The Gibraltars are great, but I never A/B compared them with my old speaker wires (AudioQuest Type4). I've always been a huge fan of AQ products, I know some people bash them and say any decent quality speaker wire sounds the same, but I A/B compared my Type4 speaker wires to Monster, Monoprice, Blue Jean, etc and always found the sound to be more to my liking. More transparent and open are the best descriptions I can think of. They are incredibly thick cables and dont bend very willingly, though, so you have to kind of wrestle them into the correct position to the bi-wire connections line up right. With this setup, though, I can pause my McIntosh CD player and crank the volume to +10db (easily loud enough to cause ear damage and get me evicted) and there is no white noise at all, which shows how effective good connection and insulation is. I highly recommend getting some AQ NRG (or any similar product) power cables in the exact length you need to eliminate the wads of 6' power cables hanging behind all your AV equipment, too.