I finally got a chance to get a sneak preview of the Jade speaker cables.
For the last year or so I have been using PAD Opis speaker cables. These have a great tonal coherency to lock in well between the CAT JL-3 amps and SoundLab A1 speakers. The Opis retain that strong PAD characterization of dynamic contrasts. The PAD Aqueous Anniv spkr cables were non-linear in my system with peaks and valleys all over the place.
After trying many spkr cables in the $1-2k range, the only other cable that worked well here was the Coincident xTreme, but the Opis outperformed this in dynamics .... otherwise they perform nearly identical here. I had several of these cables here at one time last year to play for a couple weeks.
Enter the Jade this week: Tonality is nearly identical to the Opis but the Jade has a little more extension in the low end and clearly more reach into the top. This latter difference allows for decays to last a bit longer and give the impression of more air to the notes. This was an 8-feet cable that had several hundred hours of use.
I then tried a 4-feet pair of the Jade cable with no burn-in time. Tonality was very similar but not as extended in either direction. The projection was much reduced which lead to a somewhat flat performance. A return to the burned-in 8-feet pair brought back the openness. All tests were done with the souped-up APL Denon into the Callisto with 2 pairs of Jade Hybrid ICs. PCs were a mix of Dream State and Stealth Dream.
The outcome of this mini audition indicates that this cable may need some serious burn-in. The 4-feet pair will be burned-in on a cable burner for a week or so and the test will be repeated to determine how the 8-feet and 4-feet pairs compare here again.
As it stands now, the Jade 8-feet cable was a very nice step above the Opis. One thing I have noticed here is how much less spkr cables differ vs. ICs and PCs. The difference between the two top ICs I have had here, the Indra and Jade Hybrid, have very dramatic differences from source to pre or pre to amps than the above differences between the Opis and Jade spkr cables. And the same with PCs into the APL Denon CDP and Running Springs Haley PLC: the Dream State PC in these positions is a much bigger step ahead of the Stealth Dream PC than these spkr cable differences. So there is clearly a priority here as to where to invest money in cables.
Osgorth: Oh and yes, that mystery IC was the GG Revelation. It did not work out well for me here at all.....whether straight out of the box or over 150 hours of continuous signal for nearly 7 days. Oh well. Leave it to me to wreck a perfect record! I was very appreciative to get refunded from Steve.
John
For the last year or so I have been using PAD Opis speaker cables. These have a great tonal coherency to lock in well between the CAT JL-3 amps and SoundLab A1 speakers. The Opis retain that strong PAD characterization of dynamic contrasts. The PAD Aqueous Anniv spkr cables were non-linear in my system with peaks and valleys all over the place.
After trying many spkr cables in the $1-2k range, the only other cable that worked well here was the Coincident xTreme, but the Opis outperformed this in dynamics .... otherwise they perform nearly identical here. I had several of these cables here at one time last year to play for a couple weeks.
Enter the Jade this week: Tonality is nearly identical to the Opis but the Jade has a little more extension in the low end and clearly more reach into the top. This latter difference allows for decays to last a bit longer and give the impression of more air to the notes. This was an 8-feet cable that had several hundred hours of use.
I then tried a 4-feet pair of the Jade cable with no burn-in time. Tonality was very similar but not as extended in either direction. The projection was much reduced which lead to a somewhat flat performance. A return to the burned-in 8-feet pair brought back the openness. All tests were done with the souped-up APL Denon into the Callisto with 2 pairs of Jade Hybrid ICs. PCs were a mix of Dream State and Stealth Dream.
The outcome of this mini audition indicates that this cable may need some serious burn-in. The 4-feet pair will be burned-in on a cable burner for a week or so and the test will be repeated to determine how the 8-feet and 4-feet pairs compare here again.
As it stands now, the Jade 8-feet cable was a very nice step above the Opis. One thing I have noticed here is how much less spkr cables differ vs. ICs and PCs. The difference between the two top ICs I have had here, the Indra and Jade Hybrid, have very dramatic differences from source to pre or pre to amps than the above differences between the Opis and Jade spkr cables. And the same with PCs into the APL Denon CDP and Running Springs Haley PLC: the Dream State PC in these positions is a much bigger step ahead of the Stealth Dream PC than these spkr cable differences. So there is clearly a priority here as to where to invest money in cables.
Osgorth: Oh and yes, that mystery IC was the GG Revelation. It did not work out well for me here at all.....whether straight out of the box or over 150 hours of continuous signal for nearly 7 days. Oh well. Leave it to me to wreck a perfect record! I was very appreciative to get refunded from Steve.
John