Anyone tried Shunyata's Antares interconnect yet ?

I have now listened Shunyata's antares/orion cables few days in my system. I'm almost ready to buy them. They are great cables. They are really special in many things. Maybe the only thing that is bothering me is the bass. It is very fast and detailed, which are absolutely great things, but maybe little lean (as Dgad also noticed). But on the other hand, maybe shunyata is just offering more natural bass and other top cables I have used produce just unnaturally full bass. I don't know. What I do know is that shunyata offers bass that has more resolution and details than any other cable I have tried (Transparent, Siltech, Cardas, Analysis plus ..). Maybe it is the fastness and high resulution that causes the phenomenon that sounds of some bass instruments don't have that weight and dimensionality they ideally could have. Well, I still have 4 days time with antares/orion cables, so maybe I know more after that time.

But on the other hand, maybe shunyata is just offering more natural bass and other top cables I have used produce just unnaturally full bass.

Mkilpi, this is the conclusion I've come to. With the Atma-Sphere MA-1s running Shunyata power cords, Andromeda spkr cables, and Antares IC from the preamp, the bass is neither lean nor boomy, bloomy, or smeary. For classical, try the 'wolf hunting' bass line that opens the second movement of Sibelius' Second Symphony with Barbirolli on Chesky. Or listen to the massive bass drum whacks at the end of Shostakovich's 'Festive Overture'. Air moves. The fundamental is the there, the harmonics(!) are there, the quick dampening of the drum by the percussionist is there. I wonder if what we may think of as weight is a smearing of harmonics - the more weight the more tonally undifferentiated the bass?

Cheers,
Tim

Mkilpi,

After extensive listening to the Shunyata cables I came to the conclusion that while initially they seem to be "lean" on the bass side, that really they are producing an accurate sonic picture of the original event. In other words, I believe most other cables overweight the bass (kind of like a built in loudness switch).

I tried the previous Shunyata interconnects and Speaker cables.
Even with all their glowing reviews and my being a proud owner of Shunyata Hydra 8 and 2 and the Annaconda Alpha power cords ,I thought then they sounded lean.

Descibe how you will about the bass line being lean or full. To me, the bass is the foundation. It should be neither lean or boomy.
A boomy bass or a lean sounding bass will ruin the feeling.

Try not to convince yourself it is a more natural sound. It may or may not be , it comes down to what you prefer.

This is a most interesting thread. I stumbled across it.

I owned the Andromeda speaker cable and the King Cobra V2 power cords, and now own Python Helix and Taipan Helix, and my reaction to them is that the bass is less forceful and weighty, too. I'm not sure I would agree that "accurate" bass is lean. A standup bass is NOT lean, and if every recording of a standup bass is lean, the component producing it is wrong, plain and simple.
I have owned Shunyatas for years, and I like them, but, objectively speaking, I find the weight in the lower octaves to be a factor in ALL components sounding what is called "neutral." Usually, this means that "lean" is more neutral, in which case Nordost wins the race. This isn't how I hear it in real life, and I hear cellos up close, I hear pianos up close, I hear symphony orchestras at least 6 times a year. Without a real-life reference, it is easy to convince oneself that a component is accurate. However, as any musician knows, the midbass is the foundation (NOT the low bass -- ever) of the orchestra. I like my Shunyatas, but they have clearly moved in the wrong direction in the midbass and maybe even the upper bass/lower midrange, although they are inarguably more linear than the older ranges, which sucked out the upper midrange, but had positively concussive bass. the older range looked like this:

-------/\------------v, with the "/\" being the mid/upper bass and the "v" being the dip in the upper midrange. The current line looks like this:
------------- but it is also (arguably) less forceful (dynamically speaking) in the mid/upper bass. Linear? Perhaps. True to Life? Ummmmmmmm, I don't think it's quite there yet. Not unless the cello I hear in real life is "inaccurate."