I have in the past compared my 4 strand braided CAT 5 (teflon coated) interconnects to JohnR's (the forum moderator) cross connected, John Risch 89259 cables. At my place in my system, we all preferred the CAT 5.
I went to JohnR's place on Saturday, armed with my GK-1 and CAT 5 interconnects.
Comparing my GK-1 to JohnR's Lego valve pre amp layed out on a sheet of cardborad with more alligator clips than any other component, the GK-1 didn't sound the greatest.
We fiddled around and ended up using John's 89259 interconnects in my GK-1. It made the GK-1 sound a lot better.
John mentioned that his DAC is a valve jobbie and may have a totally different impedance (or something) to my Rega Planet 2000 cd player.
The CAT 5 lost all of the bass, but made saxaphones sound nice. The Jon Risch 89259 had a great amount of nice bass, and sounded good all over (maybe not as good on saxaphone).
I have been tuning "MY" system for so long that it seems anything you change in my system is not as good as what I currently have. Perhaps "synergy" is alive and well. Perhaps if I started with a valve DAC, I would now have a totally different system.
From what I heard on Saturday, interconnects made more of a difference than anything else.
It made me want to run back to my place and put my system back together exactly the way it was.
