I'm wondering if someone could recommend a pair of speaker cables. I have looked at Nordost entry level, but they may be too thin for my system. Looking for cables that may add some "weight" to the following system.
Decware 300b tube amp (8watts), Klipsch Forte IV, Holo May Dac, PS Audio BHK Pre with 12AU7 input tubes. My room is 20X12, not treated, vaulted ceiling, fair amount of glass. Not a great room :) In the $1,000.00 range
Thank you for all your comments and advice. This forum is an amazing source when researching equipment. I understand that cables can be a contentious subject. I do take the majority of suggestions, and comments into account when researching. I do however treat audio as a hobby, and not a practical endeavor, so comparing higher priced gear with lower, SET vs high watt amps, Speaker DB's, Vinyl vs DAC, it's interesting. Sitting here on a rainy New England day, with my wife out of town, I have the living room filled with speakers, amps, cables, experimenting with sound in my not so perfect room.
Right now I am listening to a Chinese DAC, Decware 7 watt tube amp, feeding 6ohm, 88db Electa Amator speakers with cheapo 16/2 cables.... odd combo...sounds great!
FYI, the Art cables are Neotech NES 3004 mk II cables with Furutech connectors, techflex and cryoed. If you bought the pieces separate and assembled it yourself and sent it off to be cryoed....would cost you about half. If you use Mundorf super low mass bananas....very cheap....then it would cost much less again.
Thank you for the recommendations, I ended up with a pair of Art Audio Cables, AAC Statement e SC Cryo Speaker Cable, 15' . Had them build with white jacket to keep my wife happy.
WyWires Diamond is a very good cable and there is one on USAM for $2500.
I also own it and I am happy with it. I think the Audience FrontRow (also own) is a bit better, but you can get the WyWire used for much cheaper than a used FrontRow.
Looking for cables that may add some "weight" to the following system. Decware 300b tube amp (8watts), Klipsch Forte IV, Holo May Dac, PS Audio BHK Pre with 12AU7 input tubes. My room is 20X12, not treated, vaulted ceiling, fair amount of glass. Not a great room :) In the $1,000.00 range
Try the "SVS soundpath ultra" affordable speaker cable for "adding some weight" specifically (yes, they are primarily a subwoofer manufacturer, but, they appear to know something about cables).
They ain’t just "good for the price" (the bozo line you hear from every bozo in the wire biz). They are just good... Period!
Harmonic Technology Pro9+, uses solid core OCC Cu. These sound great but were too short when I renovated our living room, so I temporarily replaced them with some cheapo junk cables. They were so bad I bought some Duelund 12AWG in cotton the right length to neatly fit the newly completed layout and they were a huge improvement on the cheapos.
After about a year of listening to the Duelunds I reinstated the HT Pro9's for a sanity check and they are still there making beautiful sounds having destroyed the musical but slightly coloured Duelunds, driving 96dB sensitive speakers. The HT cables IMO are outstanding and bettered many very expensive cables when compared at friends places and at home. They can be found used at about $400
@bolong, the Duelund cable I mention is based on the original Western Electric and has a similar signature. As an experiment, try making up jumper cables from bass to tweeter terminals with WE wire but no terminals, just bare wire. Money saved and better sound.
For the price, I know none better than Morrow upper level of cables. I’ve owned the best Cardas and Transparent Ultra. Morrow sounded slightly better in my system at 1/3 the price. I have slowly tested then purchased speaker, interconnects, power cables and subwoofer cable. I’d go with Elite or Anniversary level. They run a once a year special of 60% off which is going on now. 30 day free trial as well.
Yes, all Nordost cables sound thin. Recently sold my Valhalla 2 SCs. Try Wireworld, Silver Eclipse if it works for you financially. And Cardas. All available used. The Cable Company is a great idea and they have demo and used as well.
If you like the Nordost sound, why not check out some of the threads about the fake real high level like Odin stuff is?
I don’t believe anything is illegal about doing it, and if it’s not then why in the world wouldn’t you give it a whirl?
I, personally, would not even consider trying to re-sell it if you don’t care for it.
From the things folks say around here about the real world quality of that, I guess you would call it fake s**t, they sound like they actually perform really well.
I’ve had Freya 2 for a few years now and love them. I paid real dough for them, and love them, so I don't feel the need to upgrade or I would.
I can vouch for what someone else said, about how you better like everything upstream a lot, because it’s gonna let you hear your system for what it really is.
It sounds like you’ve got good synergy in your system. That’s what’s vital, of course. It sounds like you have it.
