Folks, I'm glad to report that after a few days of burn-in (I was ill so I didn't even listen to music and just left the system playing on a minimal level) my pair of Extreme II's fulfilled all my expectations and then some. Of course I didn't expect it to blow away my XLR pair of Acoustic Zen Silver Reference II/Matrix Reference II which are great cables and it didn't but in all cases I prefered the warmer and more analogue like sound with Extreme's. The difference was in many ways like switching from CD to LP with more musical highs and mids. Even some very harsh CDs sound absolutely comfortable now. Guess now my next purchase would be 3 power cords and if they perform as well then speaker cable!
