REALITY CABLES ?

Thanks for posting that detailed account. Your review focuses on the relative rankings of the cables, but you don't say anything about the sound. Can you comment on what the Reality Cables do well (I'm sure they are good in some performance areas)?

Stereo_phile, It is interesting that your shootout confirmed the traditional concept that you get what you pay for.
When I checked on the prices of the speaker cables, they ranked in descending order:
$4500
$2106
$950
$870
$225
As I had posted admiringly, above, "Your system and the wiring that has already worked for you reads like an audiophile's dream list."
The prices of the IC's in your shootout can be tabulated by someone else, but I suspect they don't come cheap, either.
Down here where the Shakespearean groundlings dwell, I still recommend wiring a system with Reality for its performance, its moderate price, and its home trial policy which lets each listener check for synergy with his/her particular system. (I have never tried the power cords.)

Drubin good point. I was told when I purchased these cables that Reality cables are shipped out pre burned in by the factory which is the reason why it takes a while to get these cables as manufacturer takes extra steps to make sure the cabes sound great. So supposedly one of things you noitce immediately is how great these cables sound when you hook them up.

So, I evaluated speaker cable, interconnect and power cable in that order seperately fresh upon receipt to hear this marvelous claim.

I first replaced the best speaker cable I've tried to date which is Tara Labs The One. Instead of noticing improvement I head a vast collapse in soundstage, unfocused imaging and lifeless dynamically limited uninvolving sound. Yes, immediately noticeable as deterioration in sound. I tried comparing with all other speaker cables that I have mentioned but was very dissapointed with the results. Additional burn in time with cable burner and more operation time did not make one iota of difference. Same results from interconnect and power cable. BTW, afte I hear the similar things happen to the interconnects, since my cable burner was busy, I left the interconnect hooked up on my bedroom system and left it on playing music from my cd player on repeat flowing music thru it. Again, after a week did not notice any performance improvement.

Following from Listener57's post, and taking it one step further, if the top performers in your shootout scored 10/10, then achieving 7/10 for 225 greenbacks gives you a tremendous price to performance ratio. I have tried Gregg's cables with other cables costing maybe 4 to 5 times more and can say that in my system Gregg's cables sound terrific throughout the entire sound spectrum and was about the only cable that could reproduce human voices, brass and stringed instruments and percussions with lifelike realism. Even if I could justify paying for cost of cables that are many times the price of my humble system, I don't think my system is resolving enough to show a substantial difference from what I am enjoying with Gregg's cables. You certainly have an uber highend system which justifies the cost of uber priced cables!It would have been interesting to know what your evaluation would have been had you used Gregg's tubed version ICs. Also, I have read elsewhere that Gregg's cables sound best with the synergy of Reality ICs and speaker cables hooked up and evaluated at the same time.

Best Regards
Dennis

Dennis(Denjo),

Good point. There is dimishing marginal return with many things especially in high end audio. People pay unbelievable amount of money for that last 10 per cent in performance improvement. So, yes on less than high end high resolution systems these cables may work perfectly. If you have less than perfect AC lines the difference factor may become even less. Your system is good as its weakest link. This is why a general rule of thumb for investing in cables is 10 to 15% of your system budget allocated. A set of Reality cables can be had for less than $1k and it will be perfectly fine for systems costing $15,000. My system costs well over $150,000 and it would have been too good to be true to have less than $1K set of cables outperform other high end cables that I have painstakinly taken long time to compare and choose for my system. I still would like to try NBS Black Label, Stealth Indra, and Pranawire speaker and interconnect cables to see how they compare but these are easily an order of maginitude more in price with only 20 to 30 per cent better in performance which is the price you have to pay to obtain diminshing marginal return on your money for performance.

I did try connecting all Reality cables at once and did not notice any synergy. Only lack luster uninvolving sound.

Anyway, after I posted this my personal opinion on cable evaluation, Gregg Straley does not want to give money back on speaker cable stating that I damaged his speaker cables using FryKleaner Pro burn in device. Funny I did not see any such disclaimers on his web site about using cable burn in device voids money back gurantee. What about all these magazine reviewers for cables, are they all damaging cables when they use cable burn-in devices? Sounds like a lame excuse for getting back at what I consider to be true and unbiased personal opinion as a consumer. I am not a dealer or any way in shape or form involved with audio industry or manufacturers of audio products.