2017 Honest Cabling that doesn’t promote bankruptcy

@rotarius   Perhaps...but the one big advantage of the AQ interconnects is the 72V DBS system.  Once you  fire up your system you are getting 100% performance.  No cable run-in needed.

@hifiman5 The DBS system does sound interesting and I have not used it. Along with capacitance, I like to focus on the connector quality, materials & conductivity. That seems to make a big difference in SQ.

@hifiman5 

once you fire up your system you are getting 100% performance

while I love the DBS system and own a ton of AQ cable it has been my experience that
a) it takes 48-72 hours for the DBS field to fully form if you ever unplug it, and
b) like all cables the DBS equipped AQ will benefit from burn in, I just bought a set of WEL that had been sitting for six months disconnected and they needed 48 hours on my cable cooker to perform their best (despite the DBS boxes having been connected all along)

so do try AQ DBS cables but give them time to settle in

rotarius and folkfreak    Agree with both of you!  DBS keeps the dielectric in shape After you break in the cables originally.  Connector, conductor quality and dielectric always make a difference in my cable experiences.

I have owned both the AQ Niagara 72V DBS ICs and the Synergistic Research Tesla (various models) & Element-series actively-shielded cables. Both apply DC power to the dielectric, albeit by different designs (battery vs "MPC" wall wart power supply). I found both to sound excellent and sold me on the notion of charging the dielectric for improved sound quality, most notably the improvement in reducing the noise floor.

The AQ method provides a much cleaner installation with the battery packs attached to the cable and no external wiring, but the SR active-shielding allows tuning of the power source (via cost-effective mods to the MPC by fellow-member Michael Spallone) and changing the Tuning Bullets (introduced with the Tesla SE and carried on to the Element series).

Michael’s mods were a step-function improvement in sound quality across the board and the SR tuning bullets provide audible changes in the upper-frequency character of my system. Very nice to have the ability to slightly alter/tune the highly-hearing-sensitive upper-frequency region where the enjoyment of cymbals and female vocals is especially sensitive (to me) to open-ness and also glare depending on the individual system’s proclivities in that region.

Both cables provide excellent sound quality in my experience, but I personally give the nod to the SR implementation for the reasons noted above.

Dave