I'm now very curious if say the Prince and King for example are also indistinguishable from each other or is there an obvious difference in thickness between the two and does this continue as you move up the line? i.e. Emperor, Emperor Crown and Emperor Double Crown. Is anyone familiar with the Signature line that has seen these cables side by side? I would be curious about the Signature interconnects as well because he said like the speaker cables there is no physical difference between the 330i's and 770i's which I was able to take a look at and he does appear to be right. |
Thanks for the responses.
Since my setup is used for both home theater and music with the inevitable increased distance between gear and speakers due to having a center channel speaker and tv in the middle I have to accommodate an unavoidable lengthy cable setup. Going Royal Signature all around is out of the question due to the expense it would cost for the long interconnect run thus my interest in how the Classic's compare to the Signatures in gauge.
My L/R amps are monos and will be placed by the speakers. This actually works out well because the speaker cables are more money than the interconnects per meter so I can get really short SC runs if Siltech offer that. I've only ever come across prices for 2.0M as the shortest length though in price sheets which has me a bit concerned.
So I only need 1.0M to 1.25M for my L/R SC's. I will need like 4.0M though for my L/R IC. What I'm currently considering is possibly doing Prince SC and maybe 770L IC but at 4.0M I know 770's are going to be very pricey. I'm thinking of going with the Golden Ridge II with XLR for my AES/EBU cable. Power cables would either be SPX-800 or Ruby Hill II as I'm not sure I could afford/justify the price of the Ruby Mountain II considering I would be looking at adding multiple cables.
Looking at the Siltech website I see just a few models list Furutech as an available option. Do you know if that is set in stone? I would prefer to have Furutech connectors on all Royal Signature cables I would buy.
I haven't brought any home to test yet. I would like to be able to try both the dealers 330L and 770L. Since the IC's he has are RCA and I don't want to recalibrate my system just to test them as I run all XLR to my amps now so I think I'll try the 330i's and 770's he has between my source and pre as I run RCA there currently. He also has the HF but I don't yet have my digital music player so have nothing to test out the digital cable with. I won't be able to test any power cables or any Signature items as he doesn't stock them, all have to be special ordered. |
That's really good to hear that they can be ordered in lengths shorter than 2.0M. I do find it very sad that getting Furutech connectors is an extra charge on some models given the price of the cables. |
I have another question about the Siltech's Bvdiman if you don' mind, Where would you say the biggest performance increase is, the Prince when compared to the 770L or the King when compared to the Prince? |
Thanks again guys
Bvdiman, I didn't realize that there are going to be triple crown speaker cables. I seen a couple pics of the triple interconnects posted at an audio show some time ago but that has been the last I have heard of them. Siltech hasn't added anything to their site. It will be interesting to find out how they compare because with that switch on them it appears as though they may be an active design??? If so I'm sure they will sound different but would it be more true to the source or a way of manipulating the sound which would be a no no in my opinion.
My speakers can be bi-wired but I have experimented with bi-amping and didn't notice much if any improvement even there because they can not be actively bi-amped. So I'm not sure how much going above the speaker cables in jumpers like you suggest would improve things seeing as the speakers have passive crossovers. Matching the jumpers to the cables would certainly be something I would consider though just to keep the look the same vs my speakers own jumpers. |
thanks Bvdiman
I checked out that review. Like you say the reviewer basically came to the same conclusion as my dealer.
I'm not at all familiar with the previous generation lineups. Are you saying that the Compass model occupied essentially the same position as the Princess does today or were they the precursor to the Empress, Empress Crown or Double Crown?
Have you personally ever heard the Princess? |
Hey guys I have another question. After reading the comments about how the larger gain in sound between the 770L and Prince vs the Prince and King was between the 770L and Prince, if funds permit I'm going to try and aim for the Prince. Even at the shortened lengths I would need i.e. < 2m the King would be to much money.
