Questions & Answers

Thomas, sorry for the slow reply.

The Venus II is my first DAC and I’ve only had the opportunity to hear a DCS (at Music Lovers) at a much higher cost and a Line Magnetic tube DAC (at Tone)- so I don’t have much for comparison. That said, I like the sound very much.

It’s natural and relaxed, not clinical or harsh. Since I don’t have tubes in my system, a DAC with tubes would have added some needed glow. I’m having regrets that I didn’t go with at least a tube pre and am considering replacing my Luxman with a tube amp, but I haven’t been able to hear much. That’s why I joined SFAF.

How are you liking your Denafrips Venus II? Curious about Denafrips but hard to audition.

Thanks Larry,

I think Tim is willing to let me return the cables, but possibly only for credit, I need to check with him. I was hoping to see if anyone has tried them and could give their impressions. I live in Soquel (Santa Cruz).

'Sorry to be a broken record, and I don't use loudspeakers anymore, but ferrites on my earspeaker (headphone) cables make an audible improvement, quite contrary to my expectation before applying them. The ferrites are killing unwanted RF from propagating along cables and are cheap. I would recommend looking at my ferrite article on this site, get some that are big enough to go on any of the speaker cables you are going to audition, and doing comparisons always with the ferrites applied (assuming that you have verified that they do make an improvement in general). Cables make a difference to sound. In general, we do not know exactly why or how. It's complicated. Using ferrites consistently across the contenders removes one variable, so you can concentrate on the others. And they act as cable lifters, if done correctly !-)

Hi Steve,

I'm not familiar with the A23's, so I can't really comment on them. Will Tim let you audition them to see if you like them? There are a lot of good to great speaker cables out there. You could also see if there are some members in your area that would be willing to do some cable swaps with you. We also have some Iconoclast speaker cables circulating with club members, if you're interested I could get them sent to you for a free trial. Where are you located?

Best, Larry

I’m relatively new to SFAF. Recently, I purchased DeVore Gibbon Super 9s from Tone in SF.

I’m using a Luxman L590-AXII. My speaker cables are Cardas Cross (from about 20 years ago.

Tim has suggested switching to Auditorium 23 speaker cables.

Does anyone have experience with these cables? If so, can you speak to what improvements they would bring. I’m also open to other suggestions.

I would say the one improvement is like to get is with imaging. Currently the dimensionality is good, but not great.

BTW - my front end is a Lumin U-1 mini w/ sbooster and a Denafrips Venus II.