I've just run in a pair of Oval 9's ( copper ) for appr. 500+ hours. I was told by a salesman at Audio Advisor that these cables sound horrible out of the box and take quite a while to settle in. I would agree. Out of the box, they literally SUCKED. I wanted to remove them instantly. This is exactly what the salesman also said his initial reaction was in his system at home. After appr. 70 hours, i could hear some slight changes for the better. 150 hours brought better performance. 200+ hours made them almost livable. 500 hours later and they might work if you've never heard what really good cables could do for a system. I have to admit that they did come a LONG way though compared to how they started out. I took them out and replaced them with a set of my Goertz MI-2's from another system. Almost instantly, the music, soundstage, life and especially the bass came back into the system. Two others outside of myself all agreed that there was no comparison and that the Oval 9's literally removed the "feeling" from the music. My girlfriend, who is no audiophile, was not in the room when i swapped cables. She could tell the difference within 10 minutes of playing time without ANY prompting from me. She too thought the Goertz stomped the Oval 9's without question. Keep in mind that results vary from system to system and personal tastes mean a lot. In this specific system, they didn't do very well. I do have to say that they did do some things quite well, but the negatives FAR outweigh the benefits. Needless to say, mine are going back. This is not meant as a flame or troll, just stating my personal experience to show both sides of the coin. Sean >
