I'm cable-clueless and need advice...

I always find myself going to Cardas for a clean sound. If I want warm I will use the Cross or 300B Microtwin for an inexpensive good sound. For a neutral sound, then the Neutral Reference. With balanced cables, you will find there is less difference between cables sound with balanced than with single-ended/RCA cables. Even an inexpensive balanced cable can sound very good. The mistake is to spend too much. Speaker cables make more of a difference IMHO. The Vampire cables (sound connections) have good sounding balanced cables reasonable priced. Listen to all you can before you buy. Happy listening Jallen

I have a different experience than Jallen. I have a balanced system and have found just as much difference in the sound quality between balanced cables as the RCAs in previous systems.

Dennisb, I have a Meridian G08. The best cable I've found for connecting it to my Rowland preamp is Kimber Select KS1130. It is a silver cable but doesn't have silver's characteristic brightness. It is quite neutral tonally, but has lightning-fast transients and incredible resolution. It may be a bit more expensive than you want to pay ($750-850/1m used) but is worth it. One caveat, it takes about 200 hours for it to settle down and assume its neutral character. It sounds a little lean until that time.

btw,

all the cables i mentioned were $200 and under (+/- $25) used.

mike