Home Cable Asylum

Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

Cable, and AC filter shootout this weekend. . .

All:

I had a friend over this weekend, and he brought some gear for us to shootout. He brought a Stealth AC cord, and a Cardas Twinlink AC cord, along with his Ultimate Outlet.

I am running the Asylum power cords right now, and am very satisfied with them, so I was very interested to see what we could find out by listening to these cables.

On my Arcam, I have the Asylum cord running directly into my Wattgate 381. My Asylum cord has the recommended components, except the IEC is a Wattgate 320. The first thing we tried was replacing that cable with the Stealth.

The difference was quite clear between the cables. The Stealth seemed to be a bit confused. I am not trashing that cable. I am just saying that it was less coherent than the Asylum cord. All the information was still there, but it seemed to lack any sense of timing. Yuck. . .

We unhooked the Stealth, and used the Twinlink next. I liked this cord. It was nice. It was very hard to tell if it was more accurate than the Asylum cord. I think it had a slight edge over the Asylum on detail, but it was also harsh in my system. Not very harsh, but harsh compared to the Asylum cord.

Going back to the Asylum cord, I think what I like most about it is that it delivers the details, and is not harsh at all. It has excellent timing, and is as quiet as the others. So, even if the Cardas sounded better on a less harsh system, it can't sound as good as the price difference would suggest over the Asylum cord.

Next, we broke out the Ultimate Outlet. I left all my stuff plugged in the current configuration, and just plugged the front end from the Risch filter I built to the UO. The UO had a quieter background, and didn't detract much from the sound, but I can't say I liked it "better". It was just different. Very good, but I don't know about better.

I played around with different configurations of the UO, and Risch, and also my Quantum Symphony, but once I went back to what I had, I was not disappointed. I think the UO is a very fitting substitute for those who don't want to build a Risch.

Anyway, I hope I enlightened you all to the differences I heard in this shootout. Next time he comes down, we'll shootout the KKSV-1, 4TC, and Analysis Plus Oval 12.

L8r,

B



This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Signature Sound   [ Signature Sound Lounge ]


Topic - Cable, and AC filter shootout this weekend. . . - Hantra 07:40:41 08/6/01 (6)


You can not post to an archived thread.