Hi, Folks: I finally reached the end of this interminably long thread and wanted to throw in my own experiences with the HF Cables. For full disclosure: I have been on the Gon for about 13 years, contributed to and started many threads, bought and sold a lot of equipment and music (I have 10,000 LP's). I am a self-employed independent sales engineer selling components and assemblies to the medical device industry and have no affiliation whatsoever to HFC or any other audio manufacturer. You can go on Audioasylum under the name rlawry to see my system. Glad to get that out of the way.
I have a good, long-time friend who uses the name Powder 1 that has had many of the same equipment pieces as myself, including Essence and Intuitive Design gear. When he contacted me a year or so ago and recommended I try the HF Cables I looked at the prices and decided to hold off. I have had some very expensive and well-regarded cables in the past and always found them to make a difference but not on the same level as that from changing components, i.e. it required paying a lot of money for what I felt were relatively small sonic changes. My most recent cables used carbon bybee filters and I had them for some time.
So a month or so ago I finally I took the plunge and bought a used pair of entry-level CT-1 cables between my turntable and phono stage. I have a Lyra Titan I cartridge that outputs 0.5 mV and the DIN connector terminates in a pair of RCA outputs. Let me say that the cables were a miserable failure and I heard one weak channel of music, thinking that something had gone wrong with my system elsewhere, but it turned out to be the HF cables. Apparently their resistance is too high for these very weak signals.
Using them between my phono stage and preamp was an entirely different matter. I would term it as no exaggeration to say that it was the biggest change I have heard in 40 years in audio. I don't know if I need to reiterate what so many other posters here have described, but that my system had a whole new level of realism, immediacy, and speed. Adding another CT-1 between my preamp and power amp and a pair of CT-1 speaker cables added to this astounding effect, at least in my system. It is amazing to hear my system from a cold start transform from a small, flat, involving sound into one with the type of dimensionality I am hearing. I plan to move up the line and am currently taking bids for my gold fillings.
So you can slam me for paying ridiculous prices for these and I don't really care. I don't have time to research, design, and build my own cables as I finally did with my single-driver speakers, but perhaps one day I will when I pay off my mortgage and my remaining 2 boys (I have 4) complete college. Maybe then I will ask them for a loan.
Hope everyone is enjoying their music. It is going to take me a long time to re-listen to my 10,000 LP's but it will be fun.
I have a good, long-time friend who uses the name Powder 1 that has had many of the same equipment pieces as myself, including Essence and Intuitive Design gear. When he contacted me a year or so ago and recommended I try the HF Cables I looked at the prices and decided to hold off. I have had some very expensive and well-regarded cables in the past and always found them to make a difference but not on the same level as that from changing components, i.e. it required paying a lot of money for what I felt were relatively small sonic changes. My most recent cables used carbon bybee filters and I had them for some time.
So a month or so ago I finally I took the plunge and bought a used pair of entry-level CT-1 cables between my turntable and phono stage. I have a Lyra Titan I cartridge that outputs 0.5 mV and the DIN connector terminates in a pair of RCA outputs. Let me say that the cables were a miserable failure and I heard one weak channel of music, thinking that something had gone wrong with my system elsewhere, but it turned out to be the HF cables. Apparently their resistance is too high for these very weak signals.
Using them between my phono stage and preamp was an entirely different matter. I would term it as no exaggeration to say that it was the biggest change I have heard in 40 years in audio. I don't know if I need to reiterate what so many other posters here have described, but that my system had a whole new level of realism, immediacy, and speed. Adding another CT-1 between my preamp and power amp and a pair of CT-1 speaker cables added to this astounding effect, at least in my system. It is amazing to hear my system from a cold start transform from a small, flat, involving sound into one with the type of dimensionality I am hearing. I plan to move up the line and am currently taking bids for my gold fillings.
So you can slam me for paying ridiculous prices for these and I don't really care. I don't have time to research, design, and build my own cables as I finally did with my single-driver speakers, but perhaps one day I will when I pay off my mortgage and my remaining 2 boys (I have 4) complete college. Maybe then I will ask them for a loan.
Hope everyone is enjoying their music. It is going to take me a long time to re-listen to my 10,000 LP's but it will be fun.