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Interesting that you should ask....

24.128.190.210

I just made the CAT 5 on a lark seeing as I'm the curious type, like fiddling with stuff and thought it would be an interesting experiment. I started with 24 AWG, teflon, plenum CAT 5 I found at home Depot and some simple gold plated spades from Rat Shack.

It also just so happens I use SPM having bought it shortly after its introduction and have already compared it to Cardas Golden Cross, Synergistic Resolution Reference & Designers Reference, Discovery Signature, Marigo, Ensemble and a few other I forget at the moment. The SPM alsways sounded the least like wire of anything I tried, as all the others sounded like overtly colored filters which quickly drove me batty with additive sonic characters.

It took me 2 evenings to make the CAT 5 and I then burned it in for about 4 days straight before starting to listen. My speakers are the Von Schweikert VR6s and the amps are Thor TPA 30s. I also had a dual pair of Synergistic Resolution Reference on loan from my dealer just for grins as I was already experimenting with an all Synergistic line-up since just replacing my Quatro Fil interconnects with the new Designer Reference interconnects with Active Shielding (WOW! - but that's another story).

I took Chris / Jons excess capicitance caution to heart and made a biwire pair using the smaller 9 pair configuration on the mid tweet arrays while doing the full 27 pair versions for the woofer modules. All terminations were done via crimp rather than solder.

OK so how does it sound?

We'll I'll start with the comparison to the Resolution Reference biwire pair. The Res Ref was rather amazingly more colored with an exageratedly bloomy midband that gave a slightly cartoonish quality to vocals which came across as overblown, unreal and distinctly colored. This is a character I have associated with every Synergistic speakler cable I've ever heard save for the Designers Reference. The thing is, the 2 pair of 6 foot Res Refs required for biwiring sticker for around $3,600! The bi wired CAT 5 was slightly more electronic in character than the Synergistics but was less overtly colored overall than the Synergistics. In fact the CAT 5 was a bit more transparent, lacked a bit of the curiously thick air the Res Ref fills the soundstage with that seems to get between you and the original event. I know it will spound crazy, but given their respective limitations I found it easier to suspend disbelief and get lost in the music with the CAT 5s and given the choice thats the cable I would use if forced to choose from these two candidates. Not bad for a cable I built a biwired pair of for around $47 in materials.

Now on to the real challenge - how do the CAT 5s fare against the SPMs? First a little bit on the SPMs. I bought these cables after an extensive search a few years back for a cable that didn't do the sort of thing the Res Refs I described above did. In short I wanted a cable that was transparent, full bodied, well balanced, grainless and lacking from obvious additive colorations (Hey, I dont want much out of life!) and after comparing to lots of wire this was the only one that came close. In its most basic terms listening throuigh the SPMs is like not having a cable at all. If I had to ascribe a character to it it sould be trransparent, open, effortless and notably lacking in additive colorations. So how did the CAT 5s fare in comparison? Well lets get the minuses out of the way right off - they didnt equal the SPMs. Most notable was a slight added grain and emphasis in the lower treble which created that electronic character I alluded to earlier. In addition there were a few subtractive issues as well. The CAT 5s just didnt have the authority in the bass or ultimate extension on top of the SPMs either. OK, so what did they do right? Well, if you listen past the limitations I mentioned above you will hear a basic clarity and freedom form congestion within the soundstage more cables than not suffer from. And the basic "character" of the cable owed more to the SPM thant the overblown Synergistics. In short - a pleasant surprise. Particularly given the price. Now there's no way I could use them in place of the SPMs, but keep in mind the SPMs cost much, much more. If I had the snuff I'd buy the SPMs 10 times out of 10, but if I was on a cable budget under $1000 I'd make the CAT 5s and compare them to all commercial alternative I was considering before buying anything else. Hey, there's always the basic system synergy issue where they might not match your gear, but within the context of their personality they are competitve with wildly more expensive ready made alternatives.

Oh yes, how about compared to the Nordost Red Dawns? Well I've had those cables in house in the past too, though I didnt have them in house now for a direct comparison. My memory of the Red Dawns is rather vivid however, as I regard them as the weak link in Nordosts product line, sounding distinctly bright to the point of being unbalanced. Certaily brighter than the sound I heard out of the CAT 5s if my memory serves me.

joe




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