I have tried many shunyata products (have the pythons throughout with the Hydra 8) and can strongly say that with their product, you do get what you pay for. It's twice the price but sounds exponentially better. Go for the 4s and you won't regret it. It's in a totally different class then the Guardian. Background incredibly blacker, noise free and my amps threw out a beautiful soundstage--deeper and wider than my Richard Grey 1200s and incomparable to a Guardian; my preamp became more holographic and the CD player's dynamics and resolution went up dramatically. It bought the system to an amazingly new level. I suggest shuntaya power cables for the other components plugged into it as well. I started with diamond back power cords, upgraded to taipan and then python and in each step, the increased performance was easilly noticible.