Audioqest vs MIT speaker cable (short initial review)

madmax

I received my new 10' MIT S2 Bi-wire Shotgun speaker cables last night. They are replacing my 8'AudioQuest Type IV cables.

First of all I'm a real fan of the solid conductor Type IV's. They are quite nice. Going from standard spool decent guage twisted wire to the Type IV cable allowed me to notice a lot of very fine detail and spaces around the different sounds. It was a huge step up in the world of cables.

The MIT cables came with both spade lugs and bannana plugs. Each connection has a very nicely engineered threaded connector set on each of the ends. From there you screw on whatever type of connection you want. I used spade lugs on the amp side and bannanas to the bass and treble posts. My system is as listed in my sig at the bottom.

Keep in mind this is before break in and hopefully things will only get better.

So, what did I hear?

First of all, I noticed the bass extension goes maybe a quarter of an octave lower. More importantly the whole bass line was flattened out. I had quite a roll off below about 50 hz before the new cables, now it digs a little deeper but I can hear much more of everything in the low end. It has much better articulation.

The highs are smoother. Previously there was a small tell-tail sign the tweeters produced. Kind of an edge to it. Truthfully I never noticed it but in hindsight I found I was using this sound to let me know they were working. Quite funny actually. Although I heard all the treble I kept thinking one side or the other had stopped working for whatever reason and several times I got up to check. Pretty much the mids and highs now act as one, not separate drivers.

The midrange seemed to fall apart at high volumes. At least on a particular song. I later found out why. I'll keep you in suspense for now.

The soundstage made quite a gain. Instruments which were still holding on to the speaker position totally let go. The speakers are now more like flower stands with all the sounds coming from elsewhere. Nice improvement.



OK, so why did the midrange fall apart? What I did was set the volume to the highest setting for a particular song. Although everything seemed ok the midrange just bit the dust with noise and was annoying. I've always listened to this song at the same exact volume and couldn't figure out why it was doing this. Lowering the volume slightly took care of the problem. What happened is that the speakers were now drawing more of the capacity of the amplifier to produce the lower better bass and therefore ran out of steam before it normally would have. I must tell you that I was thinking at the time these cables must go. Oh well, you can only get so much out of a tube.


So, do I keep them?

Yep, they are keepers for sure. I've lost a slight amount of useable volume (not much at all really) but gained a much nicer soundstage, smoother highs and more detailed deeper bass. There is always a tradeoff somewhere and this one is small.

madmax

Schris22

Well thanks for sharing!

Even though I can't afford those for a while, it's always a nice read, glad to see a personal review.

Chris

hoosier21

good read, thanks Chuck

TroyD

What hoosier said....thanks Chuck!

BDT

F1nut

Yep, MIT does cables right!

mantis

Mad,
cool read. I'm gonna have some Audioquest for demoing soon. I'm putting them up against My Kimber Kables.

I'm looking forward to the shootout in all levels.

Dan

disneyjoe7

disneyjoe7

Ok so my question is....

Is this a fair comparison Apple's to Apple's? What $300 cables to $1400 cables is this really fair?

madmax

disneyjoe7 wrote:

Ok so my question is....

Is this a fair comparison Apple's to Apple's? What $300 cables to $1400 cables is this really fair?

NO! IT IS ABSOLUTELY UNFAIR! ANYONE WHO COMPARES A $69 PAIR OF CABLES TO A $1695 PAIR OF CABLES IS AN ABSOLUTE FREAKIN' IDIOT WHO SHOULD BE SHOT AT SUNRISE, IF NOT SOONER!


The comparison has a few reasons behind it though. BTW, I took no offense to the question at all, just want to explain. If I saw the same comparison and didn't know the reason behind it I too would ask the question. As a matter of fact, I plan on writing up some cheap to expensive turntable comparisons shortly for the same type of reasons.

The reasons for the comparison:

1: These are the cables I've had, so I compared them. Cheap set of stranded wire (better than RS but worse than everything else) for $16, Type IV's for $69 and of course the MIT's. I guess I'm on a knee or something. Maybe this is that curve of costs everyone keeps talking about

2: The Type 4's construction, guage and copper purity are beyond reproach and I found it interesting that more of the frequency range was produced (maybe 1/4 octave or so which, by the way, was kind of proven by the amp running out of juice faster) and that an edge noticeably disappeared from the tweeters. To my way of thinking this just seems impossible given the fine quality of the Type IV's. There are obviously differences which can be manipulated by design over a standard very high quality cable. To sumarize: a fine wire quality and guage isn't everything when it comes to speaker wire. Other factors also help determine the sound.

3: It was interesting for me to notice these differences and so I passed it along to anyone who wanted to read about it. I could fully accept it if they sounded no different. As a matter of fact when I heard the midrange harshness when I first used too much volume I just said to myself "oh well, these are going back tomorrow" and laughed to myself. Luckily I figured out the problem rather than just unhooking them.

