In my first post about my very preliminary first listening impressions of the Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper tone wire speaker cables, that I had just cut cold off the roll, I told you how the DCA12GA as speaker cables on my Westminster's were warmer & richer sounding than the my usual bi-wire Duelund DCA16GA/DA20GA speaker cables, which I liked a lot.
I also thought that the sibilance region for horns and voices sounded more natural with the DCA12GA, and that the DCA12GA had good measures of that familiar vividness, beautiful tone color, and timbral ‘realness’ that I love about tinned-copper conductors.
I had a few nits to pick with the DCA12GA cold off the roll though, as I thought that with the DCA12GA there was a slight ‘dryness’ to the vocals on the Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session LP that I hadn't noticed with my bi-wired DCA16GA/DCA20GA speaker cables, and that there were occasional instances of stridency as well.
I liked what I was hearing so much with the Duelund DCA12GA as speaker cables, that I built a pair of interconnects out of the fat Duelund DCA12GA tinned-copper wire too.
That's not what one does with interconnects normally, because skinnier gauge wires are de rigueur for interconnects, and it takes some work to accommodate the tubby DCA12GA within the RCA's, but more about the DCA12GA interconnects later.
I also mentioned that I had cut a second set of Duelund DCA12GA to use for speaker cables that I was going to put on my Cable Cooker for a few days to get a better idea of what a set of run-in DCA12GA sounds like.
The extra set of DCA12GA speaker cables have been cooking away for four days now, so I pulled them off the cooker and put them into the system in place of the uncooked DCA12GA speaker cables, and gave them a listen with The Sergio Mendes Trio's Brasil '65 LP.
I noticed right away that while they maintained their warm and rich presentation, they also had opened up quite a lot to sound more spacious and articulate, with more low level detail emerging.
The vividness, tone color, and timbral ‘realness’ that I heard from the DCA12GA with no run-in time, sounded similar, but perhaps subtly improved.
I also noticed right away that the cooked DCA12GA had a more convincing portrayal of tempos, so that was a definite plus as well.
The nits I had to pick, the vocal dryness and occasional hints of stridency, didn't show up at all on Brasil '65 LP as I listened to it.
I put back on Cowboy Junkies' The Trinity Session LP that I heard the vocal dryness and occasional hints of stridency on, and I thought that those qualities were still there, but in reduced amounts on the cooked DCA12GA.
I should point out that I still have the uncooked DCA12GA interconnects in the system, so that may be contributing to the nits.
So the plan now is to put the uncooked DCA12GA speaker cables onto the Cooker, along with the DCA12GA interconnects, and cook them for a while to hear what happens.
I think that with the bigger DCA12GA, they may need more time on the cooker to fully run-in, so I'm going to cook them for a full week.
I'll report back on the results of that cooking session in about a week, so please wait for it! 🙂
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As always, thanks for stopping by!