New Cables

deronb1

Just ordered some Audioquest Golden Gates to replace my Monster Interlink 250s that ive had for years. Im hoping to hear improvement in mids, particularly vocals. Any Golden Gate users?

dannylightning

i have had the evergreen and the golden gate cables... i think you will find they sound different than the monsters.

i preferred the evergreen over the golden gate on the pair of speakers i had at the time. i cant really remember why. the evergreen has sounded good on every setup i have used it on. on a different set of speakers i may have liked the golden gate.. its hard to say..

i have a couple other AQ interconnects and i have a hard time deciding if i like my evergreen or the more expensive one better. each one has some trade offs.

audioqust cable seem to take quite a few hours of play time to burn in so give them a little while before you decide if you like them or not.. you can keep your music on shuffle and repeat and have the amp off. it will keep sending the signal thew the interconnects when you are not listening to the stereo and burn them in faster

pitdogg2

those will be nice they are similar to the Copperhead but in a mini version. I've always liked their interconnects.
I had the Monster 450 awhile back and heard a difference when I stepped up to the Diamondbacks

deronb1

Thanks. My gear isnt worthy of primo cables , but seems a worthy upgrade where its easy to do.

EndersShadow

deronb1 wrote: »

Thanks. My gear isnt worthy of primo cables , but seems a worthy upgrade where its easy to do.

Define Primo lol.... My figure is that 10% the total cost of your system should be invested in cables, if not 20%......

deronb1

EndersShadow wrote: »

deronb1 wrote: »

Thanks. My gear isnt worthy of primo cables , but seems a worthy upgrade where its easy to do.

Define Primo lol.... My figure is that 10% the total cost of your system should be invested in cables, if not 20%......

Cost msrp or what i paid? BIG difference!...lol

EndersShadow

deronb1 wrote: »

EndersShadow wrote: »

deronb1 wrote: »

Thanks. My gear isnt worthy of primo cables , but seems a worthy upgrade where its easy to do.

Define Primo lol.... My figure is that 10% the total cost of your system should be invested in cables, if not 20%......

Cost msrp or what i paid? BIG difference!...lol

LOL.... point, I tend to look at price paid for all items....

And I'm not just talking speakers... speakers, sub, avr, amps, etc......

deronb1

Uhhhhh....im not spending that much on cables....yet. msrp, im pushing 5k. Chump change to many, but 500-1000 in cables? Ill dip my toe in the water and see what happens.

EndersShadow

deronb1 wrote: »

Uhhhhh....im not spending that much on cables....yet. msrp, im pushing 5k. Chump change to many, but 500-1000 in cables? Ill dip my toe in the water and see what happens.

Didn't say MSRP.... 10% of what you paid for your gear lol...

I am in around that if I had to guess, however it was over time....

deronb1

Well in that case, im on track. 100.00 in speaker cable and 50.00 on an interconnect.

dannylightning

deronb1 wrote: »

Well in that case, im on track. 100.00 in speaker cable and 50.00 on an interconnect.

yeah, you dont need to spend a arm and a leg on cables to get good quality sound. more expensive cables may not be for everyone to tell you the truth..

and i am currently using a set of 30 dollar AQ interconnects and 100 dollar AQ speaker cable, i think it sounds great and has just the right amount of detail.

on my LSim703s i find my higher end AQ interconnect kind of bring out too much detail, you can hear the flaws in allot of recordings and some recordings can be hard to listen to with the extra detail. on really good recordings the more expensive cables do sound better but if your music collection is not made of mostly high quality recordings.. too much detail may not be the way to go.. and you can get really nice sound with out spending big bucks on cables IMO

that is how i look at it. i should also add for allot of rock and roll music the guitar sounds smoother with the lower end interconnect..

deronb1

Im running 703s too. The stream magic 6 upconverts everything and I find the sound a bit tinny and lacking midrange depth on a lot of things. Not sure if the cable will help, but its worth a shot.

dannylightning

i had a dac magic plus and it was very sterile and boring sounding in my opinion.. i dont know if if its got the same dac or not. can you disable the DAC in the stream magic 6 to see how it sounds without the DAC.

are you running lossless music files to the stream magic ?? are the recordings you play good quality recordings ??

i did hear a stream magic on a cambridge amp on high end speakers at the audio shop a while back.. from what i remember it sounded really good. so that may not be the issue but its something to look into.

if the new cables do not fix it..those are some thing to look at. my evergreen interconnects are much more detailed and dynamic sounding than my bluejeans interconnects.

i currently use this setup. a sonos connect music player, a cambridge azur 651a intergrated amp, audioquet type 4 speaker cable i got off a spool and the AQ evergreens. i am pretty happy.

deronb1

FLAC from a 2TB HD into the SM6 via USB. Most files sound good. I guess i could go toslink out from SM6 into the Onk and use its DAC. Burr Brown i think. Doesnt sound bad right now, just kinda "ghosty" at times. Not rich and seductive.

dannylightning

my cambridge amp has a built in DAC usb only, when i had my computer hooked to the amp using the DAC i dont remember it to have the sterile sound the dac magic plus had. the DAC is just one possablity..

cables are definitely the fist thing to try, i will say i had one pair of monster interconnects that sounded very bad.. i also had some monsters that sounded alright.

what speaker wire do you currently have ? and what amp do you use ?

deronb1

Signal Cable classic bi-wire. Onkyo TX-SR 805 AVR.

dannylightning

people seem to like this signal cables. the onkyo amps i used back in the day were nice.. yours is a AVR and there not as good for music as a real 2 channel amp n my opinion but some of them can still make music sound good. and it looks like its got plenty of power to drive the 703's

to the get the cleanest clearest sound out of a AVR you should have a pure direct 2 channel mode or something similar.. have you tried that.. it should bypass all the digital processing a ARV does.

deronb1

Yup, always run in direct or pure A mode. Its a nice sounding AVR. Sucker weighs 50 lbs...lol.

deronb1

Went toslink out of sm6 into onk. Slightly smaller soundstage, but vocals seem a tad richer with less sibilence.

dannylightning

sometimes going a different rout may be better one one way but not as good in another way.. your best bet is try out your new cables and give them several days to burn in before you decide if you like them, after they burn in a bit, 48 hours of play time or so and they shold be mostly burnt in.. than switch back to the toslink and see what you like better. if i had the money laying around i would probably buy a few more interconnects to play around with.. the last couple AQ cabels i got seemed do be very bassy or warm sounding and lacked high end at first after a few days the high end really came out.

my king cobras have a wider sound stage, better bass, more detail but as i said some recordings that are not so great can be kind of hard to listen too. as to where the evergreen just sounds smoother on those recordings.. finding the right cables that work for you makes a difference. you may really like the way it sounds when you get your new cables.

im not sure what kind of settings your stream magic has but it cant hurt to go into the settings and see if there is anything else yo can change that might possibly effect the sound. if i remember right the cambridge has a thing that will test the wifi channels and tell you which is less congested.. using a wifi channel with less people on it can improve the sound quality from what i understand.. i would even look into that. i think channel 1, 6 or 11 are said to be good wifi channels to use. that would be a setting in your router or even possible on the stream magic.. on my sonos software i can choose what wifi channel to run it on so i dont need to get into my router

deronb1

Good stuff. Thanks Danny