From High-End
Audio:
COINCIDENT
EXTREME SPEAKER CABLE- This is the only cable I've ever heard outperform the Polk speaker cables in a direct comparison. This was in June 2004, using my own Polk cables, though it was "only" with push-pull amplifiers (which constitute around 99% of all amplifiers). Since then, according to Israel Blume, this cable has been further improved, and recently I have used the newest version on my Ars Acoustica subwoofers. The amplifiers were the Coincident Dragons, which are the finest high-power (and push-pull) amplifiers I have ever heard, for the bass and/or "full-range".
Further, I compared these new (6 foot) Coincident Extremes to an even better pair of Polks. This time I used a 3 foot pair of Polks, with 6 cables in parallel, while the "original" Polks were 6 feet with 8 cables in parallel. The results....
The superiority of the new Extremes over the Polks is now even more pronounced and noticeable. I realize we are only discussing frequencies below 200 Hz at this point, but the improvements are still such that I wouldn't want to go back to the Polks. The Dragons now sound even tighter, cleaner, deeper and more defined, while they also have a slightly lower sound-floor. This is the best of all worlds: a combination of the strengths of transistor and tube designs. I'm not through with these cables, in fact I just started with them, but based on what I've already heard, it's possible, if not probable, that the Dragons require these cables to be heard at their considerable best.
From High-End
Audio:
COINCIDENT
EXTREME SPEAKER CABLE- This cable did
what no other speaker cable has done in the last
25 years; it outperformed the Polk Speaker Cable,
head to head, and it was my own Polk cable that
it beat out, so there was no chance of an inferior
pair creating a false outcome. In the past, the
Polk, my own Polk, has always been better than any
speaker cable I've compared it with; no matter what
the system, no matter how "cold" the Polk was, literally
or figuratively, no matter what music was being
played. This time it wasn't better. I was too shocked
to remember all the details, but the Polk sounded
murky, veiled and compressed by comparison.
I've borrowed a pair of these new "Extreme" cables
to use on my own system, and I'll try to report
back in August sometime.