Pure Note Paragon vs. Kimber Select

Redkiwi, I guess you're question was posed to me, so I'm going to respond. I visit these forums because they are a great source of ideas, and because they offer invaluable user experience with products I might consider purchasing. User opinions are completely valid as starting points, but personal experience is the only way of deciding which component is best in one's own system. It's of tremendous value that by reading the Audiogon forums, a choice of wire can be narrowed to two or three options. Still, it's risky to make a choice of only one cable based solely on user opinions. As stated earlier, the chosen wire may or may not sound the same in the purchaser's system, and it would be more valuable, in my opinion to buy or borrow both cables and choose between the two after a reasonable home audition period. Also, it's common (at least for me) to always wonder "what if?". "What if" the other cable that was mentioned sounded better than the one I bought? This second guessing is typical of our audio nervosa and helps to fuel endless system reconfiguration. If one has access to used versions of cable, or to the Cable Company lending library, doesn't it make sense to listen in one's own system based on research done here on the threads?

Hi Tvad. Seems we agree. Where I live there is no chance of trying burned in cables for long enough to make a reasonable judgement. I use these forums to get a rough idea of which of the hundreds of cables I should shortlist and then I go about buying them here, living with them and then flicking them on if they don't measure up. The key thing is to develop an idea of the credibility of the individual posters, which biases you to the ones that post a lot or have been here a while. And then listen carefully to how they express their impressions of a cable and look at the system they put it in. In the end you need to use a fair bit of judgement about how you interpret what is being said, but the process works for me. I have ended up getting a lot of ideas for cables to try by reading posts here and some of them have turned out to be real winners.

Raquel, it seems to me you are less prepared to do the 'triangulation' between views expressed here than I am, and therefore wish to hear for yourself, and not be biased from potentially erroneous or irrelevant judgements of others. I understand and respect that now.

The thing is, I read this thread in the hope to hear some views expressed about the Pure Note Paragon, and have now diverted things away from that. I hope we now hear something about the Paragon.

I have owned a number of silver cabling including the Kimber 1030 Select, Ridge Street Audio MSE II and Poiema!!, Acoustic Zen Silver Reference, Empirical Audio Holophonic PC and now the Revelation Audio Paradise. The Kimbers are fine neutral cables, however in my system they were distorted in the upper mids (or perhaps revealed distortion from another component). In any case, they were not a good value. The Ridge Street Poiema !! had terrific balance, but were slightly...and I mean slightly...soft in the highs. At this juncture, the Revelation Audio interconnects are the finest I've heard in my system, and the best value in silver that I've owned. That said about silver, I'm beginning to think I prefer the slightly warmer characteristics of copper. But this is evolutionary in my system and far from being definitive.

I am very keen on the Jena Symphonies when it comes to copper, but I have not had them in my system long enough and tried it in my other system yet to make more definitive comments. But it appears to work better for me than the Kimber 1130 or the Quattro Fil.

At less than half the price I like the Luminous Synchestra Reference ICs. They do almost everything right except for the level of resolution that the Jena, Kimber, Quattro have, and I liked them better than the Poiema, as did a couple of my buddies.

I can't comment on the Kimbers since I've never auditioned them. I'm quite familiar with Pure Note and my review of the Paragon I/Cs should be up in a couple of hours.