TjeerT
New member
Hi, new here;
but last year, because of the CLX en Summit X, I visited this nice forum very often!
After listening 6 years (1990-1996) to the Sequel II and now almost 13 years to my very lovely SL3’s, I was in for a speaker-upgrade and have ordered the new Summit X; I hope to have them next month.
As you see I don’t often change gear
(my clear 20 year old Mark Levinson no23 is, after a recent serious revision, still going strong, as is my ML 390S); much more I like playing with room-tuning and f.e. power-conditioning.
Jim Smith’s last book (“Get Better Sound”) had some essential tips for me that improved the music-experience in my (dedicated) room so much, I’m sure I hadn’t reached with 10k or even more dollars new gear.
Another recent very, very nice upgrade was with the "acoustic system" resonators from mr. Franck Tchang. Really a wonder the difference it made with this little cups…
Now to topic.
When the Summit X’s have played for some weeks, I think they deserve new cables, so I want to upgrade the, 12 year-old, MIT MH-750 ‘s I use now.
My friendly hifi-dealer (btw, he is the only official CLX-dealer in my country) advises to try Transparant, Cardas or one of two other branches.
Of course, I 'm gonna listen to this cables in my system.
My interconnect is a Cardas Golden Cross, so I expect there will be at least a match with the (same) Cardas spk-cable.
But then, I surfed a bit around and got confused…
F.e. I read the white paper from Roger Sanders: http://www.sanderssoundsystems.com:80/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=130
and there was a topic here on the forum about “best” cables for ESL’s:
http://www.martinloganowners.com/~t...sanders+sound+system+ESL+Speaker+Cable&page=2
Specially mr “nsgarch” (echoing Roger Sanders, and as he said audio engineers as Jon Risch and the fellows at Purist Audio Design) was very sure about esl's and the "must" of speakercables with (very) low capacitance-figures (less than 30 - 40 pF) and not to go for multi-stranded audio cables as Cardas, MIT, Transparant, Audioquest, etc.
(A bit strange that he didn’t really like the Roger Sanders spk-cables specially made for ESL’s: “… Roger uses a coaxial design, but it sounds dry to me…” ).
But I had a question to answer:
Not go for Cardas or Transparant or the other ‘multi-stranded’??
Or at least should I also listen to low-capacitance - coax cables?
And than what branches? Where to get this kind of cables?
Also, I was curious about the opinion from the people/engineers from f.e. Cardas and Transparant.
So I sent them an e-mail, where I summarised the above and the low capacitance- coax theory, and asked them:
“Do you think your 'top' & reference cables are not arranged for ESL's?”.
Really, within a couple of hours (…I like so much world-wide-web…) I got an answer from George Cardas.
I guess some of you are interested in his answer (no problem for George, I asked him, that I used his comment for this topic):
“….Yes I can see the problem here but it is not exactly the cable, - Electro stats in general present a wild impedance curve and many amps, particularly solid state amps, simply choke on the load a high frequencies so going to a smaller, low capacitance speaker cable might make things easier on the amp certainly a speaker that dips below an ohm at 20k combined with a long Golden Cross cable could overwhelm a less than studly solid state amp
and kill the high end. But the amp would probably be marginal with any reasonably low impedance cable, using a high impedance coax or something might well fix the problem but but it would not necessarily be the right cable if you amp was up to the job.
I have shown with Martin Logans on several occasion notably when our room won "best sound in the show" at the San Francisco stereophile show using ML Statements, VTL amps and Golden Reference Speaker cable.
Or when we won "Best sound in the show" at the Los Angles Stereophile show with Martin Logan in a similar setup using Golden Cross speaker cable etc.
That said because of the impedance swings, the ideal situation is a cable with low and constant impedance given the amp is up to it. Given an amp not capable of handling the load.
The Cross cable is in fact an excellent choice it is actually design for this situation exactly.
I hope this answers you question?
Thanks for the excellent FAQ!
thanks
George
………”
Also a quick answer from Demos Dadiotes from Transparant (also no problem to quote him here):
“………
Hi,
Thanks for the inquiry and all of that information. What we have found is that ultra low capacitance cables do not sound realistic, and tend to sound bright, thin and un-involving. This is really the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.
There are many things that contribute to good cable design and great sound. These include controlling the relative level of inductance and capacitance, and limiting bandwidth (we roll off the response above 1 MHz) so that the cable does not become an antenna for RF noise. There is also what I like to call the cable recipe. This would be the oxygen free copper, dielectrics, twisted pair geometry, strand size, vibration dampening, connectors, and last but not least, the network. The stranding in most of our cables is actually heavy stranding. This helps with delivering mid and low level dynamics, and helps eliminate the bright edginess that some cables have.
We have had Martin Logan, Quad, and Magnepan speaker in the Transparent sound room at one time or another. I can assure you there are no issues other than great sound associated with our cables. I also have a customer I regularly speak with that just completed his system cabling at the Opus level. He is using the large Quads in his system and loves it. I encourage you to audition our cables. They are designed through much listening to sound natural and real. I am confident you will hear the difference.
Sincerely,
Demos Dadiotes
Lab Technician / Customer Care
Transparent Audio, Inc.
…………”
Of course, I didn’t expect to get an answer: “our cables are not arranged …”, etc.
But their comments helped me to get a bit less confused!! :music:
And still curious:
Some ESL’s-owners here that compared the different kind of speaker-cables, specially the “multi-stranded” versus the “low-capacitance - coax” cables?
And what line?
