First to log in on speaker cable inquiry: I use SR Foundation cables after having auditioned them against Double Shotgun Clear Day cables. (RIP Paul Laudati). The Foundation had more meat in the mid range and bass as well as more air and larger soundstage.
But now on to my latest discovery. So I've been sitting here happy as an audiophile clam can be with my Pass Labs XP-32 and SIT 1's making magic with my Nenuphars. Then my local Pass Labs dealer (Gestalt Hifi) becomes a Vinnie Rossie dealer and offers me an audition of the VR Integrated Amp L2i. He even has the upgraded Elrog 300b tubes. I look up the specs on this universally acclaimed 100 AB watts per channel unit and find it has zero negative feedback (great) but an output impedance of .10 ohm. Not so great, giving it a damping factor of 800 driving the Nenuphars. But still, my friend Mike is willing to come over and install the beautiful beast (50 lbs) white gloving the tubes and everything. We listen for a while, things sound decent, he leaves and I'm sort of wincing at this over ripe plummy ness to Bill Charlaps's piano. (Ah tubes, I say to myself.) So I go away and come back in a couple of hours and really listen. Whoa. Wait. We have a contender here! All plummy ness is gone, the soundstage is HUGE (something others have heralded about this amp), instruments are 3 dimensional and tonal colors are like wet paint. This can't be, it sounds more alive and real than my SIT-1s! But I'm not focusing on the bass enough, surely the gorilla damping factor has to be sitting on that. So I play the best test of true bass I know, Ray Brown's Super Bass and his Three by Four number from his Walk On album. Not only is depth of bass better, but it's more tuneful and full of these micro details, string against finger flesh, string against wood I've never heard before. Plus the live recording space has become my room! So what's the damping factor reigning in or impacting? I can't hear it. I think someone here a while ago loved the Nenuphars with an equally high damping factor Gryphon amp. I looked askance. Well, I ain't looking that way no more. The VR is punching way above it's damping factor weight (or any weight class for that matter) and I'm grinning ear to ear. More to come.