Cables:Harmonic/Nordost/Cardas

This is a tough call. This system is very new to you and you are going to speculate on some final touches. The chances that the result is still going to be satisfying to you in even three months are low. On the one hand you could take the considered route and try everything before you buy and then pay retail (since this is the only honourable course, right?). Arguably this represnts good economics because you have improved your chance of getting a synergistic balance in your system. On the other hand, with the whole system being new to you, and ditto this level of performance, I could equally argue just buy second-hand and take the risk. After you have lived with it for some months you will have a better idea of what you need to change about this system, and the issue may not be speaker cables, but one of your components. In fact I wouldn't mind betting this system changes your taste in music! And even if you do need to flick the cables, buying second-hand means the loss is not great. On balance the second course seems best to me in both the long and short term, unless you feel confident in the first. Of the cables you mention I would tend to go for the Cardas Cross even though this risks the system being a bit warm. I am not a fan of Harmonic Technology cables, not from a taste perspective but because they are very over-rated, and believe the Nordost Red Dawn is too system dependent for taking a punt on.

The Cardas is a safe bet, but it is a bit pricey. The Nordost is a little zippy in the upper midrange and treble, and requires VERY careful system/room matching. The Harmonic Tech. cables are a over rated and over priced in my opinion. Permit me to throw another hat in the ring. The Analysis Plus cables are (in each of their respective price catagories) very nicely balanced and don't require careful system matching. They are very detailed yet very musical. I think the the Silver Oval outperforms the Cardas and would be a little less expensive. Their Oval Nine would be comparable to the Cardas, and would be quite a bit less expensive.

If you read any of the negative reviews of Harmonic Tech. cables you will note that people offering these comments have not tried these cables in their system, at home, for a period of time long enough to let them burn in. I have owned Transparent, Kimber, and Tara Lab as well as listened to many other speaker cables and these only had a small change in tonal quality after break in. At best they got a little less bright and smoother over time. Please note that HT's sound like junk, until they burn in. This takes about 80 hours of continuous play. So I would give them a listen before buying anything else. You will be amazed at how good they are if given a proper amount of burn in time. I could not justfy spending my hard earned money on anything else. Their interconnects will provide even a greater improvement in your system. They have a 30 day money back return policy so you can't loose. These cables are built using science not snake oil as many others do.

You are welcome to your opinions Lost, but my negative reviews of the HT cables are due to six weeks with a full set of the cables, that the importer had used for two months previously. It is not fair of me to leap to conclusions, but my experience of cables led me to the suspicion that the purity of the HT sound was due to the single crystal structure of the conductors, but that the cable geometry, which appears to be very "garden variety" to me, was responsible for the phase errors that I heard in all of the HT cables. While the cables could be labelled promising, the phase errors, which in turn meant they had a less than even-handed presentation of all frequencies, mean that for me they do not belong in the high-end. I concede that these opinions relate to my experience in my system, and I am not going to claim that you are wrong about how they perform in yours. But I respectfully suggest that this forum is for the honest expression of personal opinions, and is not enhanced when someone attempts to disparage the opinions of others - particularly based on assumptions about the validity of those assumptions (such as - all those who don't agree with me failed to listen to burned in cables) for which you can not possibly have a factual basis.