What folks are saying about room control is real. I recently got a Lyngdorf 2170 with Room Perfect software and the way it tightened up my bass produced a radical improvement in my sound. It made me a believer.
You should check out the YouTube video of this total tube guy just raves about using Lyngdorf as a pre amp so he can still dig on his tube sound.
One think he says is that considering how big of a bang it is for the buck, it’s really not terribly expensive. I bet the way it would tame your room would drastically change the way you experience that system. Period. You know the whole thing about, you don't know what you don't know?
Since you have a Decware amp why not try the Decware cables? I have a pair and I have no complaints about any part of their performance. They are reasonable also.
I moved to Delund 12Ga tin over copper with oiled cotton insulator. I really like this for speaker cables and I hear users dyi the 16ga into single ended RCA. It is not pricey I for one glad I tried this. -
I've been using expensive JPS Labs speaker cables for a least 15 years now with no plans of switching to another brand. Their less expensive speaker cables are superb as well. Also, I really love Audioquest cables. You can't go wrong with Audioquest.
For a low powered amp you need cables low inductance and low capacitance cables. The inductance will ruin you base and capacitance will reduce your high frequencies. There are a lot of low resistance cables and silver plated cable is very good option. Also look for short cables. Good luck
What most surprised me about the Western Electric cloth covered cables is that they apparently have very wanting insulation - at least relative to a more modern understanding of what is required to to keep ambient EMF from using the cable as an antenna. The WE's have a probably waxed cloth outer covering and a single inner tube which certainly does not appear to be teflon. It looks more like pvc.
Seconds to Morrow Audio [SP7] and Cardas [Clear, Clear Cygnus]. I agree that no entry level cables sound good, something I really hoped was NOT true...but every time i have upgraded, I gained more detail, or bass "oomph", or something SIGNIFICANT [there's that word again]. I do NOT agree that that means you must spend $10,000, as someone chimed in above...
I also use Anticables in my 3rd setup, their current top of the line, which is well under your price guideline.
Unfortunately for my [our] wallets, cables do matter.
@bolongI really enjoy my cloth insulated WE’s. . The seller here on AG has made me a couple pair of speaker cables, one bi-wire. He’s also made me a couple pair of IC’s. He can be found periodically here on AG selling speaker and IC’s from his stock.
I think they are a steal at the price he charges, excellent workmanship too! I feel anyone looking could purchase some and try them out. If they don’t float your boat, re-sell them. It’s not like one had to get a second mortgage to buy them in the first place.
OP, I am using mine from a Cary SLI80HS to my Volti Razz’s. I feel it’s an excellent match. Thought I’d add this due to your amp and speaker pairing being very similar to mine.
I second the Morrow cables as a good buy,and there is usually a 50% off sale or something. I had the SP7’s in my system and they were really nice, especially for the price. They replaced MIT 3.3 Shotguns and Cardas Golden Cross. I replaced them with Shunyata Alpha v1, which used is a little out of your price range but was, IMHO, a definite audible leap forward. Cables dont make a system sound like a brand new system, of course, but an audible improvement is an audible improvement. 5% or 10% here and there adds up. I will make a radical suggestion here. Many people rave about the knockoff Nordost Odins that you can get on Alibaba. Although obviously not as good as the real thing, many people think that they are the equal of cables costing thousands. If you are not morally opposed to buying knockoffs, check out some of the threads on them here.
I have been through a fair number of speaker cables - many were upper end Audioquest - and then one day bought and connectored some "Western Electric" cloth covered tinned copper 36 strand 10 gauge wire on Ebay and was astonished by how good it sounded on my tube amp system running Klipsch Cornwall 4's. Some in the Japanese audiophile community swear by this kind of wire for tube amps and horn speakers.
This wire had been "burned in" for about 40 years at a telephone central office, and I seriously doubt it was "OCC" copper. It had been subjected to 40-50 years of 48-175 d/c volts daily. Perhaps a case could be made for such wire having been somehow annealed to having fewer grain boundaries during this journey, but I doubt anyone would give this credence without analysis at the atomic level.
To further incite the wrath of the cranky audiophile community I also recently did some bi-wiring on this same system with some 16ga wire of the same "Western Electric" pedigree by making some spaded jumper cables with the stuff and running them from the bass speaker terminals to the treble connections. According to some internet experts this should make absolutely no difference. This was done to, theoretically, reduce some of the energy going into the tweeter relative to what was going into the woofer. I waited until after component burn-in to do this because I had learned that fiddling with the system before components had revealed their true selves could become quite confusing. Lo and behold the at times faint jangle in certain treble expression - especially with regard to piano and flute - had been tamed with no loss of resolution.
