Cable upgrades
Happy Holidays to all!
I’m reconfiguring my system and am interested in upgrading my interconnects and possibly my speaker cables, and I was wondering if you could make some recommendations.
I was running Audio Sensibility Impact SE XLR between my Benchmark DAC3 HGC (as a DAC/pre) and my Benchmark AHB2 power amp. The amp is running bi-wired Kimber Cable 8TC (I think that’s the model #) to a pair of ATC SCM40 tower speakers. In this setup the bass is tight and the mids are clean - overall I’m quite happy - but sometimes I feel, for my ears, I’d love a bit more openness / brightness in the higher end.
My questions are: would improved XLR interconnects help to open up the top end a bit, without being harsh, and perhaps increase the dimensionality of the soundstage? Or would I be better off starting with upgrading the speaker cables? I’ve been looking at the Cardas Parsec level of cable, and could perhaps stretch to the Clear line, pending your recommendations.
Also, one other question: pending the possible move to 2 AHB2s (in mono-block configuration), do both XLR interconnects have to be the same length? If not, would it cause any timing issues between, say, a 2' XLR and a 6'?
I’d appreciate any guidance. Many thanks in advance.
Best, JAMES
That’s a blanket statement. There are too many variables that can render this incorrect. |
@magnuman I’ll second the statement above by @audphile1 OCC and OFC are general terms used in the industry and varies by vendor, design, and metallurgy used. For example, Cardas places their own service provider mined and drawn "Cardas Grade 1 pure copper" and process, as illustrated. Under a a visusual microscope found here. Just gotta listen to the cables and decide what’s best for you. What OP @jimboman has now is Cardas Grade 1 pure copper.
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decooney, first of all OCC and OFC are not general terms you should do your research a little bit better, OCC means ohno continuous cast, which was invented by Dr Ohno, and the process makes it so there's only one single crystal in the wire, The crystals are 125 m long so when you make interconnects or speaker wire you only get one single crystal and no crystal barriers in the wire, OFC means oxygen free copper and that has 1500 crystal barriers per foot which are little fractures in the wire that the signal has to jump across that's why OCC single crystal wire sounds so much better than OFC and that was proven over 50 years ago already. |
audphile1, actually that's not a blanket statement it was proven over 50 years ago that OCC single crystal wire is far superior for audio than anything else on the market including OFC you can't change the law of physics, OFC wire has 1500 crystal barriers per foot OCC has one crystal 125 m long, Crystal barriers are little fractures in the wire that the signal has to jump across and it makes things bright hard cold dull any one of those things or all of those things with OCC single crystal wire you don't have any of those problems because the signal can flow unimpeded. |
this is a PS to add on to what I already said, Neotech now makes rectangular OCC single crystal wire which is even better than the round, I upgraded to the Sahara which is their flagship line of copper cable from round OCC and you could hear how much better it was, It's not cheap though, The Amazon is there single crystal silver and it's twice the price of the copper. |