Thnx!
but last year, because of the CLX en Summit X, I visited this nice forum very often!
After listening 6 years (1990-1996) to the Sequel II and now almost 13 years to my very lovely SL3’s, I was in for a speaker-upgrade and have ordered the new Summit X; I hope to have them next month.
As you see I don’t often change gear
(my clear 20 year old Mark Levinson no23 is, after a recent serious revision, still going strong, as is my ML 390S); much more I like playing with room-tuning and f.e. power-conditioning.Jim Smith’s last book (“Get Better Sound”) had some essential tips for me that improved the music-experience in my (dedicated) room so much, I’m sure I hadn’t reached with 10k or even more dollars new gear.
Another recent very, very nice upgrade was with the "acoustic system" resonators from mr. Franck Tchang. Really a wonder the difference it made with this little cups…
Now to topic.
When the Summit X’s have played for some weeks, I think they deserve new cables, so I want to upgrade the, 12 year-old, MIT MH-750 ‘s I use now.
My friendly hifi-dealer (btw, he is the only official CLX-dealer in my country) advises to try Transparant, Cardas or one of two other branches.
Of course, I 'm gonna listen to this cables in my system.
My interconnect is a Cardas Golden Cross, so I expect there will be at least a match with the (same) Cardas spk-cable.
But then, I surfed a bit around and got confused…
F.e. I read the white paper from Roger Sanders: http://www.sanderssoundsystems.com:80/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=54&Itemid=130
and there was a topic here on the forum about “best” cables for ESL’s:
http://www.martinloganowners.com/~t...sanders+sound+system+ESL+Speaker+Cable&page=2
Specially mr “nsgarch” (echoing Roger Sanders, and as he said audio engineers as Jon Risch and the fellows at Purist Audio Design) was very sure about esl's and the "must" of speakercables with (very) low capacitance-figures (less than 30 - 40 pF) and not to go for multi-stranded audio cables as Cardas, MIT, Transparant, Audioquest, etc.
(A bit strange that he didn’t really like the Roger Sanders spk-cables specially made for ESL’s: “… Roger uses a coaxial design, but it sounds dry to me…” ).
But I had a question to answer:
Not go for Cardas or Transparant or the other ‘multi-stranded’??
Or at least should I also listen to low-capacitance - coax cables?
And than what branches? Where to get this kind of cables?
Also, I was curious about the opinion from the people/engineers from f.e. Cardas and Transparant.
So I sent them an e-mail, where I summarised the above and the low capacitance- coax theory, and asked them:
“Do you think your 'top' & reference cables are not arranged for ESL's?”.
Really, within a couple of hours (…I like so much world-wide-web…) I got an answer from George Cardas.
I guess some of you are interested in his answer (no problem for George, I asked him, that I used his comment for this topic):
“….Yes I can see the problem here but it is not exactly the cable, - Electro stats in general present a wild impedance curve and many amps, particularly solid state amps, simply choke on the load a high frequencies so going to a smaller, low capacitance speaker cable might make things easier on the amp certainly a speaker that dips below an ohm at 20k combined with a long Golden Cross cable could overwhelm a less than studly solid state amp
and kill the high end. But the amp would probably be marginal with any reasonably low impedance cable, using a high impedance coax or something might well fix the problem but but it would not necessarily be the right cable if you amp was up to the job.
I have shown with Martin Logans on several occasion notably when our room won "best sound in the show" at the San Francisco stereophile show using ML Statements, VTL amps and Golden Reference Speaker cable.
Or when we won "Best sound in the show" at the Los Angles Stereophile show with Martin Logan in a similar setup using Golden Cross speaker cable
etc. That said because of the impedance swings, the ideal situation is a cable with low and constant impedance given the amp is up to it. Given an amp not capable of handling the load.
The Cross cable is in fact an excellent choice it is actually design for this situation exactly.
I hope this answers you question?
Thanks for the excellent FAQ!
thanks
George
………”
Also a quick answer from Demos Dadiotes from Transparant (also no problem to quote him here):
“………
Hi,
Thanks for the inquiry and all of that information. What we have found is that ultra low capacitance cables do not sound realistic, and tend to sound bright, thin and un-involving. This is really the opposite of what we are trying to achieve.
There are many things that contribute to good cable design and great sound. These include controlling the relative level of inductance and capacitance, and limiting bandwidth (we roll off the response above 1 MHz) so that the cable does not become an antenna for RF noise. There is also what I like to call the cable recipe. This would be the oxygen free copper, dielectrics, twisted pair geometry, strand size, vibration dampening, connectors, and last but not least, the network. The stranding in most of our cables is actually heavy stranding. This helps with delivering mid and low level dynamics, and helps eliminate the bright edginess that some cables have.
We have had Martin Logan, Quad, and Magnepan speaker in the Transparent sound room at one time or another. I can assure you there are no issues other than great sound associated with our cables. I also have a customer I regularly speak with that just completed his system cabling at the Opus level. He is using the large Quads in his system and loves it. I encourage you to audition our cables. They are designed through much listening to sound natural and real. I am confident you will hear the difference.
Sincerely,
Demos Dadiotes
Lab Technician / Customer Care
Transparent Audio, Inc.
…………”
Of course, I didn’t expect to get an answer: “our cables are not arranged …”, etc.
But their comments helped me to get a bit less confused!! :music:
And still curious:
Some ESL’s-owners here that compared the different kind of speaker-cables, specially the “multi-stranded” versus the “low-capacitance - coax” cables?
And what line?
Thnx!
