AudioQuest Evergreen RCA Audio Interconnect Cable (5m, Stereo Pair)

I’ll confess: I’ve been fantasizing ... about blowing whatever stimulus check i might get on audio gear. Can’t decide between amp or DAC with my current “A” system. I even thought about going on some audio forum and asking other audiofools their opinions, but i’ll start here. My wife can decide right away though. Saving it (responsible) or traveling. What’s mine is hers after all, though she does leave me to my music. Hence my dilemma ... and this cable.So in the meantime i clicked on this and patched it in a couple days later. (Nearly) instant gratification! I love what i have, but if you’ve read this far you know how audio folks go. Here’s the BOTTOM LINE: BUY IT, TRY IT if you can spend the money. If you listen to music in a decent system you’ll get your money’s worth. Unless you prefer a “wall of sound.” It does seem to isolate the vocals in the center, and more forward.I know there’s a lot involved in this pastime, and the subjective/objective debate also inevitably leads to the subjective cost-to-benefit ratio. Subjectively there’s placebo effect. Expectation bias. You know you spent the money, you’re hoping to hear positive differences. So i’m guessing you’re simulated to listen more attentively. “Seek and you will find.” And i found the usual audio-speak stuff. An increase in space around the individual sounds in a recording. An increased ability to place instruments in the soundstage. An increase in perceived naturalness of tone (listening to acoustic instruments now. In fact it’s almost hard to type as my attention is pulled back to the music). Hearing details not heard before. How the sounds in the studio moved in the air.Really. From a cable. Tweak accomplished. I have one other experience with recent Audioquest products, a 3.5mm to RCA stereo cable, and since i have that as a choice to use, it’s definitely preferred to any other. “Sounds better.” That’s enough. I get good use out of them.Rated this as four star in value, as i’d really get more of them if they were say, $10 cheaper, and would love to get foot-longs, if they existed, as interconnects (and relatively inexpensive, like the “World’s Best”)The cable ‘reviewed’ feeds my amp, so it’s the last connection in the chain, except for speaker cable. It’s from a Chi-Fi preamp/tube buffer with GE tubes. That’s another cheap tweak, relatively speaking, i like them and have them where i can. I tried to remove it from my chain, since it sits on top a new Schiit Saga +, which i hoped would do the same things, but have more inputs and remote volume control. But when streaming i can’t push the volume to my upper limits; the streamer doesn’t output as much as say, a Chromecast audio or a Dayton Audio WBA31, but it upsamples to 192 kHz so (placebo effect?) i leave it in. The Saga, in either tube or bypass mode has little to no gain, and i can max my current (and recent) amp’s output. Plenty loud without it via CD player, but i leave it in since i mostly stream for new music.For the curious, and upgrade opinions welcome, here’s the chain, moving backwards:Q-Acoustics 3050i speakersQED XT25 speaker cablesChi-Fi ICEPower 125ASX2SE amplifierThis Audioquest cable.FX-Audio preamp w/ GE tubes, set at 11 o’clockA “World’s Best Cable” interconnectSchiit saga + preamp, stock tubeGhent Audio interconnectFX-Audio SQ-5 DAC (PCM 1794 my favorite of several that i have in this price range for naturalness of tone)— for CDs: Velocity digital coaxial cable, $13 for the 1.5 ft lengthfree Magnavox DVD player as transport (has remote)Or - early 90’s Denon DCD-660 analog out only to the Schiit— for streaming: QED Reference optical cable w/cheap 3.5 adapter, from a NEXUM TuneBox TB20 to the SQ-5Or- Audioquest Evergreen mini-jack to RCA stereo cable from a Dayton Audio WBA31 directly into the Schiit, since i have the spare inputs, but it’s not used as much. Mostly to compare the sounds, but A-Bs are a bit much to fuss with.Upgrade-wise, thinking more powerful Hypex NCore amp, Schiit Bifrost 2? what order? Etc...

[I posted this same review for the Audioquest Forest .75m digital coax cable and the Audioquest Forest 1.5m USB cable]I use a Schiit Eitr/Modi Multibit/Magni 3 stack on my desk in my home office for headphone listening. As setups go, it has plenty of power, but its footprint is small enough that it doesn't get in the way of my work, an important consideration since I do lots of sketching at my desk. Could've gotten something from iFi or Chord that would've been really good and even more compact, but the thing about separates is that you don't necessarily buy it all at once. I accumulated the three parts of the stack over the course of about a year and a half.Unfortunately, my Stack, while pretty good, didn't sound as good as I felt it should. It seemed a little congested, a little glaring, a little cramped. The soundstage, separation, details... felt they should've been better based on my experience with other Schiit components at audio shows, and then I had it confirmed when I had a chance to listen to the exact same setup but with different cables. You see, the triple Schiit stack is a very cable-centric system. You need a USB cable from the computer to the Eitr, then a digital coaxial cable from the Eitr to the Modi M, and then an RCA cable from the Modi to the Magni. Lots of opportunity for the signal to get picked away at by less-than-stellar connections.You see, I've heard so many times that cables are cables are cables that, although that doesn't seem intuitively right to me, I just went with it. It seems reasonable to think that better conductors mean a better signal means better sound. The controversy is even greater with digital cables because of the binary nature of them. But even a square wave / pulse can get muddled by a bad conductor or interference, right? I'd think so at least, not that I'm an expert. I dumped most of my science credits and electives into chemistry in college. Probably should've taken more physics.Setting that aside, I had been using cables from the bottom of the barrel. Why? Dogma. I'd been told that cables are snake oil so many times that I didn't even question that the cables might be the problem. Good ol' blind faith. But the facts were indisputable. The Stack with the decent cables sounded flat-out better than my stack, and I was hearing it with a pair of headphones that I'm very familiar with (HE-400i). I can't speak to the difference between decent cables and really expensive cables, but I can say with confidence that the step up from total garbage cables to decent cables absolutely makes a difference.So after a little poking around, I settled on the green Audioquests (USB, digital coax, and RCA). It'd be a hair over $100, but I figured that if a $100 set of Audioquest cables can't outdo the crapola cables I had, then it might be time to just sell my stack and get something less cable-dependent. The good news is that the new cables worked like a charm. The analogue RCA cable did make the biggest difference, but I swapped my old and new cables back and forth ad nauseam, and all of them made a difference. The cumulative effect of swapping all three bad cables for the three green Audioquest cables wasn't subtle. Everything became smoother, clearer, and separation and imaging improved considerably.So, if you're using mega low-end cables, cables that you may have gotten for free bundled up with various electronics purchases over the years, if you're using those free cables with your audio gear and you feel that your audio experience seems little flat, a little cardboard-y, a little congested or compressed, maybe a touch harsh or glaring... well, I suggest that you buy some decent entry-level audiophile cables. Again, I have no idea what the difference between a $100 set and a $1000 set of cables would be, but I do know that the difference between free cables and $100 cables is very audible.