2:30 Saturday afternoon, after two hours of listening to the anti cables right out of the box ..... pretty impressive so far. The cables arrived via USPS Priority Mail, very well packed, with spades on the amplifier ends and banana plugs on the speaker ends (a necessity with Vandy 1C's.) Once stretched out, the cables were easy to manipulate and connect into my system. The cables are very stable "floating in air" between amp and speakers, without touching anything else. As you can see by looking at photos of my system, the left speaker is a lot closer to the rack than the right speaker. Following the advice of Paul Speltz, I bought a six foot cable for the left, and a twelve foot cable for the right. 18 feet total ..... $98.00 with shipping. A rather inexpensive investment.
My routine demo tracks include the acoustic "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed" (An Evening with the Allman Brothers Band Second Set), "Tell Me Why => Old Man" (Neil Young Live at Massey Hall), "Lush Life => 'Round Midnight" (Clifford Jordan Live at Ethel's), "Stormy Monday => Bridge Over Troubled Water" (Eva Cassidy Live at Blues Alley), "Danny's All-Star Joint => Coolsville" (Ricky Lee Jones), "Tequila Sunrise => Hotel California (Eagles' "Hell Freezes Over"), side one of Sonny Rollins' "Way Out West", and side one of Steely Dan's "Aja." A fairly good sampling of well recorded music, which has always sounded mighty fine on my system.
My initial thoughts..... increased dynamic range with more sparkling highs and properly textured bass, natural midrange without any apparent congestion, very good positioning of voices and instruments within a nicely defined soundstage, excellent truth of timbre, and a very clear presentation of each recording. No noticeable harshness or rough edges, and very nice flow, decay, and distinction of musical notes.
The sound of music is definitely different from my AudioQuest type 6+ cables, but it's too early to tell if the music sounds "better"...... I'll let the new cables burn in for a while, and update my thoughts in a few days. Our hobby really is pretty cool, and it's a lot of fun to share this kind of stuff with all you guys and gals on Audiogon. Happy Listening.
