Best $200 speaker cables for overall performance?

D_dewards,

I really do appreciate your efforts to assist my hapless self! The cables under consideration in this thread are for another system in the back room, which has Legacy Classics for the L/R, along with a Legacy "Satellite" for the center speaker. The Nak receiver is about 5-6 years old, and seemed to sound pretty good in the other system with the Legacy Sig IIs.

I am now considering several possible culprits as to why the sound is not so good(poor soundstage and imaging) in the back system:

Room reflections/bad room dimensions.
52"RPTV between speakers.
Panny RP91 DVD/DVD Audio player(one of the first DVDAudio players) player as source.
Nak receiver problems.
Legacy Classics not nearly as good as the Signature IIs.

As I said, the Goertz cables do seem to improve the sound noticably over the stranded cables. But nothing like what I am getting in the other room system.

As far as the Nak receiver's volume control, what kind of shop can address the issues you mention?

Mtrot, just curious, did you try the Goertz cables in the better room?

That's a good question Unsound. Glad you thought of it : )

The Sig II's and the Classic's have different bass alignments. As such, they will not only sound different, but also load the amp differently. Both designs ( in stock form ) have a pronounced bass peak at a relatively high frequency ( 90 - 120 Hz ), so room placement and nodes can really come into play. This is besides any other speaker / room interphase situations taking place, which can also effect imaging, soundstage, etc...

Due to the difference in loading on the amp, the Classic's may simply require more than what your receiver can cope with. You might want to try swapping both the speakers and speaker cables in your main system and see how things work there. If you can get the results that you want with either set of speakers and / or either set of speaker cables in the main system, then you know it has to be room and / or "power" related in the secondary system. Sean
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Unsound,

No, not yet. I have a bi-wire set of Tara Labs RSC Prime(at least 10 years old) in there, which have always sounded pretty good to me. I have been thinking about trying the MI-2s, bi-wired, in there to see if they can make a significant improvement over the Taras. But I would have to shell out another $200, which is a lot of bread to me, in order to find out. I guess I could try them as a single run, just to hear the basic sound differences.

Mtrot, may I remind you that Alpha-Core has a very generous trial period. You could try another run, and see if it works for you. If it doesn't, all you'll loose is a very modest (heck, cables don't weight much) shipping fee, if you decide that you like them, you can sell your existing cables right here on Audiogon. In the mean time, just putting on jumpers and running one run, might be interesting. While I am a big fan of the Alpha-Core cables, my experience mirrors yours. They don't accentuate the bass, but, boy oh boy, do they really open things from there on up. I don't think just substituting cables in an effort to mimick another system in another room is very realistic. Best of luck. Keep us posted.