Cardas Clear Speaker Cables?

I would try the Silversmith Fidelium cables for a 30 day trial period, they sound great in my system. I sold my Cardas cables after hearing them. Happy listening.

@decooney - Incredibly helpful. Thank you! 

I'm somewhat new to the audio equipment world. I've often read that one's taste will evolve as one tries different equipment over time. Initially, I'd set out to build a relaxed and somewhat warm sounding system. I think, to your point, the relaxed QLN speakers along with the EL34 tubes and, to top it off, a DAC that has a reputation for being non-forward, leaves the system without a sense of bite or incisiveness. Lot's of spaciousness and air. Just little in the way of attack. 

I'll definitely restock my CJ 120 with those recommended tube amps on this next go-around. Great advice. Thank you agaain! 

@joeyfed55 - I will look into those, Joey! Thank you!  

Depends how much bite or incisiveness you want as to whether tube type or speaker cables will get you there. If you’re looking for the CJ amp to sound more like the Gryphon I don’t think you’ll get there with either. The Mullard EL 34 are warmer and more laid back than say Genalex KT77 so a tube change like that could help a little bit. Siemens or Telefunken small signal tubes will also liven things up. I’d try changing both tube types individually before cables. The Clear cables will give you more detail but probably not the energy and drive you’re looking for when compared to the Cygnus. I remember when you were seeking advice on the “older” CJ sound. As it turns out, could the more “modern” CJ sound have been what you were looking for 🤔. You can always upgrade the CJ amp to the SE version. Probably not what you want to hear though 😁.

To @bluethinker sure, no worries. Yes you have the correct understanding of what might be occurring here. For your awareness - this is really no different than many of us have experienced over many different speakers, amps, tube, cable, source, and or room changes too.

Where you may have gotten off course was the former output tubes wearing down, and you went out and bought the re-issue Mullard’s. I had the same thing occur with my preamp a few years back, I wanted to spare my vintage 6SN7 quad of tubes, put in the new Mullard’s in and while it had nice warm body, I lost some of the detail and zing on top. Some of these tubes are designed this way on purpose.

I did not want to mention further sending you down a Rabbit hole, but the small signal vintage Telefunken like @marco1 mentioned is one trick or the GL KT77s (more open and detailed), and some others like basic JJ EL34s are more detailed but have less body etc. Its just a balancing act. This is why I mentioned the Ray tubes, (not public, ime they are upper line tested PSVanes) relabeled and sold as Ray, and some folks in the headphone seen are commenting they have a little more air/upper detail with a nice balance, still kind of neutral. Its really as simple as you might be imagining. I dont know if the new PSVane Horizon is more neutral or not in an EL34. That might be worth asking on the CJ forum if anyone has tried them yet. Tubes can sound differently in different amp brands / models / circuits as you may know.

A few of us replied to "wait" and "not buy speakers cables yet" because we know that changing upstream tubes or amp tubes or maybe you could borrow (demo) another DAC from someone real quick to test that too. Sounds like a lot of it tilted you to the warm direction. Maybe one change at one or two of these upstream can tilt it back to more open, detailed, airy, and dynamic. We all go through this when we started - pairing up a bunch of components not originally designed to work together.  

So we go back and fine tine up/down the stack here and there til it balances out where we want the sound to go - and so forth.

Agree with @decooney except using JJ tubes 😎. Quite frankly, never used a JJ tube that I liked. They’re cheap and coupled with the fact that your amp needs a bunch of ‘em you’ll be tempted. I just replaced a set of reissue Mullard EL34 with Genalex KT 77 in an amp of mine and based on what I’m hearing they should do what you’re looking to do with your Classic 120’s. Whether it will be enough, only you can determine that. But it’s a good place to start and much cheaper than NOS Telefunken’s or Clear Speaker cables.  Oh, but definitely check first with CJ to be sure you can use KT 77’s.