Anybody tried 20th Anniversary Purist cables?

Well, I called Purist Audio today and spoke with Jim Aud (when the receptionist transferred the call he picked up!). Interestingly, he is aware of a long running discussion about the Aqueous going on somewhere on the web; I'm assuming this is the one he heard about.

He did indicate that the AA sounds not too good straight out of the bag, and takes more than about 250 hours or so to begin sounding really good. He admitted he's not sure why this is. His description of the initial sound of the cables was very much like what Cmo indicated in this thread. I asked him if it was okay for me to pass this info along and he said yes. He seems like a pretty nice guy.

BTW, I called Purist about some other stuff, and figured if I had Jim on the phone I may as well ask about this. I made sure I wasn't taking up too much of this time. He was very nice about it.

I have the Aqueous interconnect and liked it from the very beginning. So I figured I would like the speaker cable, so I sold my Purist Audio Venustas here at Audiogon, and had a pair of the Aqueous ordered and even had Purist Audio burn them in for the required time, which took an extra week for delivery. I was all excited when I got them, warmed the system up for several hours, sat down in my chair, and my first impression was, "I don't like these cables". I figured even though they were burned in by Purist, they just needed a few more days. After about four days, I didn't like the sound at all, the sound stage was shrunken, the bass was diminished, just overall not a good presentation compared to my Venustas. After about the fourth day, I contacted the person I ordered the cables from and asked if I could get a refund. Although this went back and forth for several days, I agreed to listen to them for a few more days. I did, and I still didn't like the system at all. I sent my cables back and ended up having to buy a brand new pair of the Venustas, which cost me a lot more than what I sold my cables for. I know better - I need to audition cables before I buy them. But the interconnect fooled me - it sounded so good. I'm not sure why these speaker cables in my system didn't sound good. I really did like the mid-range, but after that, I didn't like anything about the sound of the speaker cables. I definitely give a thumbs up for the interconnect, but a thumbs down for the speaker cables. Just my opinion from my experience.

I found with the Purist Aqueous Anniversary speaker cables the more efficient the speakers the better they work; with lower efficient speakers or systems using high current amps the Venustas seems to work better (the Aqueous Anniversary speaker cable is only 12 ga. while the Venustas is 6 ga.) It would be interesting to try the new contego outer jacket used on the Aqueous Anniversary with the Venustas 6 ga. wires.

Hi i was told the AQUEOUS ANV cable takes more like 300 to 500 hrs to break in because of the CONTEGO Shielding i am using 21ft balanced. Has anybody else found this to be the case. Thanks EBM!!!

500 hours to achieve the point of usability? I have to listen to a forward and fatiguing musical presentation for 6 months (20 hours a week) before I can enjoy my music again? I don't think so! Who is going to put up with this?

And then how do we really know the product "changed" after all this time? Or, did we simply adapt to its sonic signature and accept this over time? The only way to know for sure is to then drop in a new pair and do a comparison? And, does the removal of the older pair disturb the gremlins such that we need to go through another burn-in period?

It is one thing to get some refinements in the sound as a product settles down, but I expect something half-way decent from the start. Why should audio gear be any different than any other product in this regard?

On the issue of speaker efficiency, I run an older pair of SoundLab A1s. They do not have the latest cores but they do have the latest electronics. I suspect they are in the mid 80s of efficiency. Even if the AA speaker cables were not optimal with these speakers, it does not explain why there was such a prominent midrange hump whether driven by CAT JL-3 or Wolcott amps at low and high volume levels. Only the Coincident TRS speaker cables exhibited anything like this in past but not at all to the level of the AA speaker cables. No other speaker cables, Kubala-Sosna Emotion, Purist Opis, Coincident Xtreme, NBS Statement, Silver Audio Symphony48, PS Audio Statement, etc., exhibited such a forwardness and fatigue.

The final statements by Btstrg sums it up for me.

John