The reason is as per my comments on fuses in another recent thread. I have now concluded that such universal recommendations are of little practical use as they take no account of other people’s tastes or sensitivities nor of the voicing of the system in question. They also produce a stream of postings of alternatives that other member’s prefer. The result of it all being that the OP may just as well have placed all the manufacturer’s names in a hat and picked out one blindfold.
Further I am using some cables in a role where they do not meet the usual technical requirements but do not have the test equipment I believe necessary to make a conclusive argument as to why.
I saw a picture of the dCS demo room and they were using Transparent Magnum Opus speaker wires. Those are like $80k/2m. The unknown is if Transparent gifted them to dCS for marketing purposes or dCS chose them because they produced the best result possible.
You cannot draw very much from that. dCS try to be neutral about wires and, as I understand it, have several other cable looms from different manufacturers available in their listening room. The listener may choose.
I suspect that I would be correct, even without evidence, that dCS did not pay full retail price for any of them . BTW, it may not be a coincidence that the UK distributor of Transparent cables and dCS is one and the same. He is also is the UK distributor of the Wilson speakers and Dan D’Agostino amps to be found in the same room. All excellent stuff of course.
My suspicion is Transparent has a Vivaldi in their room. Personally I refuse to believe anybody is paying full retail on $80k wires. Of course I don’t run in circles populated with hedge fund managers.
Of all the high end cable companies, Transparent is the one which peaks my skepticism. Can’t get a straight answer re these magical “networks”. They also have too many performance levels. I think they have 12 speaker wire levels. Before buying I’d need extensive in home demo of three levels: the level I can afford, the aspirational level, and the value level. Really need to hear improvements commensurate with doubling of cost each step.
To be fair I’ve only ever had Naim amps and transparent isn’t considered a good match so I’ve never demoed any of them. Based on price I’d demand the Magnum Opus to be a cathartic experience rendering money meaningless. For that reason, I would love to a/b them vs the reference level in an appropriate setting.
I have their Reference speaker cable in my system, if you find the Magnum Opus we can try it in my home …I shall hire body guards in case I am home-jacked during the test
I refuse to pay more than 2000€ for any cables (2500€ limit may be ok for longer speaker cables).
Whatever the sonic results of ultra expensive cable propositions it’s not fair to charge that much.
Yes these brands have some RnD spendings to amortised but, still, compared to the cost of manufacturing it becomes a non-sense.
By the way, I have already accepted to pay about 1800€ for DiY pure silver-based interconnects (XLR), from a friend. Sonically it was worth it, even un-branded. So I have a very open mind on cable origins, big or small brands, DiY.
ESPRIT in France manufactures excellent cables. However the Lumina range, which is a very competitive and compelling proposition in terms of sound quality, is already above the budget I allocated myself for cable purchases.
That comment made me think of a well known audiophile cable manufacturer with a very expensive ( for the time) silver interconnect. He claimed that it was so expensive because it took 8 days to make. Well, I thought, if there is some guy working on it for 8 days and you are paying him a decent wage plus overhead costs it must be very expensive. However the truth was that the amount of actual labour input was only a few hours. It became " 8 days to make" only because the damping compound used in its construction took 8 days to set !
@ChrisK, do you also use TA power cords? If so, what’s your impression? I have TA Reference and XL IC and speaker cables throughout my system and am currently considering adding power cords/isolators to complement the system. Thanks. Franco
I have been using Audioquest Fire with Rossini and Parasound Halo 21+ for half a year now as an amplifier and Niimbus us5 pro as a pre-amplifier and headphone amplifier. Today I tested the Kubala-Sosna Expression XLR 1m and Jadis PGI J1 XLR 1m cables. Kubala was mercilessly defeated by the Audioquest. I didn’t expect such a result. Jadis ended up somewhere in the middle between Audioquest and Kubala. Even the Audioquest Water was no worse than Kubala. My Rossini with Fire: deep black background, excellent detail, full balance across the entire frequency spectrum, deep bass, silvery high frequencies are very beautiful, mids … In short, wonderful sound.
I used the AQ Fire between my preamp and amp for a few years as I spent a lot of time auditioning cables and was convinced I couldn’t find anything better.
Five minutes into auditioning a pair of Synergistic Research Atmosphere Euphoria and I knew I was wrong.
Six months ago, I tested the power cord Synergistic (I don’t remember the model, I think Galileo) with my system. I tried it in various places and didn’t get any gains. Therefore, I did not look at the interconnects of this manufacturer.
I used the included AC “adapter” to ground the SR cable.
Since then I’ve added a SR Ground Block simply because I’ve added more SR cabling.
As far as the power cord, that’s fine… not every cable works the same in everyone’s system, but every SR cable, interconnect, speaker and power has made a huge improvement in mine.
. BTW, it may not be a coincidence that the UK distributor of Transparent cables and dCS is one and the same. He is also is the UK distributor of the Wilson speakers and Dan D’Agostino amps to be found in the same room. All excellent stuff of course.
