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Audioquest Firebird Zero

I've tried several speaker cables over the past year; Shunyata Alpha and Sigma, Wireworld Silver Eclipse series 7, Audioquest Oak and Redwood, Audience Au24 SX, and I own Clarus Crimson speaker cables. I prefer the Clarus over all of the aforementioned speaker cables. I've had the Audioquest Firebird Zero speaker cables on loan for three days. My initial thoughts were everything is a little clearer through them compared to my Clarus Crimson. Not a night and day difference, but definitely clearer. The Clarus are slightly more 3-dimensional to my ears. My wife on the other hand just keeps saying the AQ sounds sharper, clearer, there are less impurities in the music. I'm not sure what she means by impurities, but she keeps repeating it. Maybe she means a darker background? My plan was to have a home audition of the Thunderbird Zero speaker cables, but they had banana plugs on the amplifier end and I can't use them. I took the Firebirds with the logic that if I can't hear a difference between them and my current cables I didn't need to have a home audition of the Thunderbirds. $14K for an eight foot pair of speaker cables is freaking crazy and sad! It would be easy for me to dismiss it  because there isn't a night and day difference, but once you hear the difference it's very hard to ignore. Financially I just can't justify spending $14K on speaker cables and hope to hear the AQ Thunderbirds sometime next week. Once again I'm reminded that absolutely everything makes a difference. For those that can easily afford $14K, $20K or more speaker cables I understand, because cables can be equivalent to a component change. Does it ever end?
ricred1
ctsooner
2,480 posts
 
they may not want to sell under that.  DBS is to deplete the charge from building up on the cable or something like that.  I doubt length has anything to do with DBS (or visa versa).  

I haven't heard those specific combo's, but the bi wire is going to work best if your speaker is made to be bi wired.  I will say that you need to audition the wire to see what's best for you.  
markush
31 posts
 
I heard that Robin Hood and William Tell should be absolutely outstanding in price/performance ratio. And when going for a Zero&Bass combo/bi-wiring version it should be a major upgrade in addition. Has anyone auditioned, compared them?
kennyc
1,195 posts
 
Here’s a comparison of between AudioQuest Zero speaker cables:
https://blog.artsexcellence.nl/audioquest-folk-heroes-luidsprekerkabels-review/

Seems to be a very favorable price/performance and as you move up the line you get significant improvements... along with usual  logarithmic increases in price.  
markush
31 posts
 
Oh thank you very much - very interesting! Thee seems though to be quite little review stuff and talk about the Zero speaker cables out there yet. Which is quite strange as they provide such a great value and performance.
kennyc
1,195 posts
 
From what I've read so far, it seems the AudioQuest Zero speaker cables are at least very good alone, but "major" jump in performance when adding the matching BASS cable.  

Some folks gripe that the  AudioQuest Zero speaker cables are a rip off because you have to buy another set of BASS cables in addition to sound great, but I look at AudioQuest Zero+BASS as a single product that easily out-competes with cables that are much more expensive including some of AudioQuest's other offerings.
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