Cable brands that work well with Cardas?

@decooney 

Interesting factoid:-)  I didn't recall interconnect rev1 was the crimped version.  I think I remember the clear speaker wires making that change about that time, but wow that's been quite a while ago.  How time flies.

@marco1 yep, and the factoid results may vary for others, yet one thing I tried a few years back was to send in two pairs of the older Cardas Golden Cross 1M RCA interconnects and had the soldered-on connectors removed, and re-terminated with the new no-solder crimped-on connector ends. It did sound a tad more transparent to me. Tried this setup with tube amps for a while before selling those two pairs.

Next, same as you, me also moving to the more recent Clear line of different cables. I’ve been comparing all-Cardas Grade-1 Ultra cables to all-Analysis Plus Crystal OCC, and intermixing them too for fun. Good results in all cases. What was unexpected and surprising is how good intermixing them sounds. Also very nice.

@decooney 

Coincidentally I used AP Solo Crystal before I got into Cardas.  Still have several pairs in my closet.  I'll give  intermixing a try too and see what happens 🤔

@marco1 cool, thanks for giving it a try.  Fwiw, my conclusion is I like the AP/Crystals more downstream in the system than upstream at the source where I place the Cardas.  As you may recall, when you pull those out [uncoil them] and put them in place they seem to take that same period to rest/play in place before they settle back in. Have fun testing if you do. 

I had all Cardas (mostly Parsec, some Golden Presence) and found that the Parsec speaker cables were holding back some much needed bass. So I tried some massive Clear Reflection cables which had awesome bass but unexpectedly set off my hot tweeters (Parsec is good at taming that). So I returned them to the dealer and ended up with Transparent Ultra which did not have that problem and also great bass.  So I would say Transparent is a great match!

Unfortunately they are just as pricey as the Clear Reflection, but you could call around - sometimes the factory has deals on previous gen models or trade-ins. You might actually prefer the cheaper Super to the Ultra.

Now I'm thinking of upgrading one of the Parsec IC to big old Cardas (not Clear) or Transparent.  I found out that I don't like any of the Clear line, not even the Cygnus phono cable.