Hello. I am looking for a cable that is better than my Canare 4s11G. The condition is that the price per meter must be less than $300 per meter. So far, my Canare is winning in this price segment. Is there a better cable?
If your Canare is besting $3000 per meter cable, why are you wanting to replace it? It must sound wonderful, relax and enjoy.
I like Knukonceptz 12awg "Kord". Very flexible, excellent copper and very fine stranded. Outer jacket is very durable but at the same time, easy to trim. $0.60 per foot. Kord Ultra Flex 12 Gauge Speaker Wire - Merchandise (knukonceptz.com)
Wire this up as a star Quad. Furez FZ144AS 14-4 Advanced In-Wall Rated Speaker Cable - 25 Feet (avoutlet.com)
The Canare 4S11G has smoother tonal balance and more realistic voice reproduction compared to Atlas Cables Equator, Kimber Kable 4VS, all VDHs and QEDs in this price range. I am asking the question, what else should I consider? Everything I bring home loses to the cheap Canare 4S11G.
I want to further improve the realism of the human voice and bass performance. In addition, I do not want to get a sharp, sharp sound, I quickly get tired of it.
My experience with cables…especially as you move up in price is that there is no “better”; it’s just that they are different. No one can really make a solid concrete recommendation because there’s going to be system and room synergies as well as your own personal preferences that are going to determine what’s best.
Try the Supra Ply3.4s (the shielded version), prefer it to the Atlas Equator I was using. It is affordable and well constructed. In my experience speaker cables are a bit overrated, especially expensive ones. For me they should cost no more than 10% of the system total.
I agree that the Canare is very good and I get that this thread is a bit of a laugh. I think it all depends on what bothers you in music and this can depend on system. I found Wireworld fixed the issues I was having and it was inexpensive as compared to most, although the line has some very expensive cables. Maybe you could fill out your gear profile and I'd make a more specific suggestion. For me, I found that hot passages on LPs like a horn would sound a little gritty. I like the way Wireworld cables deliver these peak moments so you hear the distortion that was in the original recording without adding or emphasizing this. I have Luna 7 on my tweeters and Solstice 7 on my mid/woofers.
I had been using Kimber 8TC for a while with my Spendors, and I bought some Canare 4S11 from an eBay seller on a whim because I wanted to see what bi-wiring would do, and they were inexpensive. When I set them up in my system, it was immediately apparent that the sound was fuller and richer, with more depth and nuance. I was very surprised because the Kimbers cost a LOT more money than the Canare. Soon afterwards, I bought a second pair of Canare and tried them in a second system, and I got comparable results. I feel there is no need for me to spend a lot of money for speaker cables now, the Canares are terrific. I recently decided to try the Canares single-wired (with the speaker terminals strapped), just to see if there was any change. It didn't really make a huge difference.
OK, so no double binding posts and a digital source. You are not dealing with the same issues I had, but I'll say this—with the Canare you get a good bit of wire weight and that seems to, across most any cable, "improve" bass. I get that you don't like a false brightness. The only thing about the Canare that bothered me was what I would call slightly smeared transients. I also found that the quality of termination on the Canare made notable difference. If I was running a HiFi shop, I'd buy some decent bulk termination and send buyers home with this cable without a second thought. I don't think you are going to find big improvements changing cables, but if you can borrow or rent some Wireworld Oasis 8 cables you might like them. They are not going to give you any artificial brightness. They are a substantially different design than the Canare.
