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Originally Posted by boozcool  I definitely agree with you, sbulack. The Caliente seems like its being held back a bit. Any recommendations for a DT770/80 recabling? (Preferably under $200)
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I have never had the opportunity to listen to the DT770/80. I can offer some observations about improvements worth-the-cost from recabling three different sets of phones which may help you to figure out how to widen this bottleneck in your own rig. Two of these observations are my own, the third comes from posts from markl. I have used his observations successfully multiple times to make successful rig changes.
Some recablings seem to be targetted for specific phones. The Cardas Sennheiser replacement cable, for instance, seems to get its best reviews when used on the HD600. For the HD650, the Equinox or APS, from my reading, get more good impressions posted about them than the Cardas. I own both the Cardas and the Equinox replacement cables. I prefer the Cardas on my HD600 and the Equinox on my HD650. The best sound from my HD650, to my ears in my Caliente rig, has come from the ALO 18 AWG Jena Labs Cryo Wire replacement cable. I have not yet tried the Jena wire cable on the HD600's, but I will, in order to assess whether or not I hear the Jena cable to bring out more from the HD600 than the Cardas cable tailored to them. The Cardas cable was about $150, and when I installed it on the HD600, the differences that I heard were sufficient in kinds and degrees to make it well worth its price in my listening to music.
I've been a long-time big enjoyer of a pair of Grado SR225 phones (from late 2003 to the present). Last December I purchased a pair of the ALO-modded SR225 (hardwood cups), cabled with 18 AWG Jena Labs Cryo Wire. On the one hand, its the familiar (and much enjoyed) sound of the SR225 - but taken to a whole new level of spatial, dynamic range and timbral competence. It was the real success of this recabling that was a factor for me to decide (about 10-11 months later) to make the purchase of the ALO Jena Cryo Wire Senn replacement cable - which has turned out to be a very successful improvement to those phones.
Markl has developed a set of improvements for the Denon 5000's and 2000's, and his own assessment of the recabling of those which brings out their best is 22 AWG Jena Labs Cryo Wire. One of the recablings with which he compared the Jena Wire recabling was the well-regarded APS recabling.
Also involved in my decision to spring for the ($385) ALO Jena Labs Cryo Wire Senn cable for the HD650 was this finding by markl that this wire was the best he'd heard on the Denon phones. Prior to this finding by markl, I was wondering if the Jena wire, which had worked wonderfully well on the SR225, were also well-suited to the HD650. Markl's discovery that it also worked really well on the Denons got me thinking that it might just let more audio signal and power through and be a generally good recable wire, rather than being targetted to bring out more of this or that particular aspect of audio for a particular phone.
Will the Jena Cryo Wire bring out the best from the DT770/80? Looking at the results above on a set of three different phones that the folks who've heard them have characterized as being rather different, there is some basis on which to think that it could. I surely can't say from any experience. In fact, I haven't even listened using a pair of DT770/80, ever.
I am aware that what I am about to say next has recently received some criticism, but there is also the factor of how your hearing and sonic goals matches that of markl and me. I know from the items of gear that markl has discussed, and that I have also heard, that my observations and assessments agree well with his. Before anyone else could accept our observations and assessments as a basis for making a purchase decision involving enough money to buy another very decent amp or set of phones, they'd have to first assess how well our observations and assessments agree with theirs.
I hope that these observations, assessments and thoughts have been helpful enough to make it worth the threadjack away from the Caliente for a monent to have posted them.
I had originally posted about the Senn recabling NOT to veer the thread off onto a phone recabling sidetrack, but to highlight the untapped potential of the Caliente (detected by boozcool) which was able to show itself in actual performance in my rig with this improvement to the audio path downstream from it. I'll end there, to do my part to help get the thread back on track.
Soon, I will post my observations and assessments of the performance of the Caliente with the HD600 with both Cardas (as requested by chouman) and ALO Jena Cryo cables, with a focus on the performance of the Caliente to drive those phones.
