IMHO, manufacturers claim the holy grail of neutral sound when, in fact, many have a house sound. I can tell a Nordost cable from a Shunyata, Audioquest or Audience. (Nordost will be faster but not as full bodied as the others--and the others have differences as well). On the other hand, companies like Stealth make cables with different conductor material, each having a different sound. Thus the only way to find out which cable sounds best to you is to try it in your system.
3 things I learned from using MANY interconnect cables
At last, I am posting here for the first time! I got so much help from this forum and always felt a bit guilty about not contributing.
Over the past several years, I have used the following interconnect cables: Audioquest Golden Gate, Audioquest Columbia, Audioquest Sky, Monster Interlink 300 MkIII, Harmonic Technology Pro Silway (I have used both Mk I and Mk II), Silnote Morpheus, Anticables (the original version), Tara Labs RSC, Nordost Heimdall, Straightwire Crescendo, and Chord Anthem. They were all purchased used and I always had 2 or more pairs to compare at a given time although I didn’t have these cables all at once. Through the journey, I learned the following:
1. The price was NOT indicative of the sound quality unless you go very cheap (less than $100). I think this point is self-explanatory so I am not adding any elaboration.
2. Disconnecting and re-connecting the cables had a very positive impact on sound quality, which will affect any AB comparison. If you are comparing two pairs of cables that had comparable sound quality, the new cables will sound better because the connection would be fresh.
3. In my experience, the cables were NOT system dependent. This might raise some eye brows as it goes against the commonly held belief so I am going to explain a bit here.
All I am saying is that I have never seen a case where my preference order of two sets of interconnect cables got reversed when tested on two or more components (e.g. cable A was better than cable B on amp X but cable B was better on amp Y, etc). With any AB comparison I ever did, the better cable always won no matter what component I was testing them on.
Oh in case someone is curious, the best pair of interconnect cables I have ever used was Chord Anthem. It had a wider frequency range and a more natural tonality than others. And I would rather not add the qualification "but it was the best only in my system" because of the 3rd point I made above. Cheers!
Over the past several years, I have used the following interconnect cables: Audioquest Golden Gate, Audioquest Columbia, Audioquest Sky, Monster Interlink 300 MkIII, Harmonic Technology Pro Silway (I have used both Mk I and Mk II), Silnote Morpheus, Anticables (the original version), Tara Labs RSC, Nordost Heimdall, Straightwire Crescendo, and Chord Anthem. They were all purchased used and I always had 2 or more pairs to compare at a given time although I didn’t have these cables all at once. Through the journey, I learned the following:
1. The price was NOT indicative of the sound quality unless you go very cheap (less than $100). I think this point is self-explanatory so I am not adding any elaboration.
2. Disconnecting and re-connecting the cables had a very positive impact on sound quality, which will affect any AB comparison. If you are comparing two pairs of cables that had comparable sound quality, the new cables will sound better because the connection would be fresh.
3. In my experience, the cables were NOT system dependent. This might raise some eye brows as it goes against the commonly held belief so I am going to explain a bit here.
All I am saying is that I have never seen a case where my preference order of two sets of interconnect cables got reversed when tested on two or more components (e.g. cable A was better than cable B on amp X but cable B was better on amp Y, etc). With any AB comparison I ever did, the better cable always won no matter what component I was testing them on.
Oh in case someone is curious, the best pair of interconnect cables I have ever used was Chord Anthem. It had a wider frequency range and a more natural tonality than others. And I would rather not add the qualification "but it was the best only in my system" because of the 3rd point I made above. Cheers!