Craig M.:took my speaker cable into my local hifi shop to have them shortened and re-terminated. got them to make me some jumpers out of the off cuts to replace the plates between hf and lf speaker connections. i only had them done because i like the look of jumper cables, i mean, you cant expect changing the plates for 6 inch of wire to do anything. well i'll be.... very definite small change in tonality, sound is slightly bassier now.
Inspired by Craig, I just tried the same tonight with a couple of offcuts from the Odyssey 2.
There wasn't enough cable to do the job properly, plus it's hard to combine two strands of Odyssey to fit into the terminal, so it looks like a pig's breakfast. However, despite the shambles behind the scenes, it's noticeably bassier - not just a bit, but to the extent I had to reposition the speakers further away from the wall even at lowish "kids in bed" volume.
If I had to put money on it I'd also say there's a bit more detail all round, but before anyone jumps down my throat it's impossible to tell for sure without doing a proper A/B test so it might be the pixies in my head and/or it might be because I'm listening closer. Having said that, the longer I listen and the more CDs I listen to, the more I tend to hear differences - again possibly because I'm now specifically looking for them. Unfortunately, I can't do any sort of meaningful comparison because if I replace the cables with plates again, the cables will never go back in, such is the botch I made of it. However, it's made me consider getting some jumpers made up to do the job rather more aesthetically longer-term. I'm a bit gobsmacked about this to be honest as I really expected no difference but certainly as regards the bass there's not much doubt in my mind given that I had to immediately shift the speakers.
But daft question coming up...I tried to twist two strands of cable together to form each separate jumper, but now I think about it, this makes the jumper connection twice as thick as the 'normal' connection from amp. Should I just have connected the spare terminals with a single strand of Odyssey, or is it better to try to combine two strands for a thicker connection? Or should it not matter?