I am not a professional reviewer and i am not working for/with audio art but thought i would like to pass a little inside info on to the masses.
I'll start this off by saying run don't walk to your computer and place an order now.
www.audioartcable.com He is about to raise his prices.
I will break this review down into three parts starting with my room ,setup, and what i like in a system/music.
Room: 12 x 15 x 8 ft. with speakers on the short wall with some fiberglass panels for acoustic treatment. The speakers are 3'4" out from the wall and 1'11" from the side walls. There is one chair (my throne) 9' away and the speakers are 8' apart and toed in to point at my listening position.
Equipment(before audio art):
Speakers: Usher 6381
Amp: Usher R-1.5
Preamp: Dodd Audio ELP tube preamp
Source: Onix XCD-88
Speaker cables: Gregg Straley Reality cables
Interconnects (cdp-preamp): Elf audio silver copper hybred
(preamp-amp): Zebra cables
Power cables: (cdp) Element cable digital cord
(preamp) Signal cable 10ga.
(power amp) Zebra cable 10 ga.
The Signal cable and Zebra cable cords are the same
design.
After years of buying affordable cables (<$100) and steady swapping them out for one another, I finally realised that I was only doing lateral moves and that there was not much difference in the sound of these cables so I was never satisfied.
In comes a friend who just happened to be demo'ng a pair of Straley interconnects ($225- 3') and boy did they make a big difference. He didn't make it easy as he gave me a pair of Elf silver/copper hybred interconnects free. The Elf's were not far behind the Straleys in sound and checking on the Elf site their current interconnects start at $450 -3'. I emailed Gregg Straley to ask which would make the most difference, interconnect or speaker cables, his reply was that most people thought his speaker cables made the most difference, so I had another friend bring a set of his Straley speaker cables over for a listen. Needless to say I ordered an 8' pair the next day.
Afetr having my eyes(ears) opened I decided on my upgrade path and that was to start with cables. My problem was where was the money to come from without getting a divorce. I started selling off all my other cables to raise funds. Here were my options:
Straley - 6' $270, 3" $225
Sas (Jena Labs) - 6' $180, 3' $140
Then I was reading about Audio Art which got a lot of great reviews saying people were selling their $600-$750 cables to replace them with Audio Arts. The prices were good enough, 2m $109, 1m $89 so I ordered a 2m length since I had determined that the link between preamp and power amp was my weakest.
I know you must think I am rambling on a lot but it is because I am sooo happy with these interconnects.
My second log will be about what happened when I subbed in the Audio Art for the Zebra cables. Almost forgot I will discuss my musical tastes.
My last installment will be about adding the 1m pair in the system between cdp and preamp so bear with me.
thanks,
marvin
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