Were any of you able to do a comparison between the 770i and Princess? If so was the difference as noticeable as it was between the 770L and Prince? Not saying I could afford the Pricness because even the price of the 770i's at the lengths I need are scary enough but I also don't want to be ignorant to the audible differences either.
What prompted me to ask this is the dealer mentioned incremental improvements as one moves from 330i to 550i to 770i and feels I wouldn't be disappointed, or to disappointed :) if in the end I could only swing the 330i's. He said to his ears he had to really concentrate to hear any difference between the 330i and 550i. Between the 330i to 770i the difference became more apparent when the middle model was skipped. Not a huge difference but it was no longer soemthing you had to struggle to hear. That's actually why he only has the 330 and 770 because the 550 would be a harder sell.
So if the improvement is no longer incremental going from 770i to Princess that's something I want to know about. |
Everyone prefers and hears things differently. For example I don't understand the fascination people have with MIT and Transparent cables. As an example why Transparent's balanced cables cost a lot more than their unbalanced cables. Sure they incldue a 2nd network box but a balanced cable is a balanced cable, it's not like Transparent have somehow reinvented transmission over balanced connections. Regardless people swear by these cables. |
Reviving a bit of an older thread. So I had a long conversation with my dealer on the weekend and I now have some actual prices and have been able to start making real plans.
The Princess with tax goes out of my comfort zone for the 4 meter length I think I can get away with so if the length works and I don't need longer I think I might grit my teeth and go for the Princess rather than 770i. My dealer is going to give me some bulk cable so I can more accurately figure out the length I need as the cable snakes it's way down and around stands and out to the amps in a similar fashion to the Siltech cables.
I'm confortable with the price of the Prince but do have another question perhaps bvdiman can share some experience on as he previously mentioned comparison to the King and chose the King over the Prince. Earlier in the thread while discussing the Classic Anniversary series the theme was if one couldn't afford the 770L not to bother with the 550L because the difference was subtle in comparison to the 330L thus this would be the one to get, not the 550L. Is this similar when comparing to the King, if one can't afford the Emperor II (which I can't and the King is out of my comfort zone kind of like the Princess) then does it make more sense to go with Prince rather than King?
I assume there would be another noticeable, no subtle audible improvement such that exists between 770L and Prince or 330L and 770L when comparing the Emperor II to the Emperor Crown and then perhaps a subtle difference comparing Crown to Double Crown?
I'll also throw this out there again, has anyone done a comparison between the 770i and Princess? If so what was your findings. |
Thanks Deedo, your post was very informative. Certainly looks like I'll have to bite the bullet and get the Princess. |
At long last I finally purchased my 1st Siltech cable. I picked up the Golden Ridge II and had Furutech carbon/rhodium XLR's installed.
Quite the impressive cable aesthetically. I went with 1 meter to keep cost down and avoid excess wire but that nearly backfired. With the cable being so thick and not overly flexible it was close to not being able to be bent back around as it left my Bryston BDP-2 and came back into my Lexicon MC-12. Any shorter and it wouldn't have worked. On the other hand at say 1.5 or 2 meters, given the thickness I'm not sure how well it would have coiled, if at all so that may have presented it's own challenge.
Compared to all my other cables in the back of my rack, this looks like a huge power cable in comparison :) It's very close to the thickness of my Kimber PK-10 Gold power cable.
Very happy though to say the least. Looking forward to adding the Princess next. |
I've read nothing but great things about the Wireworld cables, especially the Silver & Platinum Eclipse speaker cables and interconnects. The Princess price is a bit more than Platinum interconnects especially as you increase length while the Platinum speaker cables price wise fall really close to the King rather than the Prince. The Plats are around $1k US more MSRP than the King for 2 meters. So I can definitely see where these models would all be in competition with each other. The Plat speaker cables are noticeably larger than their siblings due to the larger 9 AWG wire. They look like monsters from the pics I have seen, really thick which is cool.
Of course in the Wireworld lineup the Plats are all she wrote while in the Siltech line up they just keep going upwards beyond Princess for interconnects and King for speaker cables. |
