Clear Day Interconnects

Xeno, that's interesting. Are the Clear Day ICs directional? Also, do you know if they're cryo'd? Just curious.

Hi Geoff,

The Clear Day interconnects do have an arrow on them and Paul cooks them on a cable burner in that direction before shipping.

I can chime in a bit on the Clear Day RCA interconnects (sound, not directionality) from my experience with them in my system a couple months ago: Oppo BDP-105D / Peachtree Nova125 integrated amp / Clear Day Double Shotgun speaker cables and jumpers / Magnepan 1.6QR. Shunyata Venom3 power cables on the Oppo and Peachtree gear, all gear plugged into an APC H15 power conditioner.

Though the Clear Day interconnects did mellow out some after some burn-in, they never lost their harsh, brash sound in my system. This was after hundreds of hours of burn-in. I'm not sure whether this was because they are silver, unshielded, or both. FWIW, both Blue Jeans and Cardas are very outspoken as the importance of shielding interconnects because of the delicate signals they pass and the magnified negative effects of EMI/RFI that enters the signal at that crucial stage.

I replaced the Clear Day interconnects with a set of Blue Jeans LC-1 and the difference was a relief. No more cringing on acoustic tracks, gunshots in movies, etc.

I've now settled on Cardas Golden Reference interconnects in the same system listed above. This came after both (i) an extended comparison of the Golden Reference, LC-1, and Golden Cross and (ii) after a one-night A/B session between the three on the same guitar track that made my wife and I cringe using the Clear Day interconnects.

This in no way lessens my opinion of Paul or his products. He's still the most honest and pleasurable person I've done business with in the audio industry.

I always reverse ICs regardless of direction of arrows, you know, just in case they actually sound better that way. It's not that I don't trust them. ;-)

Cables are usually directional because there will be a foil or drain wire that is connected to one end only to drain off any static electricity, etc. i believe they are designed to drain away from the source but I could be wrong.

Cables that do not have a drain wire are also directional due the directionality of the conductor. So, hopefully whoever attached the drain wire in thise cables was aware of the inherent directionality of the conductor, otherwise the cable with drain wire will be forced to go in the "wrong" way. One can image cases of multiple conductors or even stranded conductors which hopefully are assembled with directionality in mind, otherwise there will be chaos.