Cardas cables

I upgraded from Cross to Golden Cross speaker cables several years ago after doing an in-home audition of the Golden Cross. My recollection is that, sonically, they are very similar in overall character. The principal difference was one of increased refinement (don't know how selse to put it--better resolution, perhaps). Not cheap, but it was enough of an improvement in things I care about that I decided to go for it. You might want to check out the Golden Reference, too. I don't have any excperience with it, but... My opinion on the balanced vs. unbalanced thing, and I do not speak from a whole lot of experience, is that components with true balanced circuitry seem sound better if you use balanced interconnects, sometimes *much* better. And this is true even for short runs of interconnect. In my system, going to balanced interconnects between Levinson No. 39 and Pass X-150 (sometimes Adcom GFP-750 in between) made a tremendous improvement in resolution and bass "weight." The change was so significant---I had not been hearing my components at their best--that I wonder how and why the high-end reviewing community does not push harder on this point. With some components, I think running them unbalanced is a sure way to cripple your system. This has been my experience. Curious to know what others have learned.

I use cardas cross in my system, but I do think the golden cross is bettter. Drubin described it pretty well. My recommendation is that if your system is still in a lot of flux, use normal cross, but if you have very good equipment then using the golden cross or golden reference might make sense. I recommend trying both of the golden types to see which sounds best with your system.

Thank you both.Sure,my system is always in a flux.Also,over half the recordings I care to listen to are so poor that increasing the resolution too much will actually spoil the impression.So,I will get Cross,though Golden Cross would make me a better audiophile.