I'd suggest not making any final decisions about a given cable until you've burned it in; I use 40 hours as a rule of thumb. I use a tuner, and do it without amplifier turned on, and it's interesting to listen to before and after without hearing the intermediate period.

It's a bit more complicated; I'm assuming a solid state amplifier. First, most speaker impedances are nominal values only; 6 ohms is a typical figure these days, but often there are dips to 4 ohms or less at certain frequencies. Decent amplifiers can easily handle a four ohm load, and often...

I also made "twin" cables with good Cardas Cu and Cardas' silver; rather than braided, I used one strand of Cardas teflon insulated "Litz" (21.5 ga??) copper each way, and on the other cable, one strand of 23 ga bare silver insulated with 22 ga Teflon tubing; wound teflon tubing around the...

I've heard spectral balance changes and level changes with cable changes too. Obviously any spectral balance change is usually very very small, and level change even smaller, assuming reasonable cables without bad solder joints or really dirty connections. Small cues modifying the brain's...

Was reading Nelson Pass' comments about locking bananas, and their tendency to lose their plating when inevitably twisted. Next day, a friend brought his Silver Lace Homegrowns over, with locking bananas, and the gold plating was completely removed in the contact area. And I suspect strongly...

This comment would have been more useful before you bought the second cable, but anyway... You could use something big and inexpensive for the woofer; 12 ga or larger, and the silver for the mid/tweet.

My two pair are sometime in the past, since replaced by DIY's. The smaller pair (2.1??) did like having a sub paired with it. Larger, 3.0 was fine on its own. From what I've heard of later models, in showrooms, the larger ribbon tweeter is still the one to get. The ribbons, being true ribbons...

It depends to some extent on the banana plugs. If they are designed for a crimp connection, AND you have the proper tool(s) I would carefully clean the mating surfaces and then crimp. A gas-tight, cold weld silver-silver connection is what I'd think best of all. If you have some sort of...

Might you move someday? Sooner? Later? If so, that's worth factoring in as well.

Awww; I like happy endings! Glad to hear that your search turned out so well. I enjoyed reading about your adventure.

Messy topic; polyester capacitors range from OK to pretty bad, depending on construction and materials. Also, sometimes the electrolytic can have euphonic benefits. I once changed an amplifier's input capacitor, (Citation 12 iirc) an electrolytic cap, to a well-reviewed polyprope. Change was a...

It may very well be satisfactory, but I really can't buy the explanation. The problems they describe with negative feedback without getting too picky about their description, would be the work of a fairly poor designer. But, it's an inexpensive thing to try, and, as has been said before, if...

Chuck Berry; He used the Steve Miller Blues Band that night. Duke Ellington twice, once with Dinah Washington as 2nd act. Several Rhythm 'n' Blues Revues in the 50's. Chambers Brothers. Jefferson Airplane Albert King Blue Cheer Tower of Power. Jesse Fuller Barry Tuckwell twice. Met...

Mahler's Second Symphony.

I've always received a notice from Amazon if an item will be delayed; and they request re-authorization of the order in that case.

Mapleshade Records has a blues sampler that you might be interested in. They record quite a few blues artists, and the recordings are of superb quality. Thirty second samples of some pieces are available at their web site. I bought a more general sampler, and wound up buying Whop Frazier/Bad...

I just tried biwiring the current project. Impedance drops to 3.8 Ohms in three places, two around the woofer/box resonance, and one just above the bass/mid crossover. Above about 3 kHz, impedance rises to about 10 Ohms, and plateaus there. Length of the original cable was 20 feet. (Equipment is...

Two speaker cable factors that are more widely agreed on than some other factors are resistance and inductance. The resistance of thin cables is of course higher; depending on distance, speaker impedance (over the frequency range) and to a lesser degree amplifier, the cable resistance and...

In the opinion of many, (including me) the Monster cables are not bad, but do not represent good value. http://www.usedcable.com/ is one way to cut cable costs. Kimber and Wireworld and Cardas are lines that I feel offer good value; they've been in business a long time. With those companies you...

Incomplete list, but only those factors I am relatively sure about. Shorter is good. I like the Cardas silver or copper; silver seemed a little smoother and transparent, and a bit LESS bright. (Not what I expected.) Not a great deal of difference though. Insulation/Dielectric Absorption...

Michael Percy sells Vampire Single Crystal Cast Copper polyurethane "enameled" 6N wire in 26.5, 21 and 20 gauge, from $5 to $8 for 50 foot rolls. The same wire is also available in stranded configurations. I tried a 4 wire braided interconnect cable, and it was not a success; I would...

Haven't been there much lately, but there were some very knowledgeable contributors. http://www.madisound.com/cgi-bin/discuss.cgi

You should listen using source material you're very familiar with, and if possible with the same cd player and amplifier you intend to buy. Several sorts of material help; Male vocals, big bands, symphonic, and small jazz groups would cover the ground for me. When you're close to a decision, you...

If you own a vintage transistor amplifier, one that was designed during the relatively brief period before the designers had all learned that the transistors protected the fuses, you might want such a fuse to fill the output fuse position. An early tweak was to bypass the fuse, with a length...

In the 80's I designed a small line of high quality inwall speakers. With a background in telecomm design I tended toward considerations of long life and serviceability as well as the basic issues. Even then, fuses were considered sonically unsuitable for series loudspeaker connections...