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December 11, 2006 - 7:13pm
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Anti-Cables
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I am not surprised tomjtx. It happened to me a few years ago
with the same cables (XLO sig.).I replaced them with the cheap (compared to the sig.) VanDenHul d-102/cs-122.
The XLOs , except the speaker cables , are very "hard" sounding cables.I cab't pinpoint exactly what they do wrong but i never bought the "if they don't sound good there must be something wrong with your system" thing.
Yiangos,
I was refering to the XLO speaker cables. That's what I replaced with the Anti Cable speaker cable. Something you said in your post made me wonder if you thought I was talking about their IC's.
I do have XLO Sig. Balanced IC's and I've been wondering if I should replace them also. Especially if it's cheap. I'm considering the Anti-Cable IC's.
Any recommendations you have would be appreciated.
BTW the Anti's have much more air, much better defined basss, more extended and revealing highs w/o being fatiguing, bigger, deeper, wider soundstage, more hall ambience, better decay etc.
Hmmmm,this can get very confusing.Okay,i will try to make it as short as possible.The only cables in the xlo range that is worth owning,imho,are the speaker cables and to a lesser extend,their power cables.All xlo cables have a kinda
"hard" singature in their sound.Some people are sensitive to this and some aren't.To my ears,the xlo cables are bad cables,especially considering their price.I own several xlo ic,a pair of speaker cables and even some svhs cables.All are in the storage room.Even the svhs cables ,when connected to my old back-projection tv,produced some unnatural "waves" in the screen. Not that long ago,i became obsessed with cables and began perchasing anything i thought
might sound good.Other than the xlo,i have Nirvanas,MAC, Element cables and all the VanDenHul cables ever produced.
Well,almost all lol.Even in some not-so-ctitical components
such as a minidisc player,i did not install any xlo but rather some cheap MAC ic. Anyways,based on personal experience i have 2 recommendations for you.If you want some
"romantic" sounding ic,go for the MACs.If you want audiophile ic that are sweet sounding without being lush,go
for the "element" cables.
Anticables aka magnet or motor wire. Available in a number of gauges and coatings depending upon things like temperature and/or environment they're exposed to.
Yes , Rev, I am aware that they are magnet wire. The IC's have a different configuraton from the speaker cable and I'm looking for some feed back before purchase since it's more money. Audio Circle has a lot of feedback , mostly positive.
The "grade " of copper the Anti's use is better than the Radio Shack kind according to my recording enginer friend who is also an audio designer and modder.
It is sold in bulk and the minimm order is about 800.00 so the Anti's at 10.00 per foot paired seems like a fair deal.
I am wondering what the point of your post is (post 2 merlot's )
could you elaborate?
Not many are aware of this. As to it being a better grade than RS wire, how can your modding friend tell? Chemical analysis? Does it have greater flexibility without breaking? It's OFC and that's beneficial if the wire's intended use is in elevated temperature environments. You don't have to buy it in bulk and may even find it locally at places that rewind motors or alternators. $10/foot for something that costs pennies per foot is probably fair considering what you had. OTOH, it lays very poorly.
Fair enough comments. Check the anti-cable site to see exactly what type of wire.
I didn't know it was magnet wire until shortly after I ordered it. At 100.00 for a 10' pair spaid terminated it seemed like a cheap risk. Had I known I could have tried out RS wire for around 10.00 I would have done that, although it is nice to have the termination. The cable makes such an improvement that I feel it was well worth the money.
I am not a DYI kinda person.
I was offered a very good price for Matthew James' Cello Strings bi-wiring speaker cables - in fact not much higher than getting two pairs of Anticables. Does anyone have experience to compare?