Overall, I just found the whole exercise interesting.

madmax

mantis

Mad,
Thats the beauty of it all. You can compare anything to anything. This will asure if the extra money is worth it or not. Some things can be cloae and some are light years apart.

Take a receiver and compare it to seperates and find what you find. Most think wire is **** anyway so here is a good time to prove to yourself what is and whats not.

I have compared bulk Monster 12 -2 to Kimber 8tc and 14-4 to Transparent so why not man.

Dan

shack

madmax wrote:

There are obviously differences which can be manipulated by design over a standard very high quality cable. To sumarize: a fine wire quality and guage isn't everything when it comes to speaker wire. Other factors also help determine the sound.

It was interesting for me to notice these differences and so I passed it along to anyone who wanted to read about it. Overall, I just found the whole exercise interesting.

VOODOO...It's all VOODOO I tell ya!

Wires is wires....

disneyjoe7

Thanks for the explanations I love your input on this subject. Just wondering if you could give me some idea on the value sound vs. $$ on the cables in question. I know this could be a pain to do, so just an idea which is better bang for buck.

F1nut

shack wrote:

VOODOO...It's all VOODOO I tell ya!

Wires is wires....

But some wires are more equal than others.

mantis

Thats exactly why you conduct a demo like this to figure if thats true or not.

Dan

heiney9

disneyjoe7 wrote:

Thanks for the explanations I love your input on this subject. Just wondering if you could give me some idea on the value sound vs. $$ on the cables in question. I know this could be a pain to do, so just an idea which is better bang for buck.

Steve, if you're not in the cable swap program I'd highly recommend getting in if you are serious about hearing/purchasing different cables. I just started and already have heard differences. I'm just glad my ears and my system are capable of pointing out these very distinct differences. Not all good and not all bad; just sets up a completely different sound. Keep in mind that this has now brought a whole different part of the audio hobby to obsess about . Now I'm in search of the cable/interconnect that suits my taste.

H9

disneyjoe7

H9,

This cable swap program was what got me spending money on cables / equipment. That's what got me into Audioquest Diamondbacks then buying their Bedrock speaker cables.

So love to hear some Kimber or MIT in my system but I understand why they are not in the loop.

heiney9

disneyjoe7 wrote:

H9,

This cable swap program was what got me spending money on cables / equipment. That's what got me into Audioquest Diamondbacks then buying their Bedrock speaker cables.

So love to hear some Kimber or MIT in my system but I understand why they are not in the loop.

I see, so the damage is already done...so to speak . Not to hi-jack this thread but maybe in a few sentences you could tell me what you like about the Diamondbacks. This is one I'm definetly interested in.

H9

disneyjoe7

H9,

In short some of the cleanest mid's I ever heard. Good / tight bass. Love them, now like to compare them to Kimber.

heiney9

disneyjoe7 wrote:

H9,

In short some of the cleanest mid's I ever heard. Good / tight bass. Love them, now like to compare them to Kimber.

Good to know. I'm demoing the Nordost Solar Winds right now and so far the only thing I like about them over my Monster 400i II are mids. Everything else is less than ideal on my system. So I need a cable that can really bring out the mids because so far (and this is just the beginning stages) if feel that's what's missing in my current cables. I'm not a fan of Monster one way or the other. I got 4 pr. 400i II for free from my brother about 5-6 years ago and have been satisfied w/them. Would I choose to buy Monster then or now? NO. So now it's time to move up the audio chain. The Nordost aren't for me but I think at some point soon I have a pair of Diamondbacks coming my way.

H9

madmax

disneyjoe7 wrote:

Thanks for the explanations I love your input on this subject. Just wondering if you could give me some idea on the value sound vs. $$ on the cables in question. I know this could be a pain to do, so just an idea which is better bang for buck.

Obviously these are just my current opinions. Of course everyone has their own.


I consider the Type IV's an awesome bang for the buck. Given the cheap price and quality wire you can't go wrong. What they give you over the standard cheap speaker cables is a LOT of extra detail and less brightness.

Now, this is how I see the bang for the buck of the MIT's. I keep thinking of the difference between my previous Luxman tube CD player vs my current Theta/AudioNote combo. Cost wise we are looking at $1100 vs $3500. Out of that I got about a half octave lower bass, killer midrange and lost all sorts of treble harshness. Compare this to the cable costs and their associated gains, $69 vs $1695. Given that I would say it was a much better bang for the buck to upgrade the CD rather than the speaker cables.

Obviously there is a time and place to upgrade anything. Doing the cables before you have a good source and amp in place is not going to get you very far. I doubt I could hear much difference had I upgraded to the MIT's and still had the Luxman. Another thing I've noted is that unless you have a decent tube amplifier or a really high end SS amplifier (such as many of the class A designs in the $2K+ arena) you are not going to hear many of the improvements cables make. Sure, there will be some differences but you probably won't feel you got your moneys worth if you spend thousands on cable.

madmax