Like you I have a low power, high efficiency system, with fully horn loaded speakers. After playing with various cables including Duelund, which I found charming but ultimately too colored for my taste, I’ve now found audio nirvana with some "Chinese Valhalla" (in truth a chinese copy of Nordost heimdall). There are no logos or fake branding but the cable seems identical.
They are the best cables I’ve owned: not thin at all, nor bright (and my system is on the bright / upfront side so I should know!) but very dynamic, transparent, and wide open (imaging is fabulous)
It’s been compared by others to entry level Nordost stuff and is better, doesn’t have the "thin and bright" character at all. In fact I find it buttery smooth!
The OP asked for a cable for high efficiency, low current cables. There is really no point in proposing arm thick, high capacitance cables with lots of skin effect. My two bits worth…
Hard to beat AntiCables 3.1 ($250 6 foot pair) or 4.2 Flex ($460 6 foot pair) speaker cables for the money. Just remember that the 3.1s take at least 150 hours to settle in, and the 4.2s at least 100 hours. I haven't completed testing, but the Zavfino Nova OCC cables ($390 2.5 meter pair) and Morrow Audio SP6 ($550 2 meter pair on sale) are very promising.....will complete a shootout next year when my listening room is completed. Also I would have NO problem using the Micca speaker cables in a second system.....silly good for $40 per pair.
I will second @dekay's recommendation for the Micca cables. They're cheap enough to just try and see how they compare to your old cables. Or they can serve as a placeholder if you want to try other cables.
There are a couple of threads here about these cables. I bought them just for yuks after reading Steve Huff's review. I still prefer my Transparent cables on my main system, and my Anti-cables on my second system, but I could live with the Miccas. I listen to a lot of acoustic and folk music, and the Miccas do something special with midrange and vocals.
BTW, the Satori’s are OCC copper, which will make some people happy, me included. Not sure of their geometric cross-sectional shape, but I am assuming they are circular, and not polygonal.
Also had Green Mountain Audio Continuum 3/HX speakers that slightly lacked the somewhat live quality with less detail than my RM40's that would have sounded considerably better with the Fideliums. Magnepans would not like them much. That thin character would come back to often. I'm betting Spatials would also love the F's.
IF you have speakers that are a little bass heavy or just average in detail retrieval, there is no question the Fideliums would be a big step up in SQ. I currently have a pair of SP Technology Revelation Mk-V speakers that would just love them. I will be selling the SP's soon however and never tried them with the Fideliums. The Clarity Organics just sang with my VMPS RM40's. The Fideliums were too detailed with a somewhat thin sound on the 40's. The builder of those cables is s super nice guy to work with. I really wanted to like those cables. Hope that helps.
here's a PS, I forgot to mention that rectangular OCC single crystal wire is even better than the round OCC single crystal wire and the only company that makes it is Neotech.
The best cables to use is any company that is using OCC single crystal silver or copper far superior to anything OFC at any price, any company that is still using OFC and charging exorbitant amounts for it is totally ripping people off, it has been proven now for over 50 years that OCC single crystal is far superior to anything OFC on the market so if you're going to buy cables at least use cables that have the best conductor material regardless of which company it is, if they're using OCC single crystal you know you're going to get a product that's better than anything OFC.
For me the job of the speaker cable is to be transparent, neutral, adds no coloration, simply adds nothing to the performance nor takes from it. Over time I have had lots of cables in my system.
Canare 411
Belden,
Signal Cable Silver Resolution 4 strand pure silver with 4 strand OFC (excellent and not stupid expensive)
I spent the last year auditioning a number of speaker cables, but still had not found a set to my liking. Mogami and Kimber 8TC have been mentioned and were in the mix, and both had their merits, but some drawbacks as well. Unsure of next steps, and whether going up the price ladder would yield better results, I recently made an offhand comment in a general cable discussion describing my quandary. In jumps soix suggesting something similar to the post below.
@soixI’d highly recommend looking at these 12’ Acoustic Zen Satori cables that are well within your budget if they’re still available. They have plenty of tonal weight but are also well balanced with excellent and natural upper-octave detail and throw off an excellent 3D soundstage.
I took the bait and picked up a used pair of the Satori's and was very glad I did. I put them in my system and they sounded pretty average at first, but this was not unexpected. I gave them a couple days to settle in and was really wowed once I started listening. They were not only technically good, they were musically great, bringing a very liquid sound. I second his recommendation.
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