Duleland break in time

Nice summary @mitch2 

Lots of work on your part and I really appreciate your passion and interest in these cables.  I think your post is spot in terms of the differences between WE and Duelund. Spot on.  As to which one sounds best in a given system, well that will depend on the sonic priorities of the individual and the overall sound personality of the system the cables are placed in. 

I think the added plastic layer of the WE wire is causing more of a closed in and less energetic performance in the presence area.  I should say I think it is a factor, however not the only factor as you pointed out. 

Now one can change the outcome slightly by the connectors chosen. 

- Cardas - more overall warmth
- Furutech - more resolution and air
- KLEI - very neutral and closest to bare wire connection I have heard 

@mitch2 thanks for the review and work that went into it :-)!
On a side note, I made an interesting pair of Bi-wired speaker cables using two individual runs of 16 gauge Duelund wire and two individual runs of 12 gauge Duelund wire per speaker. 
I tried the 12 gauge going to the lower speaker terminations and the 16 gauge going to the upper speaker terminations. then at the suggestion of an Audiogon member, I crisscrossed the wires meaning one 12 and 16 gauge on the lower speaker terminations and the duplicate for the upper speaker terminations. Results were rewarding, worth a try!

So I was able to try more cable comparisons this weekend.  I limited the comparisons to the tinned, stranded, copper Duelund and Western Electric (i.e., WE) wires....Nos. 3,4,5, and 6 on my list three posts down.

No. 6 was very nice, as I remember it but simply a slightly less "big-sounding" version of the 10 awg WE wire ( No. 3).  

I hammered No. 4 (the star-quad Duelund wire) on the Cable Cooker for two more days (it had previously been thoroughly conditioned back when I made them months ago) and then played some music.  The No. 4 cable did everything the twisted pair of Duelund wire (No. 5) did, only on steroids.  I really like the sound of this cable (No. 4) with my big amps and low'ish efficiency speakers.  Although both were cut from the same cloth, the sound of the larger No. 4 was much fuller and displayed more body than the single-wire version (No. 5) and the bass of No. 4 was powerful and detailed. 

There is not too much difference in the gauge of the star-quad Duelund cables (i.e., 9 awg) and the single-run 10 awg WE cables but IMO in the bass, the larger Duelund wires sounded just a touch bigger and fuller, with a slight bit more impact.  These are not big differences but subtle.  From the mid-bass through the upper midrange I hear the WE wire exhibiting a touch more warmth and body while the Duelund wire sounds very slightly more extended in the upper frequencies.

I would be very happy with any of the stranded, tinned copper cables used in my comparisons.  Since I have options, the two best tinned and stranded speaker cables I have tried so far, in my system, and to my ears are the star-quad Duelund cables (No. 4) and the 10 awg WE cables (No. 3).  The differences are so subtle it could come down to liking whichever is hooked up at the time.

I would like to try one additional set of cables and since I have a bunch of vintage WE wire, I will be making a bi-wire pair using two star-quad runs per speaker of the 10 awg WE wire - for an aggregate 7 awg to each binding post or 4 awg per channel.  I believe I can maybe just fit the 7 awg aggregate wire size into Furutech's FP-201 spades but this may also be an excellent time to give the KLEI™Harmony Banana connectors a try.  The KLEI™ Bananas are supposed to accommodate wire size up to 6 awg, so they may be perfect for this very large cable.  I will let you all know how those turn out.

The KLEI will need some 150 hours before some initial brightness completely disappears. I know you use a cooker, but wanted you to know. After that they sound very neutral as if using bare wire only. I have used these on 16,12, and 10 gauge WE and Duelund wire with great results. I do not think they can accommodate the combination of two WE10 stranded wires. They accommodate a properly solder tinned 10 ga WE wire almost perfectly with little room for a second as I recall.