Really happy to hear your comments Ern Dog and Rollo.
I got my Digital American and Spirit interconnects on Thursday. They went in Thursday night at 7pm. The sound through Friday night was not good. I had previously made some modifications to my bypass my speaker's binding posts and was experiencing a new level of transparency and presence, when I put in the TWL brand new, it all went away. Warm blankets were over the speakers.
Yesterday I started to hear things opening up. By night time, they had made significant strides and were able to entertain me and my wife until 3am. "One more track, just one more track..." This was with 50+ hrs on the DA and about 15-20 on the interconnects.
I also have some ZenWave Audio D4 Interconnects in the house for demo, and at this stage the D4 are superior. I realize this is an unfair comparison with so few hours on the Spirit but I'm just sharing. My wife and I did some comparos last night and the differences are slight but noticeable even to her. We heard more low-level detail with the D4 and a tighter, more precise presentation. At first the D4 sounded lean in comparison but listening even for a little bit, you realize that they are extraordinarily accurate and neutral. The Spirit sounded fatter but just in the last day they've already improved. I am optimistic about what the next several hundred hours will bring. I am very familiar with the sound of the Coincident Extreme XLR interconnects but the Spirit are very promising as an upgrade. I expected a "lateral" move to complete the loom but I believe I can expect more, now. But boy oh boy did the first 24 hours make me nervous...
Jury is still out on the Digital American. It is powering my Schiit Gungnir and I won't swap out for an A/B with the 10+ until I'm sure it has settled in.
PS Ern Dog - I have had the Sablon PCs in house for demo. I much prefer TWL. The Sablons really provide a wallop on the lower end but they just sounded slow to me. My system wasn't anywhere near as good as today when I heard them, I was only a year or two into the hobby, but they weren't for me. IMHO, YMMV, etc, etc. Also, interesting about the Belden... this has been a hot topic over in the Decware forums along with the WE 16ga wire, which I am using for speaker wire and "internal" cabling between my crossover and drivers. Perhaps you've seen this?
http://www.decware.com/cgi-bin/yabb22/YaBB.pl?num=1428695666PPS Ern Dog - I have the High Fidelity Cable CT-1E digital cable between my Baetis Audio Revolution II and the Schiit Gungnir. It is an amazing cable. I did a digital cable shootout last fall and this one was a clear winner.
PPPS - Yes, I just said I'm using vintage Western Electric speaker wire in place of my TWL American SC. Funny how things work out, here I am trying to complete my loom and then I stumble upon something that derails it. Last week I got an idea in my head that I just HAD to bypass my speaker binding posts... so I had 20ft of the WE wire leftover and decided to modify my crossover boards to accept bare, tinned wire underneath the Cardas posts. Wow. I really couldn't believe what I was hearing. I had one channel wired up with the WE and the other in normal configuration with the TWL American SC w/ Cardas spades. I queued up some mono recordings and listened to one channel at a time A/B for like 2 hours. Conclusion: I don't care how good the TWL speaker cables are, they cannot compete with the WE wire bypassing the posts. No contest. So here's what I'm thinking now, what if I were to run the TWL bare wire and just remove the spades? Hmmm.... Pete, are you out there?