Acoustic Zen speaker Cables ..In general

Acoustic Zen have very nice tonally balance

very revealing image wise - layering and body to music

they get acoustic instruments right

I've owned Harmonic Technology and AZ is a step further in revealing and unveiling the music

the sound is less grainy and has an air and resiliancy that sound right

tom

John-
Yes I own both the Hologram and the Satori, and the Hologram is simply better, by a wide margin. I still think the Satori is a great cable, but if you are willing to spend the extra definately go for Hologram.

Do you really think that Nordost SPM is better? I did extensive comparisons between SPM and Satori, and I think Satori is more natural and more realistic in virtually ever regard than SPM. To my ear SPM and Quattro Fil have a very dry sterile sound.

I did quite a bit of cable comparing in my system a few months ago. I even compared AZ to the expensive lines by Nordost, NBS, Siltech, and Silversmith. I thought the AZ cables are the best balanced and most musical in my system.

It could just be the systems. My comparisons were done with pass labs aleph equipment and audio physic avanti-century speakers. These are very high detail/low distortion and are known good matches for nordost cabling. The aleph's have a sweet sounding midrage/treble & nordost cable just seems to bring out more of that.

I found that the spm speaker cable was a bit better than satori, but the quattro-fil i/c's were much better than az silver ref. I sold off my spm speaker cables and bought a long satori run. Mainly because I felt the small performance loss was worth the savings on a 5 meter set. I also like the idea of a $600 cable cossing a traffic area better than a $3000 cable (I do use foam sandwiches). Az should pay me a commission. Three people I know have gone to using satori's after hearing them in my system.

John-

What a coincidence most of my comparisons were done with Pass Aleph 2 amps and Silverline Sonata speakers. I also did compare them on my BAT VK150SE, Dunlavy 4 system as well. I had a few friends over when doing some comparing as well, and everyone agreed that the Satori was better than SPM and Silver Ref was better than Quattro Fil. I agree that the Nordost cables can initially sound more striking than AZ, but in extended listening I find that AZ is simply much more natural than Nordost, while at the same time passing much more of the ultra fine details in the recordings. I guess we have to just agree to disagree

They are quite system dependent compared to other cables I have used like the Analysis Plus.

In some systems they can sound really dark, while in some it can sound very neutral.

I understand why many people sell this cable off, its very sensitive to anciliary equipment.

I also noticed that you cannot use AZ cables all the way from the IC's to the speaker cable, it will be too dark sounding in my opinion.

I have combined the Satori with Silver Audio 4.0 and Silver digital cable to very good effect. Matching the components with the TG Audio cables PC 's also helped quite a bit.

Its quite a challenging cable but once you get the combos right, its fantastic!