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How goofy is this?

While waiting on jumpers for my new Audience au24e speaker cables i got impatient and figured I'd see how things sound with the au24e's to the high posts with a set of zu ibis to the low.

Granted I may have a tin ear but this seems to sound pretty good. I'm hearing - I think, or imagine - more detail, more air, more 3D, more dynamics, and a lot more bass than I was with my biwire Rockefellers.

Is this setup really whacky? Or is it possible I'm really hearing the improvements and not imagining things?
joncourage
mt10425
1,138 posts
 
I always promote connecting to HF posts and jumping to LF as explained to me by Stuart Marcus (Vampire wire) and in Tannoy speaker manuals.
joncourage OP
185 posts
 
After listening more I started noticing an edginess in the highs that was becoming very irritating. Thin, grainy, unnatural. Violins sounded artificial and annoying.

Switched the ibis to the high and au24e to the low, and the edginess was resolved, but while there's still better detail and resolution than the audioquest, the sound is very 2-dimensional, flat, uninvolving. Less bass, but what is there is better controlled and a little less boomy so I give it "even" on that count but not ideal.

I'm hoping that when the jumpers finally get here and I switch to single wired that the downsides will resolve and I'll see improvements over the audioquest. If not, back they go in service until I find something that offers better synergy with my system.

Speaker cables so far have been the toughest piece of the puzzle for me.
joncourage OP
185 posts
 
Jumpers (zu ibis) are in with the Ibis speaker cables now. SC to high posts jumpered to low.

Big improvement. Sound has gained back it's dimensionality and musicality while retaining better detail and deeper, relatively well controlled bass. Maybe a wee bit rolled off in the high, but I'm not entirely sure, and very slightly less lush in the mid.

These Ibis are extremely nice cables. Fast, controlled, musical, come to mind. A lot of PRAT. They have about 100 hours on them in a garage system so probably not fully broken in yet.

Next up I will try swapping-in the Audience cables, and I have a set of Satori Shotgun coming next week to compare also.

So overall I'd say my experiment of mix and match high/low didn't work out too well, now hearing what one set sounds like jumpered.
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