Similar sound characteractics to MIT cables?

If you want relaxed, laid back (?), clear, dynamic, natural without harshness, I recommend older CARDAS designed around 2000. They take a long time (100+ hours) to break in, but in the end sound great IMO. They were tuned in and designed on Magnepan speakers. I have owned the 6 foot maggies for 40 years FYI.

Cardas Golden Cross speaker

Cardas Cross

For a slightly more neutral sound try Burley Wire cables from Reno Hi-Fi. They are made by a guy that works for Pass Labs and are cheaper (two 8 foot lengths $695). Unknown but great. No break in needed.

Good t know!  Sharing is caring...play on.

The big advantage with Cardas and the older ones especially you never can go wrong.

In the past I visited different people with Wilson Audio speakers. Many played with Krell amps and preamps. They played best with Transparent.

Because the speakers and amps needed these cables tot get the control over the mid and high frequencies. Even with Kimber cables the overall sound was less compared to Transparent.

At that time I sold a lot of Nordost. Even in the Wilson Audio with Krell sets you got a much faster and controlled low freq. And even more details in the high frequencies. But......the lack and loss of the involving middle frequencies was unacceptable. So Transparent was the best choice.

But I wanted to let them look further. I hope you understand that you loose in the low and high frequencies details which are there. When you use different amps and speakers you would not have these limitations. That is why you can create a superior endresult when you know all the properties. You can think 3-4 steps further to make decisions earlier.

People often test and buy cables at the end. And use it for tuning. I use it as a part of the whole set. This way they even become more important. I gave shootouts to make people understand that you can create a much higher endresult when you use a much better cable. Even with less expensive amps and sources.

When you know the properties of amps and sources as well, you also will understand ealier which cable brand you can use.

I bought my first MIT cables about 30 years ago at a garage sale not because I had preconceived notions of improved sound but because I thought they looked really neat. I now have another pair that I acquired through a trade simply because I needed spade connectors, again, not expecting any magic. Consistently, on these forums I’ve admitted to a relative inability to discern subtleties in sound modifications so consider myself less than an expert when it comes to differences in sound related to conductors however constructed. 

However, when I installed these Terminator 2 wires even I heard an increase in bass output. Although I’m not a big lover of bass I was convinced if they were responsible for this change, whether or not a positive outcome for a given individual, it must be modifying the delivery of other frequencies as well.  I decided to look for an explanation of these “boxes” and viewed a you tube presentation by MIT. It was very informative but what I primarily came away with is that all conductors make changes in signal accuracy and without modification a non-linear signal not representative of the source is what the speaker sees. It seems the main purpose of the box, then,  is to recreate a linear signal. 

If, in fact, it does that then we should hear a more accurate representation of what was introduced at the source. Even though I don’t necessarily hear it myself all wires must change the nature of information being delivered. I believe, then, that for those who have the sensitivity to hear the subtleties I described will choose wires that match their taste, not because they are more accurate, but because they simply best match their tastes. Now that I THINK i get what MIT is saying, I’ll chose accuracy over other considerations for choosing wires and I’ll keep the MIT wires in my system.  

My setup used in this example is as follows:
Shanling CDS100; Theta Casablanca preamp in stereo mode; Ayre V3 amp; Martin Logan Ethos speakers

When I used to sell MIT cable I found the only other brand that sounded similar was Tara Labs.  I used my influence as a salesman to get in every cable that I could get my hands on in order to stay competitive, and to find the best cable for my system of course.  

Tara Labs sounded almost exactly like MIT.  We didn't switch to them though.  The price / performance ratio was identical.  The huge benefit of Tara Labs of course was the lack of gigantic boxes.  

I'll leave out all the details of electronics, speakers, and other cable brands.  I must say though that I learned that Transparent cable don't put their networks in parallel with the signal.  They put them in series.  Therefore they're not at all similar to MIT.  In fact I would never give them the time of day.  

On the first page of comments one is from an MIT distributor and he has the correct history between the two companies.