Purist Audio, Venustas or Aqueous

I own Elac 208A's and use the Aqueous Praesto speaker cables and they pair very, very well. They're perhaps a warmer side of neutral that the Elac's mate well with. They're very smooth sounding making vocal's very nice to listen to. ANd reveal a depth in the bass that is hard to find in speaker wire. Also, present a nice deep soundstage and black background. I like them better then Golden Ref in terms of musicality, smoothness, weight of tonality, and timber. But if you want really open, higher end detail, and soundstage forwardness that trades for a bit of leanness, then the Cardas GR are better there. Purist: richness, depth, warmth, natural. Cardas: sparkle, openness, detailing, big wide soundstage but a little lean in character vs Purist.

interesting...I own a pair Elac FS 68 speakers, using Musaeus praesto speaker cable and Elementa Advance IC's. Musaeus power cords on amp and cdp. I would not change anything at the moment. I made a short video of my system on Youtube. I know you can go much higher in the purist line but for me I think there is little incentive to, the sound I am getting now is just unreal. The elacs love the Musaeus...was told venustas speaker would be even better but ouch!!!! mega $$$$$$!!!! FYI new praesto EA is a steal!

Think of the Venustas as a "Dominus Lite" ;--) It has the sonic character of the Dominus, just a tiny bit less. Or, if it makes you feel better, you can think of the Dominus as Venustas on steroids!

My point is that the original "Ferox Trinity", Musaeus, Venustas and Dominus, represented THE watershed moment in Purist's cable development. Their incredible definition, and unbelievable silent background surpassed (and still surpasses) almost everything else available, including most of the great names (like Transparent, and such) Purist cables do have a couple of genuine rivals IMO: Siltech, Aural Symphonics, Stereovox, and Stealth included. But when you factor in price, Purist is still (don't choke!) the best value of the group;--)

Everything before the "Trinity" products, like the Elementa, Colossus (I think it was) hinted at the direction their designs were going but never quite 'got there'. Also, Musaeus is a bit ordinary sounding unfortunately. probably due to the fact there's just not quite enough 'stuff', conductor size and Ferox volume, to put them over the top sonically -- so although they're considered 'entry level' (cheaper) they don't represent a great VALUE, and you can find many other products that do as well for less money IMO. Venustas and Dominus however, even the original versions, offer (IMO) at least 80% - 90% of the performance of any of the various products/versions that came later (to stimulate sales, naturally). That's not a criticism, but the reality is that VERY FEW systems have the resolving capability to allow comparisons between the Dominus and anything further up the line -- excepting Provectus, which is Purist's first solid core conductor product, if you need solid core (like for ultra low capacitance speaker cables mated with electrostats) and now they're in a class by themselves since Virtual Dynamics crashed!

I couldn't afford to use Dominus system wide, so my system is all-Venustas -- except for the Dominus PC's, which have a well-deserved, almost a 'cult following', all their own!

It should be mentioned that when using any of the ultra sophisticated design, ultra expensive cable brands, the special benefits they all can provide are not realized by sticking a Purist here, and a Siltech there. You really need to (eventually ;--) use a given brand/model throughout your system. That's because in this realm, each brand is so unique (you might even say 'peculiar') in both design and construction, that all the cables together can become a component in themselves. Think of it as one LONG cable connecting everything in your system!
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Nsgarch, wouldn't that then make the Musaeus the "Venustas lite"? Musaeus, Venustas and Dominus are the only three cables in the PAD line to mix silver and copper conductors.

Hi J Mc -
As I tried to express in my previous, the Musaeus model, although made of the same "stuff" as Venustas and Dominus, just doesn't provide the same qualities (even in lesser amounts) as its two more expensive brothers. Many people feel (and I still do) that the Venustas line represents the best price/performance tradeoff of all the high priced cables available. It's one of those products where you'd truly have to (at least) double what you spend just to get a 10% performance increase -- and then only if your system (or hearing) is resolving enough to hear the improvement ;~)

There are some other little exceptions too: for instance the Dominous Power cords are in a class by themselves -- which is to say that in my (ever humble ;~) opinion, nothing else I've tried comes close (not even the
Venustas.) For high power applications/devices, it's in a class by itself; which, considering its cost, makes it a (relative) bargain ;~))