Detailed treble and midrange with good dynamics and control. Spacious and precise soundstage. Tight and fast bass.

A bit on the bright side, needs more warmth Bass a bit too dry, lean and soft Needs careful system matching

This solid core cable has excellent treble and midrange. Bass is tight and fast, but a bit too lean. Since it is on the bright side of neutral, I don't recommend it to bright sounding sources because the the overall sound will be bright, splashy and unpleasant in the long run. But with neutral or warm sounding electronics, this is a great cable that really lets the music shine through. Very good for vocal and acoustic based music. Good dynamics. Bass perhaps a bit thin for dance fans. Can help tighten up the bass with speakers that have a boomy bass. Equipment used: NAD 306 amp Micromega Junior CD player Audioquest Turquoise interconnects Dali 104 speakers (good match!) AudioPro A2.42 Live speakers (too bright!)

Similar Products Used:

Dali LC-OFC, Tara Labs Omni, Supra Ply 2.0

low cost, great sound

none

I have continued to use this Audioquest cable off and on for several years. It has always been very musical and it is consistently enjoyable. I think because of the cheap price I have always felt the need to try other cables. I try them and I always return to the Audioquest F-16.
Compared to the other cables I have tried this cable seems to have more dimension to the sound. Not just in depth in soundstage but a three dimension to the performers. The alpha-core makes everything sound like a cardboard cutout. The other cables either blurred the sound or gave it a sameness to all types of music.
The Audioquest is very sweet with classical music but it can rock with hard rock groups such as Staind and System of a Down. It also plays well with jazz. Nina Simone sounds excellent through this cable.
My system consists of NHT Superone speakers, Rotel electronics, Sony ES cd player, and Rega turntable.

Similar Products Used:

nordost gold flatline
kimber 4 vs
alpha core mi 1
monster cable

I ordered this from Audio Advisor for a net price of .82/foot. F-16 is a flat cable comprised of six 20 awg solid LGC copper wires. Each wire is individually insulated in PVC-type wrapping. The cable is quite stiff and heavy. Lots of research has shown that this type of flat cable performs well, although some say that the PVC isn't as good as a teflon/foam wrap.
I'm really impressed with this cable, especially for the money. For 50', the cost of the F-16 is about $15 more than 12-ga Sound King wire and about the same as the thin white Monster Cable.

It could be my imagination, since I haven't done rigorous A/B comparisons, but when I switched from 16-ga zip cord to the F-16, I could swear my system had a completely different sound. The sound is much warmer and rounded. Cymbals sound incredibly detailed, where as before they sounded thin and edgy.

I have a budget system--NHT SuperOnes, an upgraded Yamaha CA 610 integrated amp, and a Sony CE525 CD Changer.

Five stars for the price range--if there's a way better cable out there for less than .80/ft., I'd like to hear about it.

Head over to audio advisor to snag some of this stuff. Quite the bargain. I payed $0.72 a foot for it. Thick, bendable. The stuff is hard to split, though (at least for my novice skills.) Took me over an hour to split 2 cables. Once I had these babies plugged in, though, I was pleased. I had previously been using MegaValue multistrand, and these seemed a bit cleaner. I was not overwhelmed by the difference, but for $18, I shouldn't expect a miracle anyway. However, the increase in snare clarity was noticeable. Breathy, open passages gained definition, while I didn't notice a change in convoluted filled sections. Well worth it if you can find the stuff at $1.25 a foot or cheaper. I also like the matte gray finish, a welcome change from the sparkly-coppery look of most "budget" wire.