Belden 1313A is a great economical choice for speaker cables. There are improvements to be had on the other 2-cables you mentioned that are also cost effective and provide stunning performance. You might replace your 1694F (flexible variant) with 4694P and the 1694A with the BAV RCA cable. We do terminate everything we offer. Thank you for being a BJC/Belden customer.
I tweaked my system a few days ago and WOW, has that helped a lot. The CWT tweeter panel is real directionsl, worse than I thought. Stuff sounded “soft” compared to the CLX, but good…not great. Imaging is solid with the dial bi-wire speaker cable. This isn’t all a cable post per say but man, what this system can do with some changes.
I moved my seat up a foot or so and stuff images better to my ear on SIZE of stuff. With that move of course felt I needed more toe-in as you want the intersection off the front of the speaker right behind your head some…not WAY back there behind you. In front of you collapses everything. More near field seating will pull-in the soundstage width some, but in my case it added a massive improvement in clarity across the field so slightly less width for clarity is worth it. Not that the soundstage is narrow, it isn’t. I just had them doing more the impossible for maximum clarity of edge sounds.
I added about 1.5" more toe-in than usual, though. That made a big improvement to the edge detail and crispness. The CLX CLS panel, Curved Line Source, is really foregiving on dispersion as are my earlier dome tweeter speakers and far more than the CWT’s, these seem to drop like a rock off the horizontal axis off the tall electrostatic tweeter panel. Not a big deal as I sit in that one spot, but you need to get a lot closer to right toe-in for the best sound. I was missing my ear with the treble some before! Stuff is so, so much better now.
I also got the subs working, and the line-source CWT’s rejected them over and over. What it was, was too much mid bass. I turned the P3100 HV’s tone control down -2dB on bass. This allowed me to add the subs in at 35 Hz and now, bingo, great bass and no lower mid cloudiness. I thought the CWT’s were lean on bass, but it turns out they were too fat mid bass. The in room tests just didn’t rat that out until I ignored the curves and just went opposite where I was before.
The cabling really comes in to it’s own with the new placement. Changed are invisible to the eye walking into the room. A mere couple feet foreward on the seated position and 1.5" added toe-in are not obvious. Those two things made an upgrade in excess of anything I’d add hardware wise!
The CLX panels always seemed to work really well and now I know why.
-) The are a huge sound stage so seated distance isn’t an issue, imaging stuff is big no matter what.
-) They naturally have less mid bass, so the subs splice in cleanly (the subs themselves are fine).
-) The tweeter panel has really good dispersion so that’s not as critical.
Don’t be afraid to try extremes on your speaker toe-in. See what zero and really high toe-in do, assuming that triangle interstection is still behind your head! Some speakers aren’t nearly as contancerous as the CWT’s (the tweeter intersection is closer to behind your head). But if you do have those type, a mere 1.5" was the difference between good and OMG great. I thought I added enough but nope, I needed to go farther than I though and was stuck in place by earlier speaker’s limits. After all that I watched bee-keeper to evaluate home cinema on the 50" Hitachi plasma. Yep, explosions are great.
Best,
Galen
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Anyone going to Pacific Audio Fest?
Staying put, too much good live jazz here.