Cable brands that work well with Cardas?

@decooney it’s the strong Thiel upper-midrange, which they are known for. The parsec speaker cable definitely tamed the tweeter a bit but it did not have very good bass, so I sold it. Still have some parsec XLR interconnects but they don’t seem to have as much influence on the sound. I am running a full Bryston "cubed" stack (BDP-3, BDA-3, 17B3, 4B3). Walls and ceiling are treated.

I don’t have a Cardas digital cable (Transparent Premium AES/EBU there). I am using short Cardas Cross XLRs on the DAC, and Golden Presence RCAs on the phono.

So far these Transparent Ultra Gen V speaker cables are the best match. They have good bass and transparency without emphasizing any frequency. I agree that the Clear Reflection should have been the ticket. Bass was phenomenal but it also sounded harsh - as if they were not broken in enough, although they were trade-ins, not brand new. That is not what I would expect so I don't think I was imagining it.

I am curious to try the older Golden Reference when a used pair comes up. I tried Golden Presence speaker but it has some extra upper-mid air or "presence" that the GR is not supposed to. There is something about the Clear line that I just don’t like. When I tried a Cygnus phono cable it seemed to emphasize upper mids and bring vocals forward in an unrealistic manner as well.

@dr3 "also sounded harsh - as if they were not broken in enough, although they were trade-ins, not brand new."

Fwiw, the exact same occurred for me, on my first go-around. I came from the direction you want to revert to now.  I had just resold my two pairs of Golden Reference ICs to guys with edgy SS amps wanting to stream various qualities of content.  Those Gold Refs were  part of a brief rerun Cardas did on those over a year ago. After those, I was still looking for smoothness, transparency with nice tone and texture. On first attempt, tried new Clear Reflections and Clear Cygnus. Liked them okay first try. Both got returned prematurely - as I painstakingly realized later. I should know better having done Cardas for 30+ years now. Duh.  

Coiled up Cardas sound bad imo right out of the bag/box. Absolutely benefit after 14-21 days (30 days preferred) just to relax the conductors and dialectric inside. Everything events out given some patience and not fighting it. Retested this theory many times even with used cables from Cardas and Analysis Plus. Impatience gets the best of us some times. It's not ears/brain adjusting.  There is real truth to what George Cardas reports here, along with other reasons why these damn cables take so long to settle in. Weird! Exact same thing use to occur with my older Golden Cross interconnects if coiled up in a bag/box sitting a side on rotation. Expect 14+ days, all over again.  

Round-2: A year later, 2nd retry. Today In my system today is two pairs of Clear Reflection ICs at two sources and one pair Clear Cygnus between my tube preamp and two tube monobock tube amps. The Clear Refs were horrible the first 1-7 days, veiled over, could not double-up end to end, at all. Cygnus was weird too, grainy when brand new. With added reminders and pressure from an insider colleague, gave it 30 days of relaxing, settling in, more play time. Low and behold - Wallah, there it is!

If you do go with Golden Reference, give them time too. imo, I’d look real close again at your beloved older gen "Cardas Cross on the dac". I still have some older Cross too. Nice but just not at the same level of the newer design, quality, of later conductor and dialectric materials now. Maybe you can retry some loaners from TheCableCo.

To triple-prove this time/relaxing theory, I compared 30 day old In-use Clear Ref ICs to a 2nd brand new unused coiled up pair of Clear Ref ICs, side by side. Was like listening to completely different cables. Weird, perplexing, all of the above. Then gave that 2nd pair a full 30 days too, and it all evened out and came into focus too.

@decooney I am just reading your reply now however I came on to report recent developments. I will admit I did not give the Cygnus phono cable more than a few minutes of listening because it was too far off my expectations, however the Clear Reflection speaker cables were left in place for 2 weeks with minimal disturbance. After the first day there was an improvement but there was still a problem with the highs that did not go away until I reverted to the Parsec (temporarily).

Since upgrading the Parsec speaker cables to Transparent Ultra and enjoying a more full range sound, I believe the extra transparency allowed me to detect some smaller problems upstream that the Parsec was probably masking.

1) Vinyl playback was leaner than it should be and there it was again, that Golden "Presence" I had such high hopes for, but this time in the form of interconnects on the turntable and phono stage. So I reverted those interconnects to Parsec and smooth vinyl fullness was back!

2) Next I looked to the Cross XLRs on the DAC, as you suggest there may be a deficiency there, so I moved Parsec XLRs up there from the amp. Since the amp position was now vacant I asked my dealer if he had any Clear Reflection XLRs on sale but he did not. He did have a good deal on a demo pair of Transparent Super and this turned out to be a perfect match.

Very happy with the way things turned out: Parsec on all source components, Transparent from preamp down, no glare and a nice clear soundstage. The GP by the way works very well on my tube system, just not a good match for my Bryston system I guess!