Hehe, I suppose I was asking for this. It's too bad I don't have the stock cable anymore, as I gave it to another headfier (as we headphone geeks call each other) whose stock cable broke, or I could let Ken and Peter compare it to the Cardas themselves and hear the truth.


Be not afraid, JohnK, for I have not caved in to the voodoo of power cords and getting my cd player/amp/preamp/toaster oven modded to accept third party power cords. I'm sure you can probably hear *some* minor differences between your run of the mill 18awg power cord and a big beefy 10awg power cord made from ultra high purity silver with a special double braided geometry, teflon coating and the dust off a pixie's wings, but unfortunately pixie dust is rather expensive these days.

And I'm not all that impressed with all these cable manufacturers making these claims of the heavens opening to those who try their cables. Case in point, my main interconnects are a 1/2 meter pair of Outlaw PCAs running from my cdp to my amp. I recently ordered a 2 foot run of Signal Cable Analog Two interconnects to see if I could hear any differences. Both of these cables cost ~$50, and from what I've gathered from forum posts and reviews, the Signal Cable is supposed to be a giant killer and clearly better than the Outlaws. I've actually got a fairly good test system for this - my headphone amp has two inputs, and my sacd player has two outputs, so I can hook up two sets of interconnects and simply flip the input switch on the back of the amp to do quick a/b comparisons. So I let the cables ...(wait for it)... burn in for a couple days and tested it out. I think I might hear a slightly better soundstage with the Signal Cables, but to be honest, if someone were to give me the dreaded double blind test, I couldn't tell you which is which. They sound pretty much the same to me. I can't detect any tonal differences, any increase or decrease in resolution, and I'm ready to accept that the possible soundstage improvement I noticed was merely the power of suggestion and/or wishful thinking. So maybe I wasted $50, but at least I'm now certain that I don't have to spend money on anything other than source/amplification and speakers/headphones.