Cardas Golden Presence - anyone familiar?

the presence is listed below the golden reference on the cardas website but according to the prices on fatwyre.com, the presence is significantly less expensive than the golden cross ($700/m vs $870/m).
Therefore, I'm assuming the sound is closer to the cross than to the more revealing reference series.

I auditioned Cardas Cross, Neutral Reference, Golden Cross and Golden Reference *interconnects* a couple years ago. I ultimately bought Golden Cross: both Goldens had a lot more resolution than NR & Cross, but the slight added warmth of GC aided my system and ears over GR. But I found NR to be one of the best $500 ICs out there, far better than Cross, which was too syrupy and congested for me.

A couple months ago I was auditioning speaker cables, including Neutral Reference and Golden Presence. The NR spkr cables had all the great attributes I liked in the ICs. I had high hopes for the GP, but rather than filling the gap between NR and GR as expected, it seemed to be a 'cross' between regular Cross and NR. I could discern NO advantages in resolution, detail, smoothness between GP and NR that differentiated the GR ICs from NR. For the extra $$, it seemed to be just a warmer NR -- which is not a bad thing at all for a lot of systems. But now I had the 'warmth' with my ICs and the rest of my system and needed a more neutral cable. So for me, Golden Presence didn't justify its pricepoint closer to their GC/GR series.

BTW, after LOTS of A/Bing, the final contenders were NR and Wireworld Polaris 5. I chose the WW in part due to closeout pricing, but still wonder if I'd be a smidge happier with the Cardas NR...

Thanks Sdecker - I too am looking for new speaker cables and was considering going with the GC since I have been very happy with the ICs. Do you think that an all GC cabled system would be too much of a warm sound?

An all GC system *may* be too warm, but it sure depends on system setup, components, acoustics and preferences. George Cardas is no dummy so it's likely there's a synergy there that keeps the sound from going overboard. You'd certainly be getting the resolution + a bit of added warmth with the GC spkr cables, but for the $$ you should.

I think the extra $$ for GC over GP would be money well spent given what I perceived of much greater resolution (GC vs NR ICs) vs no greater resolution (GP vs NR spkr cables) and probably equal warmth over NR in both cases...

I can't recommend the Cable Company highly enough for auditioning esp the higher priced wires so you can be more confident about how things sound.

You may want to try something like an Audience Au24 for speaker cables. I used to have Cross speaker cables and various Cardas IC's. I was getting too much warmth and eventually got the Audience. Made a big difference.