You want the IC cable to be more current coherent than the speaker cable, or a smaller AWG size, to not bottleneck the coherence improvements.This assumes some other important issues are addressed, so this is most true for ICONOCLAST only. Those issues cancel out as they are all in every design, leaving the coherence issues as the main driver…but, better design allow the improvement to be larger than the wire size alone. This is what people refer to as synergy…most cables don’t really have a plan for that up front.
BAV 2468 IC- 25 AWG. Very good electricals for the money.
ICONOCLAST series 1 IC 25 AWG. Better dielectric than BAV.
ICONOCLAST series II IC 30 AWG- Best coherence and dielectric.
RCA is in the same order of performance. These IC feed the 24 AWG speaker cable. Technically, the coherence pipe is biggest at the source to not limit the speaker cable.
Oh the web site. It will get better. We had to get a working order entry point ASAP. We did that. But yes, it can be far better to suit the ICONOCLAST brand. The good news is you listen to the cable, not the web site.
Thanks for the additional info on the Iconoclast IC’s. I have to admit that I’m still struggling a bit to fully grasp the concept of “coherence” when it applies to cables, but I’ll keep trying. For my Thiel CS2.2 speakers, the CS stands for “Coherent Source,” which refers to Thiel’s design technology intended to preserve music’s phase and time information. Obviously, coherence improvements provided by a speaker occur only after the IC’s and speaker wires have done their job, but it was interesting to hear you say that you want the IC cable to be more current coherent than the speaker cable.
Coherence refers to the current at all frequencies being designed to be closer to the same by managing skin depth magnitude through wire size. PHASE is provided with lower inductance. This is all explained and reference in the iconoclastcable.com documents.
Yes, I want the quality at the SOURCE has to be the highest or it is wasted at the destination cable. Why send a bad source to a better speaker cable? The final speaker cable can’t add back what is now missing. I want the signal to stay as good as you can, and the coherence to stay highest at the source to the load. Some disagree, but listen to ICONOCLAST’s “synergy” and that may change your mind. My work on this set the priority that produced the most good.
Of course you want the signal to be “perfect” everywhere, but that’s not economically done. The “synergy” is to optimize the benefit at the best cost, the IC’s are easier to improve coherence (small AWG size signal wire(s)) where the speaker cable is easier for PHASE (low inductance).
I can improve speaker cable, but not without far higher design cost. I know what needs to be done, and how to do it, but the market is far smaller for higher priced cable even though they would be far less than most “ultra-premium” cables.
On a side note (ha! a pun) the speaker STILL has the worst phase and coherence, that is true. But, my job was to make the CABLE better…that’s what I do, not simply top place blame on what is worse and ignore making cable better.
Thiel and Vandersteen are one of the few speaker makers that have products that can produce a perfect impulse response. Time and phase correct.
I’m using Van Damme Star Quad cables pn: 268-027-060 with Neutrik connectors with excellent results.
I had originally picked a up a pair of short Monoprice XLRs for my GCD to S300 demo, It was factory fresh, so I figured burn in could have been the cause for being more or less not impressed over my previous integrated that I’ve had for a few years. Played with speakers and positioning for a few weeks and with no real success was ready to send it back. I then happened to land on a fair amount of reviews on the Monoprice cables that were sub par in build quality to being DOA, swapped to a pair of Van Damme Silver Instrument Cable pn: 268-900-055 rca interconnects I had kicking around and wham! the difference was night and day. I then got the XLR cables mentioned above made and I’m quite content, I’ve had the Stellar gear a little over 3 months now, and is always a pleasure to listen to and I’m always excited to have guests over to listen to music. As excellent as it was in the past, I don’t miss my previous integrated.