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Cable Asylum: REVIEW: Clear Day Audio Solid Core Silver Cable by the analog kid

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REVIEW: Clear Day Audio Solid Core Silver Cable

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Model: Solid Core Silver
Category: Cable
Suggested Retail Price: $200.00
Description: Pure Silver Speaker Cable
Manufacturer URL: Not Available

Review by The Analog Kid on June 30, 2008 at 11:08:13
IP Address: 67.162.213.164
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Let me start with the punchline: Clear Day speaker cables are the real deal. We've all lusted for, dreamed of, and fantasized about the "giant killer" component that can compete with the "big boys" (size being defined as bite out of wallet) for a fraction of the price. But usually such products suffer from significant compromises, and all too often money - at least to a certain point of diminishing returns - nets better performance (just think of the difference between a $10 and $50 bottle of wine). But Clear Day is a glorious exception - a true reference level cable manufactured by a genuinely (unbelievably) kind and generous person for a price guaranteed to cause cardiacs in those who have taken out second mortgages on their homes to finance mega-bucks cable purchases.

Given the numerous posts on this site regarding Clear Day, I won't presume to present the "definitive review" of them. Instead, I'll tell you the story of my perplexing, intriguing, and ultimately affirming experience with them.

A few weeks back, when I was in the midst of evaluating and enjoying my Elf Audio interconnects (see my review), my best audio bud here in East Lansing (Joe) called me and said that HIS audio friend had recently sold a pair of Kimber BiFocal XL cables and replaced them with "Clear Day." I decided to look into them for myself - and a brief search on both the Asylum and Audiogon turned up rave after rave. I contacted Paul, the designer, and he offered to send me a pair FOR FREE. "Just try them out," he said, "and see what you think." He also cautioned me (when was the last time you heard someone with a financial investment in the stake say THIS?) "you might not like them - they're very system dependent." OK, I thought, and promptly dropped the whole thing from my mind.

A few days later, a SMALL box arrived on my doorstep. I opened it, to find a bag of what appeared to be nylon shoestrings in it. I sat there for probably 2 minutes with this bag on my lap: "what the heck did I order?" Bootstrings? Tent cord? Then I saw the connectors. These were my "speaker cables." Hmmmmm. Ridiculous! I thought. SO ridiculous, that I called Joe (and emailed a couple of other audio buds) just to ridicule and heckle - "these damned things look like boot laces!!" I chortled. But I also got suspicious - they looked SO unlike any other cables I had ever seen (most of which resemble garden - or perhaps even FIRE - hoses) that maybe, just maybe, they were something really.....SPECIAL.

I plugged them into my system - which actually was kind of a pain, because they are SO light and flexible that getting them to sit still on top of my "cable elevators" was an exercise in futility (just let it go, dude). Then the audition began: Brubeck 45 RPM Classic pressing "Everybody's Jumping" and "Pick Up Sticks," Sarah McLachlan's fantastic Classic pressing "Fumbling Toward Ecstacy," and the new Radiohead, Side A of "In Rainbows."

In my experience, two defining characteristics of a truly superlative system are the following. First, the music seems to "slow down." SO much additional information is included, that the whole experience simply slows down - the space between notes, the attacks and decays. Second, and perhaps most importantly, you can have very different instrumental timbres within the same soundstage space. For instance, in my friend Joe's system - by any measure a top-flight system - you can have scratchy vocals, ringing bells, and warm sax all within close proximity, and all with enormously different TIMBRES preserved. Within lesser systems, you have clear delineation of instruments and soundstage, but the variation in timbres is much less pronounced.

I bring these two characteristics up because these were precisely the most noticeable things that struck me immediately upon hooking up the Clear Days. SO much more information was coming at me that everything "slowed down." The space between Joe Morello's drum strikes on his solo in "Jumpin." The distance between the notes in Sood's opening fill in the last track of Side A on "Fumbling." The shimmering decay of cymbals. I was overwhelmed with new and nuanced information. And the TIMBRES - unbelievable. The two other things that were most startling were (1) the lack of grain and edge, and (2) the complete and unfathomable lowering of the noise floor. Regarding the latter, I had always been of the mind that "huge cables = better shielding, and better shielding = lower noise." WRONG. Here these things were that looked like shoestrings, and they were creating the blackest, least noisy background I've EVER experienced. And Oh, the resolution! The tone! The low level detail and transparency! Ahhh!!! I had to bust out the Kleenex and wipe off the......drool.

My audition was with a pair of bi-wired. Paul is now crafting me a set of "double shotgun." I can't imagine an improvement beyond what these current cables are giving me, but everyone else's posts suggest superiority with the Shotgun (frightening to contemplate BETTER!! - will have to stock up on Kleenex!). What did Paul say? "See which one you like best - if you like the bi-wired better, send the others back, and I'll refund the difference!" What? When was the last time you heard a product producer encourage a customer to act against his own financial interest?

By any reasonable standard, I don't have a top-flight system. I have put together a system that I pride for providing enormous bang-buck (the one piece that's an exception is my GNSC modded ARC SP14). But with the Clear Days, this system has been catapulted into the stratosphere. In the past, I've used AQ Forest and Type 4 (still a fave bang/buck), Nordost Blue Heaven, Bogdan pure silver, Kimber BiFocal XL, Silversmith Silver, and Nirvana XL, to name a few. For me, and my tastes, and within my system, the Clear Day trumps all of them. But as Paul says, "you may not like them - cables are very system dependent."

Regardless of YOUR sonic experiences, I CAN guarantee one thing - your INTERPERSONAL experience in dealing with Paul will be unprecedented - he is the kindest, most generous, high integrity designer I have ever had the good fortune to meet and buy from. He offers money back guarantees to those not satisfied, and encourages careful auditioning and scrutiny of his product.


Product Weakness: not a "weakness" per se, but be prepared that these cables don't look like others
Product Strengths: tranparency, tone, lack of grain, timbre, low noise floor, purity of resolution, price, pleasure of dealing with a genuinely kind, caring, and generous person


Associated Equipment for this Review:

Amplifier: Parasound HCA-1000A modified by BPT
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): GNSC Reference ARC SP14
Sources (CDP/Turntable): Music Hall MMF-7/Grado Sonata
Speakers: Snell Model D
Cables/Interconnects: Elf Audio Phono 1 Silver
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Female Vocal; jazz; progressive rock
Room Size (LxWxH): 22 x 11 x 9
Room Comments/Treatments: RPG Diffusors
Time Period/Length of Audition: 2 weeks
Other (Power Conditioner etc.): Monster HTS5000
Type of Audition/Review: Home Audition




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Topic - REVIEW: Clear Day Audio Solid Core Silver Cable - the analog kid 11:08:13 06/30/08 ( 12)