The best speaker cables you’ve had


Simply put, the best you’ve owned and/or heard.

gochurchgo

Audio Note Sogon (2 meters) is what I own.  It is among the best I’ve heard.  I have also heard great performance from NBS Black Label wires.

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The best cable I have ever owned was the one that made me stop thinking about getting another one.

Blue jeans cables Deluxe - as they said they bring the goods to your speakers 

what more can be done ,even shielded  what more can you ask for $400 !!

they sound great  with my old ONKYO while working in my garage .

Audio Art AAC SC-5 ePlus Cryo. It's not an expensive cable but after it settled in (and it was all over the place while that happened) it's been a fantastic upgrade.

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@gochurchgo 

Funny post.  Good luck sorting things out.

Monster Cable I bought new in '86 for $30.  Still using them with my Dahlquists....  I think they are sufficiently 'burned in' 😉

Before you buy, get a schematic of your speaker. Some speakers, especially ESL's, have a resistor in series with the input. Solution: make up you own speaker cables with that specified resistance, and remove the resistor in the speaker. If you have mono blocks as I do, the speaker cable can be just short pieces of nichrome wire replacing that (probably garbage) resistor. Win + win.

@terry9 That's some pretty bogus advice there. Do you have a clue what you're talking about?  If you want to replace a resistor, do it with a quality component, not some hokey nichrome wire.  Either way, you're sure to 1) make no notable improvement and 2) void your warranty..

AntiCables SP3.1 and Flex 4.2, Zavfino Nova, Micca 14AWG (Amazon Chinese Cables) untested

The 14 gauge wire from Home Depot but I've also owned Anti-cables and some Kimber ones. They all sound the same. 

@jhnnrrs Well John, you’re not wholly wrong, I’ll give you that. Void the warrantee, true. The rest, not so much.

You have heard of wire wound resistors, perhaps? That’s "hokey nichrome wire", or some variant thereof. Guess you’d better tell Mills about your discovery. Thank goodness someone is too smart to fall for such "pretty bogus advice."

The best resistors, like Vishay VAR, consist primarily of a metal resistive component which is laser trimmed to provide a channel with the specified resistance. Any guesses as to which metal they use?

 

 

@gjrad i also own and love Kubala Sosna. They just gave me

the least amount of problems especially if every cable was Kubala Sosna from speaker cables to interconnect to power cable.

Another vote for Audience AU24SX.

Oh, and a shout out to @jl1ny – my second favorite were Virtual Dynamics David that I used many years ago!

Simple, just build your own.  Plenty of wire to try and plenty of formulas out there.  Try a few and you can forget about buying cables altogether.  Wire is wire and all you need to do is figure out the formula that works for you.  Under a hundred dollars to experiment.

@terry9 "The best resistors, like Vishay VAR, consist primarily of a metal resistive component which is laser trimmed to provide a channel with the specified resistance".  I'd prefer that to jury-rigging some pieces of nichrome trying to get the correct resistance.  I stand by my statement that there will be little or no improvement, and the loss of a 5 year warranty is a significant cost to pay for nothing.

By the way, they use nichrome wire in toasters because of the way it heats up when current is applied.  Maybe I can toast my english muffins over your speaker wire.

Sadly, John, Vishay VAR can dissipate a maximum of 0.4W of heat. A speaker resistor is often rated at 10 W or more. So Vishay VAR could only work in a large and expensive array, and then you would still need another conductor.

As for obtaining the required resistance, try a multimeter? Always at least three figures of accuracy. That’s 0.1%. Most OEM resistors are 5% at best.

Yes, they use nichrome wire in toasters, and in space heaters. And in aerospace. So what? And didn't you ever wonder how a resistor works - by dissipating electrical energy as heat?

Audioquest Bi-wire Bi-amp Oaks. Huge difference in sound quality over a double run of BlueJean 10 gauge wire.