Anybody tried 20th Anniversary Purist cables?

He was growing a beard............. And starting to develop a nervous arm flapping movement????

Jafox, the Aqueous is very powerful and is mysteriously related to the CLC, but in reverse, in that it acts on the listener rather than on the equipment. . . and turns our worst audio nightmares into psychosomatic reality. [chuckles!]

Seriously, with the several cuts I listened at CMO's with the Aqueous, the consensus at the ttime seemed to be that the effect was uninvolving, hooded -- as in not extended -- and sweet but slightly thin. I did not hear at the time an excess at the top, but we were concentrating mostly on some tracks from Edgar Meyer playing Bach on the double bass, which does not have exactly a piercing treble to start with. It is entirely possible that on other material I did not listen to, the treble overpressure may have showed up.
I would welcome Albert Porter's comments on the subject of the Aqueous, as we all seem to have such a diverging experience with this wire. I am seriously wondering if some of the wires were shipped with some manufacturing defects.

While speaking with Purist last week, Jim told me the break in process for Aqueous Anniversary was a lengthy ordeal and the Purist break in disc (CD) has almost no effect on accelerating the process.

I don't know if this is a recent turn of events or something that he has been aware of all along. If the Purist disc was used to "burn in" at Cable Company, then shipping could have almost offset the gains.

The good news? Any type of music (including the break in disc) is fine, there just seems to be no way to shorten the "waiting period."

The Aqueous Anniversary I had on my CD player took several weeks before it stopped changing (running 24-7) and the Aqueous Anniversary power cords are still breaking in. Hate to say, but this might be a 175 to 250 hour break in cable.

J. Fox probably has more experience with the new Aqueous line than I do. I loaned him a lot of cables and we have been shipping back and forth. I recently switched to the Purist Anniversary (new top of the line), and preoccupied with getting it settled and discovering it's full capability.

I have had my limited supply of Aqueous loaned out nearly 100% of the time, so I've had little time to evaluate it for myself. There is a good deal of wiggle room between Venustas, Opis and Aqueous Anniversary. All are excellent and all different.

Which is most correct is in the ears of the beholder and perhaps none of these will be right for some members. There is a lot of differences between systems and what each of us prefer.

There really do appear to be some divergent opinions on the Aqueous Anniversary cable. I demo'ed the Aqueous Anniversary speaker cable, and in my current system it easily outperformed cables such as Cardas Golden Reference, Wireworld Gold Eclipse III, Nordost SPM, Kimber 3033, Purist Opis, Audioquest Mont Blanc, and others. The magic in this cable is in the midrange - tonality is accurate, (string tone is exceptional), images take on the appropriate body and presence, soundstage width and depth were very good (although not the best I have heard), transient performance was outstanding - both attack and decay, reproduction of low level detail was excellent, bass was solid, extended, with wonderful authority in the midbass. In particular, the reason I was/am so fond of the Aqueous is that it's hard to find a cable that is as revealing in the midrange that is not edgy or clinical.

As a caveat, however, if your system is on the "warm" side of things in the midrange, I think the Aqueous Anniversary might be too much of a good thing. In the system I have now (admittedly not my ideal setup - Verdier Platine, EMM Labs CDSD/DCC2, Cat JL-1s, Merlin VSM-Ms, Silversmith ICs), its just about perfect.

I have to admit I am surprised to read others commenting that this cable was "closed in." Does it have the most extended top end I have ever heard? No - that distinction belongs to the Silvermiths. But closed in? I can't picture it, based on what I hear in my system. I suppose there must be some system matching issues with this cable, and I have to admit to being curious to see with which components others are using it.

In particular, Jafox, what components did you have in your system when you did your demos? Your characterizations sound pretty accurate to me, except I had the opposite preference with respect to Aqueous v. Opis - I found the Opis, while a touch more extended at the frequency extremes, to be muted in dynamics and subtractive of low level information in the midrange - as a result, while it is a good cable, I never found it very involving. Thus, I am betting you probably have components that tend to sound more on the yin side, whereas mine are more on the yang side.

Also, I have to echo the above comments re: break-in - these cables certainly need at least 150 hours of break in, and probably closer to 250. Fresh out of the box, it lacks a bit of coherency, images sound overblown, and the bass doesn't have that full measure of extension.

Some comments here based on the last few posts:

Once again, what is "hooded"? Does this imply constrained dynamics or maybe a clipped-off top end or ....? Neither of these were my observations with the AA. Again, my experiences were the opposite; the presentation was simply too forward and fatiguing rather than a coherency across the band.

The Opis speaker cables I have were played on my system for nearly 2 months before I did the shootout to the AA speaker cables. I would put a fair estimate of hours on the Opis at 150 hours. I have no idea how many hours the AA had before I auditioned them. If they had minimal usuage, I could have indeed judged them before their break-in time.

Unfortunately, breaking in speaker cables requires listening to music. And if the sound is terrible, you have to put up with it. I would have a most difficult time breaking in the AA speaker cables. Other cables like ICs and PCs I can do 24/7 with no sound coming from the speaker. So it would be nice if Purist could pre-burn-in these cables and thus give us a good first impression of these. One of these days perhaps I will get an opportunity to hear the broken-in AA's but for now, the Opis works incredibly well and I have no interest to change them out. There was absolutely no dynamic compression with the Opis. As for midrange subtraction, I did not experience this either.

Rzado: I do not pay too much attention to terms like yin(g) and yan(g), the totally worthless "PRAT" or the trendy here-today-gone-tomorrow, "continuousness", etc. I simply seek a balance, or better term, best-compromise, of dynamic contrasts, frequency-extreme coverage and the issues of dimensionality such as decays, portrayal of space, harmonic textures, etc. Since the time I first heard the ARC SP-8 and then later bought the SP-10, I have been a decays and bloom fanatic; the dimensionality issue has been #1 for me ever since. And from all the systems I have heard out there, only a small handful of them do it for me in this area. But two local audio gurus and a few others out-of-state who have much knowledge on the CAT, Aesthetix and SoundLab products have given me a lot of advice to pay more attention to the other sonic attributes. My system now has resolution like I never could have imagined because of the help from these people.

The CAT JL-3 Signature amps do dynamic contrasts and resolution like no other amps I have heard. But combined with the CAT preamps, this is simply too much of the same direction (analytical) for me. I find that the Aesthetix Io and Callisto preamp models do the dimensionality like no others I have heard. It is no surprise that the Aesthetix/CAT pairing results in an awesome integration. These driving the SoundLab A1 speakers make for an explosive, tonally coherent and 3-dimensional presentation. The primary source is Clearaudio Ref TT with either the Clearaudio Accurate or Koetsu RWS cartridges.

I ran the above system for much of last year with a mixture of NBS & MIT PCs and ICs and tried and tried to find a speaker cable to mate well. The emphasis was midrange warmth with only mediocre resolution and dynamics. With the system fully loaded with Kubala-Sosna Emotion cables, the performance took a major leap forward in coherency, frequency extremes and dynamics. There was for me however, a slight loss in the involvement of the music as the NBS had some characterizations I very much liked.....the decays and ambience. And this was why I investigated the Purist (mainly the Dominus) to bring back some of the involvement I had before but not to give up the newly discovered capabilities. You can read my detailed post on this topic in the Kubala vs. Purist thread that was started a couple days before.

One trap I want to avoid is to choose cables for the purpose of "synergizing" the tonality of my system. If I have to do this, I have issues elsewhere that need to be resolved. This was a lesson learned during the Kubala-Sosna cable audition. Changing cables for me should be to find the "best compromise" of the sonic attributes I mentioned above.

John