Analysis Plus Solo Crystal Oval 8...OMG!!

@jtcf seems so. Thx.  

After these burn in a little more, I'll let them run for a bit (set them a aside a bit) and still have a pair of TJ Full Music 6SN7s coming a buddy talked me in to trying.  He's using them with his new AP  cables and his new DAC tube in his preamp.  He now says his AP solos are keepers but had to tune the front end a bit more to smooth things out since "everything comes through" with the APs Crystal Solos on his system too.  

Some people say cables don't make a difference. :)  In a revealing system they sure do and can make it better or worse when garbage-in garbage out applies. 

jtcf,
got your msg and i'll post it here after 3+ weeks of burn in.    

AP Solos Interconnects:  
The AP Crystal Solo IC cables settled ever so slightly, and while they are a little smoother now, they still can be like focusing a closeup high definition camera right up close to someone's face on video. They do not filter out much like some other overly stranded copper cables can do. With the Crystal Solos,  If you play nice smooth audio tracks, you hear nice smooth audio.  If the content is grainy or edgy streamed tracks, what goes in comes out.  What to do...

DAC Tube:
I went back to my DAC and pulled the tube originally on the edge of bright and transparent and replaced it with a much smoother and rich sounding tube to help remedy the situation.  The improvement is a tad less detail to lose some of the grain, however at some loss of soundstage size and depth. A tradeoff I guess.  

Preamp Tubes:
I pulled the new-production TS 6SN7 tubes and went back to NOS driver tubes and another new pair of input tubes for a different tone.  This helped some and Its "clear" pun intended, once you add AP Crystal Solos, every other change in the chain becomes that much more evident - tube changes too!  They let you hear it.  

Changing the tube on the DAC helped the most.  I'll put another few weeks on this configuration and reevaluate one last time.  

I'm glad somebody's finally getting it. I've been trying to tell people over and over again that OCC single crystal wire is far superior then anything ofc. And anybody that spends 30-40 $50,000 for a piece of wire is a sucker as far as I'm concerned and you're getting taken to the cleaners by scammers. Harmonic Technology makes some of the best wire out there and it's not crazily priced like some of the other companies that are selling OCC single crystal wire. Neotech manufactures OCC wire and they're reasonably priced as well.

urbie19  I'm a fan of continuous cast wire also and used to have a loom of mid level HarmTech years ago in a different system.It's so interesting and at times frustrating how the exact same wire in different configurations can all sound different from each other.
This Analysis Plus Solo 8 is so revealing that any changes upstream are apparent.So we continue to make changes to find the perfect balance.Next up for me is demoing Zenwave cables (Neotech wire) and finding just the right tubes for the Dac(Tubadour).The Teo cables which I had high hopes for did not work out at all,not a good fit.Which is ok because it helped me to figure out at what juncture a cable or tube change is needed.

Conclusion:
Caving in. After trying several combos (over many years in different systems) I’ve concluded I cannot run two pairs of the exact same brand/type/model interconnects (in my system) from source to preamp to amps and enjoy the music. Intermixing CAN allow for the right amount of salt and pepper and spice.


Privately, a friend inside a well known manufacturer admitted this is something they realized can happen and now recommend people try it. Same goes for tubes as many leaned long before I did. Worth a try.

I just proved this as a viable option (in my system) in both directions, and people with symmetry obsessions can stop reading here, just kidding, kinda...

A) If I run two pairs of the AP Crystal Solos OCC RCAs, its too lean.

B) If i run two pairs of my Cardas it was too fat on older versions and too lean on newer versions.

C) INTERMIXING one AP Crystal Solo (OCC) pair and one Cardas Parsec pair works really well in my particular system. I have owned/tried many other Cardas models in the past.This led me to AP.

Choosing "C".  

Your Mileage May Vary. Done listening to cables and compensating tube and cap changes for a while, now back to music. If you get stuck, give intermixing a try - it’s another viable option :)