Recommendation for an audiophile speaker cord that is not "bright"?

Impressions from the OP:

1. The Transparent Audio RSC8 reference speaker cable does sound good with the ARC tube amplifier ---> the Wilson Sasha speakers combination. This realization came after several days of listening;
2. The Wilson speakers seem to love vocals, especially opera, and the more recent crooning from Diana Krall and similar artists that audio dealers love to use in demonstrations. I don't like opera or the Diana Krall, Norah Jones and/or Frank Sinatra genre all that much - I much prefer the Beth Hart (and old Joni Mitchell) genre of female vocalists, string-based classical music, orchestral music, hardcore improvisational jazz including bop, bebop, and fusion, and rock;
3. I realize that I eventually should get rid of my tube power amplifier and get a powerful solid-state amplifier, but then these Transparent Hi-Z speaker cables may not be a good fit...jeez!

I would like to thank everyone for their great feedback...I am still searching...The grateful OP (as in "Long, Strange, Trip")

Leaded solder is even softer than lead-free, so it flows even more. With speaker wire, it just means your screw contact will loosen up and your contact resistance goes up. The average power is normally low, so no biggie. When people do this with AC wires, it can lead to arcing and fires.

I watched the video ... the one where he does not tin the stranded copper wire. Tinning the stranded copper wire is a bad idea. It will loosen. Even if you tighten it again, it will loosen. The solder flows very slowly under pressure, even with a lot of pressure.  It is best just not to tin the ends where the screws are coming down .... so yes, my suggestion how to make it better = Follow the instructions in the video where they do not tin the wires. Ignore advice to tin wires that will be compressed with screws.  I understand you said you prefer to solder them in place, but you keep trying to justify tinning the ends when they are screwed down.

w.r.t. AC, way back early in my career I did a short stints in industrial electronics and got to see the end results a few times of someone tinning the ends of wires, right up to melted terminal blocks.


This is a well known issue, and unfortunately you can find a thousand threads on the web discussing it and a thousand wrong recommendations. In any environment with properly trained staff (not to mention say a UL inspection) it will never be accepted.

https://cdn.thomasnet.com/ccp/00142951/263810.pdf
https://www.eptac.com/ask/when-to-tin-and-not-tin-wires/