Atlas speaker cable

Greetings all!

This is my first post in your new home, so be nice

Yesterday I borrowed a set of Atlas Apex/Ascent speaker cable from a local HiFi shop, and must confess before I was handed them I had never heard of them. Also, when I said I'd give them a listen I'd misunderstood and thought they were £20 per metre instead of the £40 per metre it actually is. So they're much more expensive than I was looking to pay but the trouble is on first listen last night they sounded fantastic . A lovely full rich sound but without apparanent loss of detail. A sound which frankly I didn't think my little AVI Pro-Nine speakers could produce. The pair of cables are intended for bi-wire use, but at present I'm using the two in parallel to my mono-wire only speakers. Rest assured I shall be checking out each cable seperately soon. Now, I was wondering if anyone else had any experience of these cables, and more importantly with any of their cheaper cables? That is, can I get close to the sound I have now but for significantly less cost?

Also, these cables have a shield, but in the ones I've borrowed it isn't connected at either end. Is this right? I kind of thought a shield had to be connected to the return signal path at at least one end to do any good?

Thanks very much for any advice,

Martin

 

Had a quick look at their web page nad the info on some of the dealers page. You have to let me know what an " unencombered frequency range is ".

There owned[?] by the ex head of Ariston, so the pedigree is good.

There does not seem to be anything inovative or unusual in the designs, they have had some good write ups. But the proof of the pudding as they say..........

I can't seem them being better or worse than any similar product. The prices seem a little steep but thats probalbly just me !

 

Well, it's pretty scary money as far as I'm concerned (I'd need a 4.5 or 5m pair)! My experience of cables is very limited. I've been using FFRC :duck: and before that had some CableTalk 3.1 (which IMHO is terrible), and at present I've got some Kimber 8VS and 4TC I've been trying from RA. Of these the 8VS is my favourite, which is a bit better than my FFRC, but the Atlas stuff sounds soooo much better than all of them. Which is annoying given at that price I really wanted to try it, hear no big difference, and say how could anyone want to pay that much...

The Atlas website does though shed some light on my shield connection query, with the advice being to connect it to an earth at the amp end if you've got one, or with the return leg of the cable if not. Which makes sense.

http://www.hifi.org.uk/tech/cable_termination_instructions.php