What are you using? Besides looking at members signatures.

My staple digital cable is Kimber Illuminations D-60 and staple RCA IC Kimber KS1030. Great transparent neutrality with musicality.

I've also owned digital from Snake River Audio Boomslang coax and Cotton Mouth IC. The magnetic High Fidelity digital coax too. Kimber KCAG/now in my other Rig for many years.

Speaker Cables over time:

Kimber 8TC
Kimber KS3033
Kimber KS3035
Zen Styx
Kimber KS6063
Anticables
Fidelium Cables / Silversmith Audio
UP-OCCC DIY
UP-OCCCopper DIY with 6N Silver (see signature - hybrid of Kimber KS6063/KS6065 solid core)

Combination of 24awg solid core and 19awg stranded per Kimber's formula; something more real musically about these gauges. My ZDSD and ZMA get to really show what they can do (D-60, KS1030 & current DIY).


Now, contemplating AUDIENCE FRONT ROW Speaker Cables. I see in the multiple reviews another layer of the onion gone.........especially when I'm a timbral stickler.

Donnie, I love you man. Whatever that spat when you were curator for a spell>? People are nuts, right?

Anyway, Neil Gadar and such/as Neil  .......it's there ...glad I can hear it.

I had tried quite a few well liked value cables. Some that did not stick long were Zu Mission, an early version of Reality cables, some earlier Anti-cables, and a few more I can't recall... And ones that stayed in a while, a DIY design using ethernet wires, Decware Styx, and Morrow's second to the top model. Then I fell into a really nice price on some used Synergistic Research Copper Elements with their special ground tech and sound tuning "bullets." The bullets were pretty powerful, each one giving the wires different feels, from more open and clear to more warm/bassy. They were the most revealing cables I had tried in frequencies and speed, with the cleanest bullets, very good at fine information and space. But not quite right for me, I could not liven up the bass, being a little soft and lean for my setup.

About then, I stumbled into the NOS WE tinned copper wire trend, and liked things I heard with one 16 gauge wire... lively, textured and fun in the mids, while not being so flavored as to sound too fake to me. Trouble was, that little wire could not give me the bass I needed. So I tried two together, and then three. Three 16s brought the bass into the mix pretty well, but 2 and 3 wires together made the mids progressively hard, making the initial mid magic from a single wire too concentrated and dense.

So liking one WE, I took a cue from the SR Elements, and decided to mix wires with the sonic character of each in mind, trying for a really good sonic blend I thought the mix might give. For size, like finding the WE wires too small/lean, I had found big wires like Decware Styx and some others too big, making the mids a little too dense and hard, and the bass too big and dominant. The happy medium here, between the 8 gauge wires and 16, that was quite a spread... I decided to start with 13-12 gauge...1 - WE 16, 1 - "polished" 20 gauge soft annealed pure silver wire in over-sized teflon tube, and I think an 18 gauge (maybe 16?) soft annealed pure copper in oversized teflon, also smoothed and polished with fine steel wool.

As luck would have it, this was quite good here, so I started playing with the number of wire crossings to tighten/clean up the sound by sound....not really twists, as my fav, if I am recalling correctly, had wire crosses something like every 10-12". Once I found the geometry I liked best, I tried some odd wires in teflon tube, and I ended up with a subtle improvement in the finest stuff...I am thinking it might be a 28 gauge titanium plated copper wire...

In the system at the time these cables were overall notably better than the SR Research, quite close in fine detail and space revelation, and with good spectral and speed balances from bass to highs. Sorry I am vague about the exact wire and geometry, but from looking at emails, this was about 9 years ago, bringing memory into question, and the orders are so old, the links to exactly what they were are not working...

Interestingly to me... though I have had UPOCC silver and copper wires, and some Duelund interpretations of WE wire for years, these are so good here, I have never felt compelled to take the time to make an upgraded version.

I started making cables because I could not get what I wanted easily buying them without going sort of stratospheric price wise (to me like these Audience cables). And getting really good results that I could tune to my preferences with good materials, designs, and iterations, I never looked back. To me, my cables beat the few high dollar references I had tried, but the main reference for me, has been, do they make it sound like real music across recordings without noticing the cables? Then my bud who has heard most of the greats, testing my ICs in his reference systems, said my ICs are near as good as they get. I trust his perception and discernment more than anyone else I know, so this was encouraging to me, that my way of evaluating was working.

As to more or less of anything, something I think I have learned is that everything matters lots at this level, wire sizes, metal types, draws, purities, dielectric, stranded or solid, geometry, ends, damping, cryo or not, magic sauces, solder....... So I can't really say if all OCC copper is "better," especially since I tend to like some silver in my power, USB, speaker, and ICs, especially UPOCC in the latter. And the silver used way matters. For example, my ICs at this point use careful blends of UPOCC gold/silver, silver, and copper, and if I trade VHAudio UPOCC silver in cotton, for Neotech UPOCC silver in loose teflon, that changes the whole cable sound... or change the gauge a little of any of these wires with the same wire... notable change in sound. Loving these cables, still I can't say this is the "best" route, since the cable sound is the sum of so many influences and how they work with one another.

Supporting this idea, I don't doubt these Audience cables sound as amazing as folks say. I just can't imagine paying that much for a cable when what I have is so satisfying that I can't hear flaws. But as importantly, what led me here, I got tired of sending higher dollar things back because they did not quite suit me, again, the balance of things in good cables as important as anything, and that complex of balances effecting how they fit in a given system and room. But that is me!

Hey Stone, I get it.

If something works really well to improve and enhance all the best qualities of all else...That can be sort of priceless. Good luck in the quest, and I hope more come in on this thread!