AN Niobium versus Tantalum resistors?

Takman metal film are the best value for money out there. Shinkohs do not sound better in all locations.

Niobium prices set new standards for resistors…..ouch….

Don't know about the AN Niobium but the Takman carbon film should give you what you're looking for. Recently put some in signal path of my Coincident Statement pre, looking for that exact fuller musical presentation you're looking for, they did the job. I wasn't looking for more lower end weight specifically, didn't notice a lot of change here.  BTW, AN parts are nice, added two Seiryu caps at same time as Takman, replaced Nichicon FG, very nice. I've used the Kaisei caps in past also very nice.

Should have mentioned the Takman CF replaced generic metal oxides.

So, more to the story :

I tried both Takman carbon and metal - also replacing generic metal. The carbon were super awesome for low end weight and realism, but they no doubt have a compressor effect (in pro-audio lingo) or smoothness (in hi-fi lingo). They just had weird, softness issues. They were also notably less transparent and higher noise than the Takman metal. They gave me the musical information, but with less clarity. I burn-in several hundred hours with my testing.

I tried to run Takman metal on the + and carbon on the -. Worked very well at first, then I felt fatigue after a couple weeks, like something wasn’t quite right. It was like parallel compressing lol.

So I returned the Takman metal and the overall coherency is back, but I’m jonesing for the best of all worlds. Willing to pay the price for AN Niobium.. their Kaisei have had no downside for me when it comes to low noise and transparency. Considering Takman carbon are like 10+ years old design (?), and Niobium is from last year...I have to imagine there are advances.