Anybody tried 20th Anniversary Purist cables?

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

Could one use a cable cooker on these AA's to burnem in?

Guido,

I had the cables in my system for about a week (30-40 hrs??). I heard no change during my time with them......... If it's like Albert says, we may have been WAY off the mark.

BTW, my system is both yin and yang...... that's why I like it so much.

Jafox,

I certainly agree with you about the CAT amps and resolution - they are among the finest resolvers of low level detail I have experienced in my system.

However, it looks like we are talking past each other here. Yin and yang in my understanding always have been accepted terms for describing frequency response characteristics (i.e. there is no amibiguity in their meaning, such as with prat - which really is related to transient performance - or with continuousness, which I think relates to dynamic performace across the frequency spectrum). Typically, yang refers to a frequency response that is tilted toward the whiter side of the spectrum. The extreme of yang is clinical (or as you put it, analytical), cold, sterile (in fact, your identification of the CAT Amp and preamp combination is a perfect of example of the yang side). Yin refers to frequncy response that is tilted toward the warmer side of the spectrum - the extreme of yang is referred to as dark, fat, tubey, etc.

Thus, to rephrase my previous comments in more acceptable terms, my system tends to lean more towards the analytical side of the frequency spectrum than yours, which is why I think the Aqueous would work better in my system than yours. Further, your identification of the Aesthetix premps also matches my initial perception - I think anyone would say the Callisto is certainly more towards the yin side of the spectrum than, for example, the preamp in the DCC2.

I also agree that "decay" is important - although decay is also a result of transient performance, low level resolution, and, depending on exactly what one means by decay, microdynamic performance. It is these latter two qualities that are most important for me. If a system cannot provide resolution of low level detail, and does not excel at microdynamics, I become bored with it rather quickly. I thought the Aqueous did an exceptional job with these characteristics without leaning two far to the analytical side of the frequncy spectrum (and hence found it have the best balance of characteristics that are important to me).

As to the Opis, as I think about it, I probably committed the same error I cautioned against - I only gave them about 50-75 hours or so before I gave up on them. Did they change singificantly during break-in as well?