Best $200 speaker cables for overall performance?

Vitalik,

Thanks for the tip. Will give them a call.

I will second S.D. Campbell on his selection of Kimber 4TC. I have owned it and 8TC as well and felt that the 8TC was much more problematic, particularly with regard to the abudance of bass with this cable. I have found the 4TC to be very neutral, neither hiper-detailed nor lacking in resolution and it is full-range, with excellent extension at both extremes. Excellent evidence of an excellent cable is that as I have seen my system change, the cable never got in the way of revealing the changes in sonic characteristics. I have never felt the need to upgrade the speaker cable. Insofar as my experience with interconnects and JPS Superconductor, although I haven't tried their speaker cable, my guess is that it is a worthy competitor in the budget range as well. My interconnect experience tells me that it might not be as neutral as 4TC, but it is reasonably smooth, a very solid mid-bass, dynamic and clean. To my ears, it has a slight emphasis in the upper mids - not enough to be unpleasant, but enough to be noticeable if you are aware of these things.
This can actually help some recordings by adding a little life, or if your system is on the dark side, it can be just the remedy to breathe a little life in the system. If you are looking for natural sound, you can spend a lot more and not do any better. I have tested many megabuck as well as hightly regarded, moderately-priced cables in my system (predominantly interconnects) and found that they do nothing but overemphasize one part of the frequency spectrum or another and call it an improvement. I think that you are right to go with excellent budget cables. If you want to look around at expensive cable later, you haven't lost much by owning a good budget cable that can be resold without losing any money.

One that I don't have experience with is Goertz Alpha-Core. I see that many have mentioned it favorably here.

Anglesmtn, the JPS superconductor fx ic in my system sounded bloated and heavy in the bottom end. These to me seemed to roll off the highs to much. Very smooth on top but did not have that clean sparkly sound. They reminded me of the Audio Metallurgy GA-0 with better imaging. I never even would have thought to give these a mention based on price to performance. The Paul Speltz Anti ic's had a cleaner sound with more sparkle and sounded more life like on top. They are a bargain hands down. The Reality Cable ic's just made mince meat out of anything I have tried. The sound just exploded out of my JM Lab Electra’s. The soundstage grew way outside of the speakers. If anything at all these cables brought an enormous amount of life into this system.
The crashing of cymbals is just startling real with great weight through the frequencies. I would call these very neutral because there is not one frequency I could detect that takes over. The JPS SCFX to me is just not as balanced. You are right about ordering one set of cables and evaluating them and I started with the speaker cables first. This is just more proof that cables are definitely system dependent and synergy is the key to making one happy. I am glad you found your synergy. I guess we better get back to talking about speaker cables now.

Rayhall: The 8TC's are half the impedance of the 4TC's, meaning that a stable amplifier should be delivering more power with improved transients across the band into identical speaker loads.

If you ran into low frequency problems when going from 4TC up to the 8TC, my guess is that either the amplifier was having a hard time with the change in impedance ( 4TC's higher impedance acting as a buffer to the amp ) and / or your system componentry leans toward the warm side and you prefer a slightly leaner tonal balance. Might have been a combo of these two factors too. Obviously, one has to choose and use what they like best within the confines of their system. Sean
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My system is big planars and all tubes (pre, monoblocks, CD). I appreciate alot of air in my system. The old stuff was 15 year old Monster Cable ICs and Kimber speaker cables (black and grey twine), and some more recent Supernal biwired speaker cables (unshielded). The system presented alot of air around instruments and voices. I did come to notice that the cables also presented some unwanted noise -maybe not so much noise.... rather a lack of crispness and clarity.

The Reality Cables immediately took the life right out of my system -first IC, second IC, then rolling in the biwired speaker cables. The system seemed completely dead. I thought something was wrong. I checked circuit breakers, etc. I checked the cable direction. I checked and evaluated dozens of different test cases. I rolled the cables out of the system in reverse order. The life came right back into my system. I thought perhaps the cables needed burnin, so I ran them round the clock for a week. No difference. Gregg then sent balanced ICs as well as SS ICs for evaluation. Same result - no life. After almost two weeks, I finally gave up.

I think that maybe there is some electrical uniqueness that presents itself between the VTLs, the Maggies, and the Reality gear that simply doesn't make for a successful combination. Listener57 conjectured that maybe Gregg was using this certain noice reducing film (sorry, I can't remember the name) that caused everything to sound so deadened. At the end of the day, I don't really know why the cables didn't perform. But I felt like I did everything in my power to give the Reality gear every chance for success.

For me, the JPS gear (purple sheath, RCA jacks - the cheaper stuff) was quiet, crisp and clear. I felt that many reference tracks I listen to (typically jazz, vocal, instrumental) for evaluation came to life in a refreshing way that I hadn't heard before. Maggies can play highs very high. I noticed that the JPS helped tone down the excess noise in the highs. And I felt that the JPS made hard rock sections a bit punchier or full bodied.... which I like as Maggies are not necessarily known for deep, heavy bass sections.

I'm sure there are better cables than JPS. Over time, I might like to try the Red Dawns or other loftier gear just for grins. But at this time, the JPS seems to be hitting the mark with my system. This experience has taught me just how much difference that cables can make in tuning a system.

Jp1208, it's interesting that the characteristics that make for a shortcoming in your system makes for a benefit in mine.