Gerrardasnails:THESTIG08:I have just upgraded to Chord Odyssey 2 from chord carnival silverscreen and what a difference it makes. my local hi-fi store lent me some Chord Odyssey 2 and chord rumour. the difference was noticable with the rumour but the Chord Odyssey 2 was in a different league, a very clean and natural sound, very detailed and much better bass, great cable in my opinion and worthy of a demo. I think you need to spend a lot of money to improve on the Odyssey.
Agreed at some point, i have the Chord Odyssey and it was defenitly an improvement over standard cables from a DIY store and such, no matter the thickness of cable. If anyone absolutely doesn't want to spend money on speaker cable they are better of using coax TV/Antenna cable then normal speaker cable, no kidding! You should try it!
The sound with the Chord was clearer, more open at the mid/high frequencies, a bit more energy and better seperation. Part of why the Chord sounds good might be becausse it are massive wires in contrary to most traditional speaker cables. I heard further improvement on a very expensive Supra sword cable in terms of scale and open sound but defenitly not worth the high prices in my book, money is better spend on upgrading components.
Rightnow i'm playing with the Anticable, basically 1 massive pure copper wire with only a thin coat of laquer for isolation. Reason is that isolation limits the aspect of speaker wire, part of why some cables needs long burn in to. The Anticable might be not simple to install for some. It is stiff wire and it has to float in the air and not touch the ground. When comparing the Anticable with the Chord Odyssey the difference was not as straightforward as comparing it with cheap wire. Seperation of instruments were at least as good with the Anticable and i found a more natural midrange and overall sound while the Chord had a bit more energy in the mid/high, propably becausse the chord is silver plated. Anyways i found both good cables with a slight preference to the Anticable as i feel it is the most neutral sounding cable, but if you want to alter the sound a little bit, the aspects of other cables like the Chord can do nicely. I hold on to the chord for my system upstairs becausse it is easy in use, roll up and put it away in contrary to the stiff difficult to manage Anticable ( i have the habit of building a 2nd system up in an other room from time to time) . The Anticable can also be bought cheaply fromp the roll without terminations if you don't use any, that way it's as cheap as chips. But unless your system puts emphasis on the mid/highs you certainly wouldn't make a mistake buying a Chord Odeyssey though!