After a couple of days of marathon listening sessions, I have concluded that the Bybees(at least the ones I have) are everything they are advertised to be. This pertains to the Bybee Ultra Quantum Speaker Filters with Nordost SPM Reference tails, Cardas spades, and Cardas gold posts. In my system, there was no down side. The best way for me to describe what it was like, is that everything seemed to get "broken-in" all at once. That smoothing out you get after break-in of a component, is kind of like what happens. The level of smoothness is killer, with all the air, detail, dynamics, layering, frequency balance, naturalness, emotion, and everything still there. IMHO, they are worth every penny spent.