I’m a big fan of these cables. They were first introduced to me by an audio dealer I bought some ATC SCM 19’s from many years ago. I mention the ATC brand because these are about as revealing a speaker as you’re likely to find. Their domestic lines carry through the lineage of their pro studio monitors so these aren’t speakers that editorialise, soften or hold things back. Being the “descendants” of pro studio monitors if there’s something fishy going on in the recording or mastering the engineer would have to know about it and if that’s your bag as a hifi enthusiast… well these are the speakers to tell you all about what’s coming downstream. Put another way an unfamiliar speaker cable being introduced into a decently resolving system wouldn’t easily get away with adding colouration or rolling off frequencies without you knowing and I was quite used to the sound of highly resolving cables, I was already using Nordost cables at the time. When the dealer first showed them to me I was dismissive… actually probably more like a little rude. I literally laughed at him and called them lamp cord. He patiently offered me a pre-terminated pair to go along with the speakers he was loaning me for home demo. Since I’d been so rude I thought I’d humour him convinced my Heimdalls would so resolutely outperform his lamp cord that the world order would be maintained. Incidentally, I ran a full Nordost loom in my system at the time. I was at the start of my Primare phase then so I inserted them between my PRE32/A34.2 amp combo and the ATC’s. I’m not here to tell you that the Canare’s were better than the Heimdalls - nothing here blew anything out of any imaginary water, or any of the other hyperbolic nonsense that people like to say these days - but they came so close that I privately felt a little foolish for having spent all that money on high priced cable over all those years. After all these Canare’s are comparatively so inexpensive that on the basis of audiophile snobbery alone they surely had to be dismissed out of hand? In terms of resolution and extension, for my money I called it a dead heat or at least so close it didn’t matter. The one area the Nordosts still had the edge was in their conspicuous sense of speed but the Canare’s countered with a more natural tonality and removed what I felt was a small hint of artifice in the Nordosts sound… like there was still some small imposition of the cables signature where the Canare gave the impression of the sound passing unaltered. I ended up selling the Nordosts and pocketing the (significant) change. When I eventually drove myself beyond the point of enjoyment with the cycle of obsessive upgrading and walked away from audio pretty much altogether the Canare’s were the only component to stay in the tiny budget system I put together. And now that I’m dipping my toes in again they’re still there. I’m not saying they’re the greatest cable ever, and of course the individuals response to audio gear is nothing if not subjective. But they turned my (quite rigid) assumptions about price as an indicator of performance on its head and even if I eventually make my way back into the real high end it will take a very special cable to dislodge it as my speaker cable of choice. P.S - they take a while to run in. From new they go through various phases from having pretty “hot” and screechy upper mids to the mids generally playing peek-a-boo for a little while, then there’s tubby bass for a spell… it’s all a disjointed mess until they come into their own. P.P.S - my impressions of the Nordost Blue Heaven and Red Dawn - BH is to me a sort of “first taste” of the Nordost sound but a little lean tonally overall. RD actually caused me ear discomfort… had them in my system for nearly two weeks and never did get rid of the piercing boost in the upper midband that made them very fatiguing to me… and they just generally sounded a bit “etched”. A bit like over sharpening a digital image… it ends up looking a little “hyper” real and therefore not convincingly real at all. P.P.P.S - I begrudge no-one their enjoyment of high priced cables and I pass no judgement… this post relates my experience only.
Agreed. Until something comes along to convince me otherwise... and I've been around the block too many times to be stubborn about it - after all, every day is a learning day ... these Canare's remain my speaker cable of choice.
I have 2 pair of Canare speaker cables both are 3' long; one pair has banana ends the other pair has spades. I doubled them up using both spades and bananas on the same amp outputs to the same speaker inputs. My thinking was that using speaker cables as short as possible and doubled up should be a wonderful choice since I run 1200 watt monoblocks. All was good till an 8' pair of MIT mh750 speaker arrived here and the Canares have been sitting in a drawer ever since. That enlightening experiment is when I discovered there's a lot more to speaker cables than a short heavy gauge run.
I've not heard or used Canare but just a general comment, in my system at least speakers cables have consistently made the least difference in sound quality of any other cables. I dabbled in Purist and then Cerious and currently has AN Lexus copper cables I picked up used for $400. Based on reviews here and what others have told me Canare is likely in the same ballpark soundwise and a serious bargain.
Would there be any issue in not terminating the canare cable and just connecting the bare wire to the speaker posts and the amp posts,?
I would tend to agree with that. My requirement of a cable I can happily live with is simple - I don't want to use cables as tone controls and the less sense I have of a cable adding artifacts or omitting things or generally presenting me with its version of events the better. Effectively the best cable to me is the one that feels like it simply passes signal and nothing else. But maybe I'm just a little too "been there/done that" for my own good to fret about it and I'm done chasing my tail trying reach a sort of nirvana that never comes. Nice gear can certainly enhance the experience, but music is what matters... not the endless gear audition.
Nope. I happen to like terminated cable because I find them neater. And I guess if you swap gear a lot they can make the process faster?
The 4S11 was great, the 4S11G a big improvement even over that. But honestly, the best bang for the buck, see if you can get the 4S11CBGB cable. Talking Heads sounds like they're right in my living room. Although, it could be the scotch.
Scotch improves most experiences. After "lightening the f*** up"... it's the 2nd best audio upgrade I ever made
