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Re: Element Cable & home grown audio???

I've used products from both companies. Both have policies for returning products you're not satisfied with.

Anthony at Element Cables is great to do business with. Many of his offerings are based on Jon Risch recipes. You can't beat the price for the Musical II's with eichmann terminators, but the twisted pair are better. The 27 AWG 4N Silver Serenade is probably the best value in ready made (not DIY) silver interconnects, however his implementation requires a good 150-200 hour break in. These cables, though they sounded lousy initially, ended up trouncing Musical II copper IC's.

Element power chords are also very good value for the money. You have to step up to $250-300 chords before you start outperforming them.

I've used the Element bi-wire speaker cables (shielded OFC designs) which were pretty good, but could not retrieve the level of detail that silver cables do. Anthony now sells silver serenade speaker cables, which I would bet are very good - but I haven't tried them.

HGA positions themselves a little more upscale than Element, but Element has a new more expensive Signature line. HGA is also an excellent value at their price point. Their silver IC's are a tad more full sounding top to bottom than the Element cables in my system - but both cables have excellent neutrality and resolution. The fuller sound og the HGA is probably due to the thicker guage and/or the RFI/EFI rejection the braided designs provide. The HGA LOK silver performance locking barrels are excellent connectors. They're very sturdy and well designed. The quality of the soldered connections are excellent.

I'm currently using HGA Silver Lace (8 strand braid) and Silver Diva (4 strand braid) IC's with the X-32 speaker cables (8 strand litz braid, spade connectors). They sound very, very good, however I'm still in the process of evaluating them against various types of music. I'm not sure if the Silver Diva's are better than my DIY's with Audio Consulting wire and cotton. Like power chords, I swap back and forth with other wires to further support what I think I hear - what I think sounds "better". Since it's only been about 250 hours or so with the X-32 cables in place, but I'm pretty sure I'll keep these in place for a long time.

I think you can't go wrong with either Element Cables or HGA, and that they are very good performance at real world pricing, and I hope this helped.

Ken

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