Help with upgrading speaker cables

EE3 - actually, in my system, they were better than anything else I could throw at it. Money was no object. As I said, I tried all the high priced blends, and the Anti-cables were the best. As a matter of fact, Audioquest has a new muti-thousand dollar interconnect, that is 3 or 4 times that of Sky (I forgot at the moment). By the way, in my system, Sky had just a bit less performance than Anti-Cable - 2nd best. Anyway, I plugged these things into my system, and my wife thought that something broke. She raised her voice and asked me what I had done THIS time...put it back the way it was. This just demonstrates that all systems are different, and we who are looking for "The Best", can't take anyone's word for the superiority of any cable. You MUST listen to how it performs in your own system, evalutate, and reject it, or write a check.

JTMA..performance can diminish with time. You really should clean the connections every couple of months. It's just good hygene.

Sambar - you are very correct about the synergy between Audioquest and Vandy's . Now...if you really want the best (read my post below) try Anti-Cables. After trying everything that Cable co. would send me....LOTS of stuff...Audioquest Sky and their silver speaker cable (I forgot what it's called) came in second. I could be very happy with Audioquest, but the Speltz wires were even better. NO joke. If you click onto my system you will see that I use Vandersteen's as well.

There is so much change to my system coming next week(ARC CD3 MK2, ARC VS-115) when things settle in I'll try the CDP's I/C or do you think you have to change-out 100% from the start?

As to performance diminishing with time for cables, there is no reason that the electrical characteristics of copper cable or any common synthetic insulating material used over the last twenty years would change within a human lifetime. Unless there is visible corrosion at the connections, i.e. if you are using bananna plugs or spade connectors, there is no reason for a change. And any corrosion can be corrected by retermination. The cable has the same inductance, capacitance, and resistance as the day it was made.