2023 Editors’ Choice: Best Speaker Cables $2,000 – $5,000

The Furutech Flux cables land on the speedy side of sound delivery. They are extremely transparent and detailed and probably best coupled with tubed electronics. A slight coolness pervades the cables, apart from the phono cable, which ranks among the best produced. The Flux cables transmit a wealth of detail but are never harsh. The quality of workmanship, as with all Furutech products, is stunning. The connectors are a pleasure to handle and use. JHb, 239

The Big Silver Oval is a speaker cable that brims with resolution and dynamic life. Constructed of pure silver over a stabilizing strand of OFC woven into AP’s patented hollow-oval geometry, this is a cable you don’t listen to, but rather listen through. Recorded music simply flows in an earthy and tonally authentic manner. Harmonics align; images and soundstage conform with no serious sonic missteps. And it’s real-world affordable. NG, 215

VooDoo’s Stradivarius Amati interconnect offers a full-bodied, ripe, and colorfully detailed bounty of musicality. Tonally, it plays it straight down the middle with no obvious frequency hiccups. It has a forward-leaning character that lends soloists and vocals energy and presence. On a scale of warm-to-cool, Amati tilts ever so slightly to the cooler range—a subtle trait perceivable during high-drive wind or brass passages or upper-octave violin solos. Of note was its mid and lower midrange eloquence that brought to life the deep voicings and trailing resonances of cello, bass viol, and bassoon, or the throaty bloom of a tenor sax. The Stradivarius Amati knocks on the door of some of the best cabling out there. NG, 311

A loom of Nordost’s flat, FEP (fluorinated ethylene propylene) Tyr 2 interconnect and cable brings transparency, precision, purity, depth, texture, openness, and expansiveness to the listening experience. WG, 305

The new statement wire from Audience proved worthy of its name. Led by a full-throated midrange, highly focused imaging, and a “you are there” transparency, frontRow summoned up the electric excitement of the live concert experience like few cables NG has experienced. Dimensionality, always a strength with Audience cabling, was even more well defined. Audience’s top-notch wire, although not inexpensive, seemed boundless in its responsiveness, speed, and musicality. Highly recommended for systems of superior resolution. NG, 332

The summit of Wireworld’s current thinking in this field is Platinum Eclipse 8, which sports newly refined cosmetics and heavy-gauge OCC silver conductors. There’s no hype or spectacle here. Only a neutrally balanced presentation with just a pleasing gust of midrange warmth. Plus, it sets a symphonic soundstage with the precision of the staff preparing the dining room table at Downton Abbey. A “state-of- the-art” component. NG, 244

This thick blue cable takes the patented technologies in Cardas cables to new heights. The balanced and single-ended interconnects and the loudspeaker cable are functionally identical in sound. But that doesn’t mean a “house” sound; instead, Clear sounds as close as you can get to having no sound. Eclipsed in performance only by Cardas’ Clear Beyond. Where Clear used four conductors, Clear Beyond features eight, meticulously built up using multi-gauge strands in a “Golden Section” symmetrical tri-axial design. The larger strands are built upon this core until the inside of each conductor looks like a copper nautilus shell in cross section. Clear Beyond’s eight conductors can be used to bi-wire your loudspeakers or for “shotgun” bi-wiring. NG, 226

Everything about this wire screams extreme. Its sophisticated construction uses vari-strand silver and solid-core silver conductors. Sonically, there’s a feathery light-footedness to its sound that doesn’t so much add power as it does transient speed. By virtue of a bottomless well of dynamic contrast and tonal color the Kimber unearths energy and atmosphere in even the most familiar recordings. NG

Diamond is a Litz-wire air-dielectric design incorporating tiny, individually insulated strands of ultra-pure copper. Impeccably assembled it is also a cable of ultra-wide expressiveness and resolution. Its sound is settled, fast but not twitchy or brittle and utterly devoid of histrionics. In tonal character the Diamond edges toward the warmer side of the spectrum but only by a breath. It’s not forward-leaning, but it doesn’t flinch from hard rock sizzle or flesh-eating dynamics, either. Its approach embodies a softer sell that grows ever more multi-faceted, musical, and transparent. A cable for connoisseurs. NG, 264

This new V2 generation of Sigma interconnects and speaker cables performs considerably better than their predecessors. They can make a less-than-stellar system sound much closer to a super-system than we thought possible, so well did they tame underlying smear, grain, and glare. More subtle details emerged with ease; dynamic timing became more coherent and cogent; spatial details became more apparent; and musical flow and expression benefited from greater overall accuracy. KM, 331