Peter,

I've never owned any speaker cables other than Transparent. I started with B Stock dealer demo Ultras and over the years upgraded to Reference and XL (soon to Opus MM wife permitting). I found each upgrade increased transparency and reduced background noise (please no flames here fellas). I never had the urge to look elsewhere since 1) the Transparent folks are wonderful to work with, 2) their products have worked great in all my systems over the past 15 years. There are several price points of Nordost cables you could try to compare. They don't have a network as the Transparent cables do. The biggest knock against Transparent's product line is that the network rolls off the treble. I have not found this to be the case, but only you can be the judge. The Cable Company (www.fatwyre.com)carries Nordost and will loan you a set of which ever ones you want for a deposit which has to be applied to some purchase. They are also great folks to work with.


Topspeed,

The picture of the room treatments is somewhat old. I kept the rear wall diffusers and Tube traps. They control the base. On the side walls I have small Studio Traps from ASC at the first reflection points. They diffuse rather than absorb allowing me to keep some "snap" and "sizzle" in the room.

Cincy2