Budget cable chaos??? Is River Cable the new star?

Sunnyjim and Zd542, in the budget cable market River cables have been around for years. River Cable is not a new entry to the market. See the link below:
[url=http://www.audioholics.com/gadget-reviews/speaker-cable-reviews-faceoff-2]River Cable 2004[/url] This speaker cable faceoff may be of interest too.

I haven't tried them, but one of these days I may, if my most recent purchase does not measure up. Sunnyjim, as far as budget cables go, I would definitely recommend trying out Supra Classic 6.0. If they're good enough for Merlin speakers, they're a very good budget cable.

"Why not look at budget cables from companies that are more established?"

That was what I said above. I really have no idea how long River cables have been in business, but they're not as well established as companies like AQ, Kimber, Cardas etc.. If someone is going to make an effort to not audition cables and buy blind, there's a lot more info in the form of comments and reviews with the bigger names.

I took a look at their site, and at the descriptions of the three speaker cables Jim mentioned. FWIW, here are my comments:

1)What is most impressive to me about the site is what is NOT there. No techno-babble, pseudo-scientific nonsense, far-fetched theories, or other BS.

2)It is reassuring to see that they provide essentially complete descriptions and specifications of their cables.

3)The description of their background supplying professional markets for 20 years or so is also reassuring.

4)As are the facts that they make their own cables, and subject them to thorough testing, monitoring actual signal waveforms.

5)The photo on their home page is certainly impressive :-)

On the other hand, I have no idea why they say that "low capacitance in speaker cables is especially important with dynamic coil speakers," and emphasize that the capacitance of their top end speaker cable is an extremely low 10 pF/ft.

Normally inductance is a more important parameter than capacitance in a speaker cable, and the inductance of their speaker cables is nothing special.

FWIW. Regards,
-- Al

TO Jafant: Snake River cables are far from budget level. But thanks for the rocommendation

I knew I was going to take it on the chin with this thread.
Zd542: I know you "don't take prisoners" in your comments but I wish you would not come on like gang busters. This is an audio blog, not a national security meeting

However, I THOUGHT my comment very funny and insightful that the "Audio Business is not a roving consortium of Renaissance Faires, etc, etc." This is not an original thought on my part but was inspired by either John Atkinson, or one of the senior editors of Stereophile. The subject was under discussion in the "AS WE SEE IT" section of the publication.

It is in my opinion spot on because I am not travelling to an audioshow in Vegas, Denver, Chicago, or NYC to audition a bunch of speaker cables. This idea that the "Cable Company" has every cable on the shelf for auditioning is just not true. Sometimes, they don't have the lengths required, or the loaner of a particular brand is NOT available.

I don't live in New York City, San Fran, or Chicago where I can avail myself of least the advice of audiosales people, or "loanership" of different brands from numerous audio shops. Honolulu has two high end audio shops, neither of which loan out cables or sell budget cables. So I must depend on the astute audio wisdom of my audiophile brothers to get a "read" on different brands of cables out there which I have little to no access. I can't row to Los Angeles in a kayak and check out their audio stores which are numerous if you include all of L.A. county

The sad truth is that many high end stores think of cabling as an after dinner mint. They are more concerned with selling the other components, and often have a narrow selection of cables they can recommend because they don't want to be bothered. The other problem is many of these goddamn audio mags that many of us subscribe, go out of their way to avoid cable reviews or cable shootouts. Maybe many of the writers CANNOT articulate the differences and don't want to be bothered by this after the sale product.

Case in point, page through the September 2013 TAS, there are lots of expensive cable ads, but rarely reviews. Plus, as much as Robert Hartley of TAS claims otherwise this magazine has become increasingly dedicated to super high end audio. This turn has occurred over the last year or so.

Lastly, To Almarg. thank you for your assessment of River Cable Company via their website. You always provide informative and judicious answers (and advice)in response to the threads offered. I wonder if the inductance/ capacitance ratios of the River Cable Flex 8 could be the reason that responder "Jtcf" "sounded dead" in his system. The company's reluctance to quickly refund his purchase is not a selling point for River Cable