Thiel Owners

Excellent Cabling discussion Guys.  Keep up the good work.

Happy Listening!

As many of you know, I've been on a wire odyssey this spring and summer. The goal is finalizing internal wire upgrade options. But prior to those trials I have compared my various component and speaker cables to assure myself that I have a neutral and articulate signal feeding the speakers. More on that as things progress. Tonight I'd like to report on the digital S/PDIF from the CD player (Philips CD80 gone through by Bill Thalmann) to the DAC (Benchmark DAC3B). My digital cable stable includes Audioquest, BAV, Benchmark, StraightWire and Morrow. I consider the Morrow a cut above, and the rest basically equivalents with subtly different sonic shadings.

The good news is a sample which Iconoclast sent to me which ups the ante. The cable costs around $30 and appreciably outperforms the others in my trials, which are admittedly less than the league of many of you. The winner is Belden 4694R cable made for ultra high definition (12GHz) video, using high purity copper clad in silver. It's available from Blue Jeans cable. I'd love to hear from any of you who know it and are willing to share your opinions about it.

@tomthiel  What connectors are you using with the Belden 4694R cable?

sdl4 - stock Blue Jeans

This cable was sent to me by Iconoclast for evaluation as their best offering from the BAV line, short of Iconoclast. I don't believe it shows up in their stock offerings with RCA terminations. The cable shows up in BJ's SDI section, but the connectors look like their stock audio RCA's which are Canare RCAPs.