Acoustic Zen - Hologram ii vs Satori

@johnah5 are both the hologram and satori very stiff?

surprised to hear the spades are a pain...do you have pretty normal sized standard binding posts on your amp and speakers?

+1 @audphile1  Try AZ Silver Ref between source and pre.

My Satori were bi-wire and more expensive than the regular run due to how Robert Lee configures his true biwire speaker cables.
But regardless, These worked better with my B&W N803 speakers I had at the time. one other note…I have found that AZ interconnects work better as a set rather than mix ‘n match. This was the case with Silver/Matrix, Matrix/ Matrix and the full Absolute Copper set. Mixing in a different cable before or after the Zens can screw up  the tonal balance. So keep that in mind. Your TWL interconnects are probably holding you back.