Wow... I left this thread for dead, only to come back a few weeks later and find it alive and kicking!
To answer Bobf's question the GG Revelations I tried ended up with about 200 hours on them. Apparently that isn't enough time, because according to Steve Brunelle they need 300 hours to completely settle. While that may be true, I have a hard time believing that cables can undergo wholesale changes in character between 200 and 300 hours! In my (perhaps limited) experience, I've had pretty good idea what a cable is gonna sound like after a few days... After that, the rest of the break in tends to manifest as refinement in sound, like a smoothing out of the midrange or a sweetening of the treble.
My experience with GG Revelations was that they sounded very "dense", compared to the Jade Vermeils, both in terms of the soundstage as well as temporally. I felt like sounds that were previously spread out nicely between the speakers all fell towards the center of the soundstage. I particularly noticed this with the bass. Also, like Jafox has described, I lost a certain amount of shimmer and the sense that sounds decay into a black background. But main reason I removed the Revelations before 300 hours was that for some reason they accentuated some treble hash that I had never experienced before in my system. Now that may have gone away with more break in time, but I couldn't stand the thought of having to listen to my system like that for another week! So I put the Vermeils back in for some respite, and I never felt like giving the Revelations another try. Perhaps I like the treble through my Vermeils more because they have Bybee filters in them?
That being said, just because the Revelations didn't work out for me, they have so much positive feedback and Steve Brunelle is such a great guy to do business with, I have no reservations in recommending that people give the Gabriel Golds a shot in their systems. I would just keep an open mind and try other interconnects as well!
As an aside, I don't understand why all these manufacturers who claim these exceedingly long break in requirements don't break in the cables themselves with a cable cooker before shipping! I know that the dielectric still needs to settle after the cables are moved around, but requiring a customer to put 2 straight weeks on a cable before listening critically is a bit much.
On a separate note: Mattheus, I have the Vermeil Digital cable with Furutech Rhodium plugs, and I'm very pleased with it! It replaced a Stereovox XV2, and I had no qualms selling the XV2 as soon as I placed the Vermeil Digital in my system. The Vermeil retained all the detail of the XV2, but the treble was smoothed out considerably. I didn't really do an A/B test between them because I just preferred the Vermeil! If you end up getting one, I'd be interested to hear what you think about it.
And another note: A fellow Audiogoner graciously let me borrow a pair of Jade Audio Pure Gold interconnects for comparison with my Vermeil + Bybees. And I just won an auction for a pair of KCI Silkworms... Once the Silkworms arrive, I'll post a comparison between these three interconnects!
Tomer
To answer Bobf's question the GG Revelations I tried ended up with about 200 hours on them. Apparently that isn't enough time, because according to Steve Brunelle they need 300 hours to completely settle. While that may be true, I have a hard time believing that cables can undergo wholesale changes in character between 200 and 300 hours! In my (perhaps limited) experience, I've had pretty good idea what a cable is gonna sound like after a few days... After that, the rest of the break in tends to manifest as refinement in sound, like a smoothing out of the midrange or a sweetening of the treble.
My experience with GG Revelations was that they sounded very "dense", compared to the Jade Vermeils, both in terms of the soundstage as well as temporally. I felt like sounds that were previously spread out nicely between the speakers all fell towards the center of the soundstage. I particularly noticed this with the bass. Also, like Jafox has described, I lost a certain amount of shimmer and the sense that sounds decay into a black background. But main reason I removed the Revelations before 300 hours was that for some reason they accentuated some treble hash that I had never experienced before in my system. Now that may have gone away with more break in time, but I couldn't stand the thought of having to listen to my system like that for another week! So I put the Vermeils back in for some respite, and I never felt like giving the Revelations another try. Perhaps I like the treble through my Vermeils more because they have Bybee filters in them?
That being said, just because the Revelations didn't work out for me, they have so much positive feedback and Steve Brunelle is such a great guy to do business with, I have no reservations in recommending that people give the Gabriel Golds a shot in their systems. I would just keep an open mind and try other interconnects as well!
As an aside, I don't understand why all these manufacturers who claim these exceedingly long break in requirements don't break in the cables themselves with a cable cooker before shipping! I know that the dielectric still needs to settle after the cables are moved around, but requiring a customer to put 2 straight weeks on a cable before listening critically is a bit much.
On a separate note: Mattheus, I have the Vermeil Digital cable with Furutech Rhodium plugs, and I'm very pleased with it! It replaced a Stereovox XV2, and I had no qualms selling the XV2 as soon as I placed the Vermeil Digital in my system. The Vermeil retained all the detail of the XV2, but the treble was smoothed out considerably. I didn't really do an A/B test between them because I just preferred the Vermeil! If you end up getting one, I'd be interested to hear what you think about it.
And another note: A fellow Audiogoner graciously let me borrow a pair of Jade Audio Pure Gold interconnects for comparison with my Vermeil + Bybees. And I just won an auction for a pair of KCI Silkworms... Once the Silkworms arrive, I'll post a comparison between these three interconnects!
Tomer