Are Cardas Parsec cables Overkill for Zen Stream?

A $10 Monoprice cable will do just as well as an expensive boutique cable. Honestly! Wire is the last thing you need to worry about!

many love Cardas,  and many quite dislike...gotta listen first...and clearly some believe cables irrelevant...but even cable believers are quite divided on Cardas...

Probably would not help the sound quality. But, you can try. I would recommend Cardas if you try any. They have different tonal balance depending on the level you purchase. So, purchasing a inexpensive Cardas are going to be designed for your components.

Early on in my pursuit of the high end I purchased very high end cables for my speakers and they sounded bad… interconnects also. My gear was noisy (not the kind of noise you hear directly… but it produces fatigue). So they sounded terrible. Years later with a much better system I tried them again, they sounded great! Really enhanced the sound quality.

Typically you must have a certain level of components with their higher level of associated resolution and lower noise before interconnects cables start having a notable effect. Then as quality of components increase the effects become more pronounced. Typically I consider a $200 interconnects to be budget interconnects and those would be appropriate to try with a $2,000 component.

But as I say Cardas is made at different levels. If you go ahead and try them, I would really enjoy hearing your impressions.

A note, wires typically take about 100 - 200 hours of use to break in. They tend to sound a bit trebly and harsh at first. So, try not to judge immediately.