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Cardas Clear Speaker Cables - From cable skeptic to beliver in one fell swoop

Hello,

For many years I have been happily living with various flavors of Mogami speaker cable during the many stages of my audio journey and felt that they did an excellent job at presenting music in a clear, neutral and honest way. For the money I still consider them an excellent choice.

Recently I decided to take a trip to the dark side and go against my belief that an esoteric cable won't offer much more in terms of SQ compared to my super short run (2ft) of Mogami 2921 cables.

As a first test I started by dipping my toes into the water with a pair of Cardas Neutral Reference which fairly quickly showed some promise that maybe I was wrong all this time. I felt that they didn't really do anything wrong and in fact did some things better than my Mogami's did.

After this test I found myself asking the question, "Hrmm, I wonder how a cable further up the chain would sound". I was liking what I heard so far so why stop now.

Next up I tried a pair of Cardas Golden Reference. After hearing these  It didn't take long to realize that My system was indeed being held back by using the cheaper cables all this time. I liked many things about the GR cables but ultimatly thought they added a bit too much salt and pepper to the sound and seemed to round off the bass more than I prefered. But, the new details and soundstage depth/width they extracted became addicting.

As before, I started asking myself another question again "If these GR cables are this good I wonder if a cable even furthur up the chain would give me everything the GR does without the drawbacks?".

This time I decided to just jump in head first and quit messing around. So I borrowed a set of Cardas Clear from the Cable Co with much fear after seeing the price of the cables.

As my time winds down borrowing these Clear cables I can feel my wallet starting sweat. In all honesty it only took about 2hrs from the time the first note started playing until I began to hear these cables start to do EVERYTHING right. Soundstage Width- Check, Soundstage Depth - Double Check, Bass Accuracy - Impressive is an understatement, Soundstage Detail and Clairity - Yup, Everywhere in spades.

So with all that said, I can say with 100% certainty that I'm writing the check. After hearing what these cables did for my system there is just no going going back no matter how painful the price tag is.

As they say ignorance is bliss. In my case if I didn't take a chance and swallow my pride then I would still probably be oblivious to how much more my system had to offer.

Any other Cardas Clear users hear? What are your findings?

Thanks


eniac26
eniac26 OP
97 posts
 
Cables are system dependent; therefore you can't get upset when someone doesn't like them. I too tried Cardas Clear in my system and found them dark, without detail. If they're great in your system, simple enjoy them.

Not sure if this was for me or not? If so, I don't see any previous response of mine that should lead someone to believe that I am "upset" that someone else has a different opinion of these cables then myself.

Only a fool would post in a cable forum and expect that everyone who responds will feel the same way about the cable being discussed.

In any case, I'm not usually one to post reviews (or much of anything for that matter given my 60 total posts in this forum since 2009), especially about cables, but in my system and to my ears there was something pretty remarkable about what these Clear speaker cables did at first and continued to do right up until I had to box them up and send them back.

Dunno, maybe this post will motivate other cable skeptics to give them a listen also if they have the means to do so. After all, they certainly changed my mind.
almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
A point that may be relevant is that Cardas Clear has a capacitance of 278 pf/foot, which is considerably higher than the capacitance of most other speaker cables. Mogami 2921 is more like 30 pf/foot. And by any chance was the Cardas Clear you tried significantly longer than the 2 foot length of your Mogami 2921? If so, that would increase the disparity in capacitance correspondingly.

While in general the capacitance of speaker cables is much less significant than it is for interconnect cables, if it starts getting up into many hundreds or even thousands of pf’s it is certainly conceivable that it could affect the sonics of the amplifier, in ways and to a degree that would be highly dependent on the design of the specific amplifier.

In any event, enjoy! Regards,
-- Al

garebear
1,178 posts
 
I have had several posts with Stringeen on his opinion about Cardas Cables I never got a straight answer if he has actually listened to the ''new'' Clear line. I do not think that he has and is basing his opinion(s) on the older Cardas cables in which based on any given system.....his opinion may not be too far off. However, by not listening to the Clear line and always posting negative comments  about Cardas Cables on every single Cardas post here on Audiogon  is getting old .........Cardas will be coming out with a Clear Beyond interconnect shortly. I own the Clear Beyond Speaker cables and Clear Rev 1 interconnects and looking at listening to the CB power cords as well. In  ''my system''...........this Cardas line sounds more like real music ...at least to me and that's what matters most   
almarg's avatar
almarg
9,670 posts
 
P.S. to my previous post: The reason for the relatively high capacitance per unit length of the Cardas Clear is most likely that it helps make possible the cable’s very low inductance (0.0176 microHenries/foot). The likelihood that a low inductance such as that will be beneficial (putting aside the potential effects of the high capacitance on the amplifier) will tend to be greatest if the impedance of the particular speaker is low at high frequencies, and if the length of the cable is longer rather than shorter.

Regards,
-- Al

lowrider57's avatar
lowrider57
5,418 posts
 
I’ve auditioned Cardas IC’s and speaker cables thru the Cable Company.
My findings were that the Clear line of cables were vastly superior to the old Cross cables. The earlier Cardas have a warm sonic signature with rolled-off highs. The Clear and Clear Light were much more transparent with more detail and extension. Soundstaging was wider and deeper, but still had some of the Cardas signature warmth. I found them very enjoyable in my system.

It should be noted that if you are using fully balanced components, there may not be a drastic difference in sonics between IC’s.
When using SE components, the different sonic signatures of RCA interconnects are very noticeable. Having said that, I found a great deal of difference in sonics between the Cardas models and other brand IC’s when used with my SE components.

In my shoot-out between Cardas and Purist Audio, I chose Purist for my IC’s and speaker cables. I found the Purist to reproduce a more natural, organic sound.
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