Warm, fullbodied, smooth, and transparent


What IC best describes warm, fullbodied, smooth, and transparent to help a thinner sounding CDP.
seabreeze

Showing 2 responses by johnnyb53

For this situation and those values, you'd be hard-pressed to get better for the money than the Audio Advisor's AudioQuest Black Mamba II for $99.95 for a 1M pair.

I have many kinds of interconnects, and a couple of types that I like better, but the Black Mamba has going for it the things you were talking about. It's monocrystal copper with six nines purity, so it is uncommonly smooth and organic. It is terminated with *very nice* AQ silver-plated RCAs that run $40/set on their own. It's very smooth and musical, but resolution is good as well, and unfailingly musical.

If you want to spend a little more and get more speed and transparency, try to score some Zu Wylde on eBay through the zu_promos vendor. You get the cables with free shipping and Zu's 60-day trial period. The Wyldes were a $300-400/pair interconnect that's been discontinued. I have two pair in my #1 system, and in fact these replaced Kimber Heroes, which in turn replaced the AQ Black Mambas.

You can go to Audio Advisor and buy Black Mamba II's on any day in any quantity in any length, they break in quickly and easily, and always sound musical. But if you want a little more clarity, detail, and dynamics without introducing harshness, the Wyldes will do that, but you have to wait for the right auction to come up and jump on it. Also, the Wyldes require more burn-in; they start edgy and require a couple weeks of sending signal through them constantly to smooth out and come into focus. But once you do you'll probably have an interconnect you won't think about replacing for a long long time.

08-07-11: Mrtennis
hate to bust your baloon, but warm and transparent cannot co exist. check the definition of "transparent" and warm".
Hadn't really thought about that, but that's fundamentally true: "Warm" means a tonal balance tilted toward the bass with some rolloff of the highs. Transparent requires fast risetime, which means frequency response way out to the ultrasonic range.

I stand by my earlier recommendation of the AQ Black Mamba II for its smoothness and clarity without being bright.

However, in my experience, the Cambridge components tend to sound a bit bright and forward. The Black Mambas might help, as well as sitting the CDP on a set of weight-correct Vibrapods.