Fortunes on Cables?? Help!

At a far more palatable price, and in my opinion, much better sound than even the top Siltech, I would consider Bear Labs Silver Thunder or Nirvana S-L depending on whether silver or copper, respectively, float your boat. Both are reasonably priced such as these things go. I use Bear Labs throughout my system with Lamm electronics and Kharma speakers, and I'm not looking back. Like you, the Kharma Reference gold cables I'm sure are nice, but the price is--as you say--"ruinous". I'm sticking with my Bear Labs.

Dkuipers, could you please be kind enough to give us the infomation on Bear Labs. Do they have a website, what are their prices, anything you can give. Thank you very much.

The Bear Labs cables are made by Randy Bradley, he's a well-known custom builder of tube amps and preamps in upstate NY, which is how I first heard of him. The cables came as a real surprise, a friend that also owns Kharma speakers recommended them to me--because I was too cheap to consider Kharma's own cables :-) The speaker cables I have are silver braid, very professionally done, with spades on all ends, I think he charged me $700 for them (8 foot). The interconnects are REALLY good, I think they go for $400 a pair (I bought a full system re-wiring for a package price, so I don't recall the exact pricing per piece). I can tell you that I listened to Silver Audio and Kimber silver cables, which I thought would be logical alternatives, but the Bear Labs stuff was (IMO) much more coherent and VERY smooth. You should try them! Here's Randy's email, I don't think he has a website: bearlabs@coollink.net Good luck!

See comments at "system matching" under "speaker cable".

Dkuipers, thanks for your illuminating advise. Will be contacting Randy Bradley very soon.