Clio09 - As recommended by the manufacturer, I hope you burn the cables in for 150 hours before sharing any final thoughts on the GG's. And I assume the 150 hours implies a signal going through the cables and not simply connected to two components. You have had the cables for a week now but how long have they been "burned in"?
I set my CDP on repeat and run this into the preamp through ICs when I burn them in during the day and night when not listening. A cable burn-in device may work here, but I assume that when a manufacturer states a certain number of hours, it refers to actual use of the cable. And thus, the CDP->Preamp cable burn-in process as described here works well.
Audiobuzz - I assure you that I was NOT mistaken when I refered to depth. I know all too well a recessed presentation. This typically refers to a significant suckout in the frequency response where one musician is far far distant from the rest of the performers. I have immediately dismissed some preamps, cables and more recently some tubes that exhibit this problem.
Last year I visited an audio dealer's home. He had Avalon speakers that were 8 or so feet out into the room. And he had recently gone through some serious efforts with room treatment devices. Never before had I heard speakers disappear like this. And never before had I heard a singer so far back from the speakers with such incredible realism. I understand that this is a key area where the Avalon speakers excel. And they certainly impressed me. But the overall system implementation had just as much to do with this success as well.
When I came back home, I could hear that I had greater decays and harmonic structure than that system, but I did not at all have the mentioned qualities here like he had. And this never left my mind.
I have since moved the SoundLab A1s another 2 feet into the room, gone through significant amounts of tube rolling with the Aesthetix and CAT gear(thanks to a tube guru friend who continues to send me box after box after box of tubes to try and often allows me to purchase the ones I like), revamped all power cords and recently incorporated a very special APL Denon CDP. Each of these changes brought on significant improvements in a number of areas. But it was only when I dropped in the Jade Hybrid ICs did my mind then return to that Avalon based system. Unlike before, musicians are now placed back from the speakers ... and they integrate so well with the rest of the musicians up near the front plane of the speakers.
Of course no cable does this on its own. But as I have noted before, I have heard a number of ICs (most notably from preamp to amp) so quickly destroy all the magic of a system up to that time.
John
