Transparent , Kubala , Luminous , or RS Poiema

Henryhk: I have not yet heard the Stealth speaker cables. I know a couple people who use the Dream speakr cable and swear by these things. I am reluctant to listen to them as I might not be able to send them back....and their cost is scarey. And still to this day, speaker cables affect the sound less than phono cables, ICs and PCs in my system. As I replace each PC with the Dream PC, perhaps the speaker cable will affect the sound even greater...I don't know. This coming week I will finally get a chance to hear the Indra vs. the Jade cables in my system. The result of this will set the stage for the 4 ICs to be used here. I will report back on this after giving both products a fair shake. It is exciting to be so close to finally having my system fully configured with high-performance cables. It's the last thing I have focused on here.

I'm running MIT V1.1 IC's on my Krell Evo stuff now...wow, so freakin real sounding...alot cleaner then the Transparent and so much more compelling than non networked cables I've owned.

John, you have shared some outstanding and valuable information for all of us with your cable quest...thanks, cable shootouts are fun but require alot of time, effort, crawling around and bending over! I have followed many of your threads, you've got a big time system and I have great respect for your opinion.

I'm sort of in the camp with Dave b with regards to MIT, I just haven't found a cable that is more involving, more balanced, and makes me forget I'm listening to recorded music. Many traits that a cable brings out in a system have been thoroughly covered by everyone here, tonality, extention, midrange...etc. but unless I've missed it in a thread the most important thing to me in cabling a system is "can I live with this longterm." Does the presentation do it for me a month later, or 6 months later? (In our hobby 6 months is longterm!)

I'm not questioning anyone here, these are simply my findings. I have auditioned alot of cables, from dealers, loans from friends, and the cable company. For me, living with cables for a weekend, week, or even 2 weeks just isn't enough time for me to really get comfortable tuning my system. I read alot of comments about dropping in a cable here or a pc there and right away WOW, it blows such and such away. I would caution anyone, especially someone new to the hobby to be careful about such claims, immediate impact is easy to ascertain but is it right for you when the "newness" wears off. Thats another great thing about audiogon, buying used so you can really give a product a shot and either keeping it or get some or all of your investment back.

Again, I'm not calling anyone out here, goodness knows I've been on the nirvana quest for many a year. I enjoy swapping out cables that I own on occasion, it really allows you to get to know your system.

I read alot of comments about dropping in a cable here or a pc there and right away WOW, it blows such and such away. I would caution anyone, especially someone new to the hobby to be careful about such claims, immediate impact is easy to ascertain but is it right for you when the "newness" wears off.

I agree, caution is imperative before making such a conclusion. And yet there have been a few times where a cable immediately and so handily outperformed one I had been using for so 5 years. The NBS statement to Purist Dominus transition was such a time. Trying the NBS cables hours later or days later was the same. And going back to the NBS, which I held onto for many months after loading my system with Dominus, was futile. In some cases, such as this, it is inevitable at first listen. Btw, the result was the same with K-S Emotion cables over the NBS; overall I preferred the Dominus in my system. It was not synergy, but rather my preferences of one product's strengths/weaknesses to another. A local audiophile friend would have chosen the K-S and I understand exactly why. But we both concluded upon first listen to either the K-S or Purist, that the NBS was far far behind both of these.

There have been many times where just in a matter of minutes, I know that a product will NOT work. This can be a tube that has a fatiguing edginess (in the mids or trebles), a cable that squelches dynamic contrasts, a line stage that truncates the harmonic overtones, etc. For such flaws, dismissing a product quickly is easy. No amount of fiddling around is going to resolve such issues when I can go back to what I had before and be done. Even when the "new" product brings on some refinements of its own, if the result is fatigue or less involvement, out it goes.

The challenge is when we try something new and then we sit there struggling to hear a difference. The only way to come to a conclusion is to play for a few days with one and then go back to the other. I have not found that I need more than this amount of time to know if one allows me to escape into the music more than the other. If they are truly a draw, which so far has only been the case for me with a couple pairs of different tubes and some tonearms, I go with the less-expensive one and sell off the other. Now if you are looking to completely overhaul your system with cables, that's a different story. With all the combinations, even within one manufacturer's line, that's a lot of time. There is one other factor, product burn-in, that we have to take into account before we perform a shootout.

cable shootouts are fun but require alot of time, effort, crawling around and bending over!

Oh so true and I am happy to know I am close to being done with all this. Removing and replacing cables over and over is not a good thing anyway.

After much time spent auditioning my MIT Oracles and many other cables mentioned here I have fallen for the Krell Cast system...it is a quantum leap in music reproduction. My last demo session was spent with my daughter...she heard the superiority of the cast cable immediately. She said, the 2nd one (cast) makes the band sound like they are right in front of me...enogh said!