Wfay: Heh.. You snuck your post in while I was replying. Audio Asylum won't even allow discussions of double blind tests because they never lead anywhere and it just ends up being a nasty flame war.
That John Reisch CAT5 cable recipe looks interesting. It also looks like an aweful lot of work. Have you heard a set?
Just to let you know on the Z560's. I have them and I'm using the lamp cord that came with the set. You can probably use this cable if you can get the wire through the teeny 5 way binding posts on the satellites and squeeze the wire into the spring clips on the sub without breaking them.
What's funny is that these speakers are meant to mimic the high end speakers with the metal phase cone on the drivers and the 5-way binding posts. Heh.. With the size of the binding posts though, you can't fit any wire of substantial size on them unless you terminate the cable with pins (worthless anyway) and I highly doubt that the phase plugs on the tiny drivers help to do anything but look cool.
The problem with the Z560's btw isn't the sats IMO. They are fine for computer speakers. The problem is the sub. I've never heard a sub that was more uncontrolled than this thing. It's just way too boomy in the mid-bass and what's tragic is that you can't turn it down low enough to keep it from getting boomy. I have my bass volume button all the way down and it's not enough. I won't use the EQ either on Winamp because it just creates noise when it's activated. I might end up doing surgery on the sub to see if I can tighten up the bass a bit. I might change the interal wiring, replace a few caps, brace up the box and put in some sound deadening material to absorb some of the standing waves.
OTOH.. I might just dump these things and get a decent set of pc speakers because it seems like too much work for what it's worth. These speakers are great if you want to piss off the neighbors, shake the walls or scare the cat, but if you want to listen to music like I do, they are completely worthless.
Sal