[Duc]

Can anyone recommend me some good ones or point me into the direction of DIY, around the 100$ mark? There's a million out there and I am willing to spend a little mone to see what the fuss is about.

 

[Comfy]

Blue Jeans Cable.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Blue Jeans Cable++.

Recommended at any price point.

 

[zoboomofo]

As Bill Curtis might say, Blue Jeans Cable is the balls. For 12 feet @ $50, my LC-1 ics sound easily better than my $50 AR ics at home. They even impressed compared to another $50 cable I had in my car- though it's apples to oranges with different configurations between the car cable switch. I hate spending money on fancy cables, so there's relief when I can find something that performs close enough to my virtual dynamics ($200?)

Also, their customer service was top. They followed up quickly to a query I sent with my online order.

FYI, they offer the Belden 89259 under 'shop by coax type'.

 

[jpr703]

If I was buying without trying, I'd go with Bluejeans too. They just make a great cable for the money. Grover over at Steve Hoffman's site also makes a great cable for about $150.

I've since found other cables I like better than both of the above, but they're in the price range where you'd want to demo them before you'd even consider paying the asking price.

 

[Roasty]

i just received a 1m pair of zu oxyfuel interconnects. paid US$50 for them which i thought was a good deal considering they sell them here in singapore for S$180 which equates to US$115.

received them still factory sealed, but out of the box, they are quite an improvement over my old QED qunex 1 interconnects. with the QED there was a bit of sibilance and harshness to the highs. the Zu seems to have solved that problem, and at the same time adding more detail at the top end. mids seem a bit fuller. using them to connect my cdp to my headfive.

i'm happy with the Zu, but has anyone compared blue jeans cables to the Zu? cause i am looking to get another pair of interconnects.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roasty i'm happy with the Zu, but has anyone compared blue jeans cables to the Zu? cause i am looking to get another pair of interconnects.

I've seen other people recommending the Zu Oxyfuel, so I checked out the company's webpage about them. It's a little bewildering. Zu seems to subscribe to nearly every cable myth under the sun:

(All spelling and grammatical errors courtesy of Zu.)

"After the cables have ran in the system for a while they will become ... permenently directionalized so if you have to unhook things you will be able to easily remember how they were hooked up before. If you did get them backwards after they were ran in all that would happen is that they would sound new again--a bit edgy and flat--for a few days until they became redirectionalized."

"We recommend that the Oxyfuel label be oriented to read in the direction of signal transmission."

"On average 150 hours are required for complete burn-in."

The only actual cable specifications they chose to list:

"Cp = 56 pF
DCr (+) 0.06 Ohms
DCr (-) 0.19 Ohms"


At the very least, the Blue Jeans Cable LC-1 has much lower capacitance at 12.2 pF/ft. They describe it as being much better than their previous top-of-the-line, which was rated as 22 pF/ft. Compare that to Zu's rated 56 pF/ft.

 

[jpr703]

The only Zu cable I've tried is the Pivot. The sound quality is not as good as the Y cable that Grover made for me, but it's not half bad either. The construction is outstanding. Very flexible with rock-solid connectors.

The other cables I'd recommend you take a look at are Chord. The Cobra 3, Siren and Chameleon are all real good cables that won't break the bank.

Some other members have also had good luck with Signalcable. I've never heard their stuff, but they get some good reviews around here.