Acoustic Zen Absolute Copper vs. Cardas Clear interconnects

@audphile1 Will do 👍

@mclinnguy LOL!!!  Did you really?

LOL!!! Did you really?

From Used Cables to be exact, but same company- snapped it up and demoed it against a Triode Wire Labs, and it wasn’t really a fair contest. Actually I do see one on The Cable company- was it not there when you looked? 

UPDATE….  I got the Acoustic Zen Copper interconnects and they outperformed my Cardas Clear interconnects, so they are a new fixture in the chain.  Then, I got a pair of Acoustic Zen Absolute speaker cables on loan from The Cable Company earlier this week to conduct a shootout with my Cardas Clear speaker cables.  Thus far, The AZ Absolute speaker cables has an airy, full sounding midrange and bass! My Cardas Clear has a more accurate sound in the bass region and just cleaner throughout the frequencies ranges. Pianos sound better with the Cardas Clear. But the Cardas does seem to lack that rich midrange and air like the Absolute. I’m trying to decide which one I like the best because I love the sound of jazz cymbals and brushes on the snare drum with the Absolute, but I love the clean bass and realism of some instruments that Cardas provides. I need more time to listen to my music library because I like to narrow down a test playlist for auditioning my gear, so I can focus on the tunes over and over to hear the difference. For clarity, I’m using the AZ Copper interconnects in the speaker cable shootout because they definitely sound better than the Cardas Clear interconnects.  It’s hard to beat the airiness and beautiful midrange of the Absolutes, but I wish the bass was tighter like the Cardas Clear.  I’ll spend more time with them and make a decision.
 

To be continued…

@dbt good info -thanks for sharing. So many times a poster has a question like this, they say they are going to try this vs. that, and then the thread ends and a reader has no idea what ever happened! 

I am not trying to insult your audiophile knowledge and experience, but that bass might be controlled by a slightly different speaker position, if you haven't already tried that, or maybe a bass trap, or even trying a different power cord, (see below) but with a different power cable that will affect tonal balance with the higher registers also of course. 

If you don't mind my hijacking your thread again I will add some power cord thoughts for what I have recently gone through with my Hurricane addition, as I already brought it up earlier. 

As always this is with my ears and in my system, YMMV.

My components are neutral, and I have always strived for speed, details and resolution, but we are all trying to achieve smooth and natural with that neutral. With playing around with Squeeze, which is the highest resolution and best sounding software for my recent K50 server/streamer (Roon, I love, but it is more heavy and opaque-better for lesser recordings) I have found some recordings needed a little taming for the cymbals, I was getting too much of a good thing, and my ears told me look for a little more midrange body. This is exactly what I got with the Hurricane- compared to the Zavfino Silver Dart it brings the vocals a little more forward, which I like, it adds some richness and tends to truncate 10% of the highest frequencies. The detail is still there with the Hurricane, just more of the middle parts of each transient and less of the extension (its quite odd to hear after being used to the Silver Dart), and the Hurricane is a wee-bit smoother. Maggies soundstage quite well, and I understand many might like having the vocals 10 feet in front of the plane of the speakers, which is what the addition of the K50 did, but that is a little too deep for my liking. 

The advantage I have in my system is I just use the Hurricane on just my mid/high frequency amplifier, and I still have the Zavfino on my bass amp, as I actively bi-amp. Therefore, the overly ripe bass with the Hurricane is something I don't have to worry about. The crossover point is ~200hz if someone is wondering. I did try the Hurricane on the bass amp for fun, and actually it wasn't as bass heavy as I thought it was going to be, but my maggies don't go down too deep of course, so someone else with conventional large woofers will get a much different experience. The Zavfino is definitely tighter in the bass, goes just as deep, maybe deeper, and will be staying on my bass amp. I still am using 3 Silver Darts in my system on the other components.

I haven't tried any other high end power cables, and I always wondered how these Zavfino silver darts compared: I tried one and loved it, and got a few more, and my ears told me they sounded really good, but always wondered how they stack up against others. Well, after trying a Hurricane I can verify these Silver Darts are an absolute bargain at $1025 for 10 gauge 1.5m silver power cable- if someone is looking for more resolution and frequency extension, more excitement, but always remaining smooth, and little deeper soundstage, over the $2700 2m high current 11 gauge Hurricane try the Silver Dart. Wish I had 20+ other power cables to compare like Audio Bacon, but sorry, no. 😁 You can't always tell which cable may be silver these days as manufacturers are blending different metals, like Acoustic Zen, which OP just described as "rich mids" but in this case it is easy to know the Zavfino is silver and the Hurricane is copper- after listening to both the older stereotypical assumptions about silver vs. copper are easy to hear in this case. 

So yes @audphile1 very happy with the Hurricane, it did exactly what I expected it to do thanks to everyones descriptions of it I have read online over the past year, and the balance of the system is more musical overall. I think another Hurricane in the system may make it too smooth though, and may somewhat reduce the details that I love to hear. I am good for a while. 😁 It is interesting the option to go with one manufacturer's products versus a mix and match for fine tuning. I don't know. 

As an added bonus, I have a 2m Hurricane, so it is long enough to go to the Furutech GTX directly and not in the Puritan PSM156 and I do think I get a little more ooomph. I still need to go back and forth to verify but yes, the Puritan may decrease dynamics a small amount for my amp.