I thought it might be worthy to share my cable switching experience with fellow fm. Very recently I have imported signal cable (yes, the brand name is SIGNAL) which I never heard even 3 months ago and I think most of us also unaware of such brand. Whatever it is, first of all I have to admit that I am a cable believer. Still I have serious doubt about insanely priced power cable, so my experience and experiments are limited only to audio interconnects and speaker cables with low and mid budgets.
Through out last 3/4 years I bought different audio and speaker cables. Few years back I had an Indian Branded music system called "Metablitz SCR 1000" and some of them still available for sale on OLX or Quickr. First I tried with that with different speaker cable but no change I can count on. They always sounds same or best with the stock cable. Now I know that system had serious limitation to reflect the changes between cables.
With Audio-gd, Nad C356 and Emotiva I started My experiments again.
Audio-gd FUN is almost like natural water, the headphone and DAC out always come with different flavor showing how good or bad the cables or headphones are.
Nad C356 sounded more full bodied with authority with my Polk Rti-A7 when it's speaker A+B were used as bi-wired config. Here I first time realized how good the Chord Carnival Silver Screen were compared to the stock cables of Indian Metablitz and ordinary electric cables (Finolex 2.5mm and 4mm). I also felt the merit of DAC interconnects (DAC ARX01A) for the first time bought from hifimart compared to my imported cables. Difference was not huge but enough to talk about.
I bought Emotiva UPA-2 without their preamp and still think that was a mistake. It never sounded attractive pairing with NAD as preamp or Audio-gd preamp. It always sounded kind of sterile and cold with whatever cables I used between. I had no silver cable at that time, so with copper cable and without their own preamp (USP-1) Emotiva totally failed to impress me.
After NAD and Emotiva, I had Denon PMA-1510AE. It was a power house, with warm and punchy sound signature irrespective of whatever cables I used. It immediately impressed me but in the long run I felt fatigue with it, so gave it up. One of the reason could be Marantz NA7004 as a source was also warm.
Here comes my Music Hall A70.2, it is the most serious piece of equipment I ever owned. It's detail but cool sound signature belongs to another league. With new DAC (Schiit Gungnir) in hand I ordered DAC SPY211 speaker cable and Silver reference speaker and interconnects from SIGNAL cable, USA.
In this regard I have to assure you again DAC interconnects (DAC ARX01A) most VFM product I ever experienced. If you care for audio quality without hurting your pocket then it should be the first choice. But DAC Speaker Cable (DAC SPY211) had not paired well with my present system. It is quite thick and very well built, but it sounded warm with high frequency rolled off and emphasized mid/vocal with kind of artificial way, the most impressive part was low. Over all I liked Chord Silver Screen more than DAC SPY211 for detailed, defined and focused sound signature.
The last and latest was 'silver resolution' series from SIGNAL cable (speaker and interconnect). It was a jump in terms of details and realism. Instruments never sounded that impressive before, but there is a small trade off, vocal get crisper but lost little forwardness of copper. I also imported Blue jeans XLR (Balanced) cables.
Now from the Dac to Inte-Amp I have 3 type of connection together to compare. 1)Signal Silver interconnect 2)DAC ARX01A 3)Blue jeans XLR. With Blue Jeans XLR the sound field gets little wider like almost surround sound effect.
Recently I sold out the DAC SPY211 speaker cable. So between speaker cables to compare now I have 1)Signal Silver Resolution 2)Chord Silver Screen 3)Metablitz Speaker Cable 4)Finolex Electric Cable. Approximately 7/8 months ago one of friend brought me a DIY cable made out of CAT5 Ethernet, that was very impressive, vocal/mid came out with unmatched liquidity. But they are no more with me now to compare.
So I am in the process of assessing them with more close attention with different combination, hope to share result in future.
My final conclusion regarding cable switching: Most of the time it takes time to apprehend the merits of different cables. So at least try to spend fortnight before made any decision or choice on particular cables.
Through out last 3/4 years I bought different audio and speaker cables. Few years back I had an Indian Branded music system called "Metablitz SCR 1000" and some of them still available for sale on OLX or Quickr. First I tried with that with different speaker cable but no change I can count on. They always sounds same or best with the stock cable. Now I know that system had serious limitation to reflect the changes between cables.
With Audio-gd, Nad C356 and Emotiva I started My experiments again.
Audio-gd FUN is almost like natural water, the headphone and DAC out always come with different flavor showing how good or bad the cables or headphones are.
Nad C356 sounded more full bodied with authority with my Polk Rti-A7 when it's speaker A+B were used as bi-wired config. Here I first time realized how good the Chord Carnival Silver Screen were compared to the stock cables of Indian Metablitz and ordinary electric cables (Finolex 2.5mm and 4mm). I also felt the merit of DAC interconnects (DAC ARX01A) for the first time bought from hifimart compared to my imported cables. Difference was not huge but enough to talk about.
I bought Emotiva UPA-2 without their preamp and still think that was a mistake. It never sounded attractive pairing with NAD as preamp or Audio-gd preamp. It always sounded kind of sterile and cold with whatever cables I used between. I had no silver cable at that time, so with copper cable and without their own preamp (USP-1) Emotiva totally failed to impress me.
After NAD and Emotiva, I had Denon PMA-1510AE. It was a power house, with warm and punchy sound signature irrespective of whatever cables I used. It immediately impressed me but in the long run I felt fatigue with it, so gave it up. One of the reason could be Marantz NA7004 as a source was also warm.
Here comes my Music Hall A70.2, it is the most serious piece of equipment I ever owned. It's detail but cool sound signature belongs to another league. With new DAC (Schiit Gungnir) in hand I ordered DAC SPY211 speaker cable and Silver reference speaker and interconnects from SIGNAL cable, USA.
In this regard I have to assure you again DAC interconnects (DAC ARX01A) most VFM product I ever experienced. If you care for audio quality without hurting your pocket then it should be the first choice. But DAC Speaker Cable (DAC SPY211) had not paired well with my present system. It is quite thick and very well built, but it sounded warm with high frequency rolled off and emphasized mid/vocal with kind of artificial way, the most impressive part was low. Over all I liked Chord Silver Screen more than DAC SPY211 for detailed, defined and focused sound signature.
The last and latest was 'silver resolution' series from SIGNAL cable (speaker and interconnect). It was a jump in terms of details and realism. Instruments never sounded that impressive before, but there is a small trade off, vocal get crisper but lost little forwardness of copper. I also imported Blue jeans XLR (Balanced) cables.
Now from the Dac to Inte-Amp I have 3 type of connection together to compare. 1)Signal Silver interconnect 2)DAC ARX01A 3)Blue jeans XLR. With Blue Jeans XLR the sound field gets little wider like almost surround sound effect.
Recently I sold out the DAC SPY211 speaker cable. So between speaker cables to compare now I have 1)Signal Silver Resolution 2)Chord Silver Screen 3)Metablitz Speaker Cable 4)Finolex Electric Cable. Approximately 7/8 months ago one of friend brought me a DIY cable made out of CAT5 Ethernet, that was very impressive, vocal/mid came out with unmatched liquidity. But they are no more with me now to compare.
So I am in the process of assessing them with more close attention with different combination, hope to share result in future.
My final conclusion regarding cable switching: Most of the time it takes time to apprehend the merits of different cables. So at least try to spend fortnight before made any decision or choice on particular cables.
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