Acoustic Zen vs. Nordost

Jec, I have directly compared these speaker cables in my system and found the AZ Satori to have everything the Nordost Red Dawn had to offer, but were much more balanced top to bottom and were more "musical/organic" than the Nordost wires. I find all the Nordost cables to be very detailed, fast, and transparent but not very pleasant to listen to because of an overall sense of being in your face. Critics, of my opinion, retort that the Nordost wires are so revealing that I'm just discovering some short coming in my upstream gear. I disagree, based on the type of pieces that are in my system, along with hearing other reference level systems with and without the top of the line Nordost wires compared to other wires, including the new AZ Absolute wires. It's all personnal taste/synergy anyways, so take my opinion with a grain of salt and try a home audtion and tell us what your ear's tell you.

See I told you, anytime someone doesnot like Nordost Valhalla the fans of this over priced/praised wire always retort that the "bright/thin/kinda-in-your face" quality is because the Valhalla is revealing whats wrong with your system. The only systems that I ever heard Valhalla sound good in was with tube gear, where their a tone control decreasing the fat/overly warm sound of the tubes. I believe that Nordost is one of the "scared cows" of high end audio, if you don't like it in your system, its not the cable, but something is wrong with your gear upstream.

Yes Fatparrot, I did a home audtion of the Valhallas, starting with my digital front end all the way through to my speakers. Of all the different cables I audtioned, the Nordost cables were some of my least favorites, even compared to far less expensive wires. If you look up my system here on the GON, I don't think I disliked it because of some weak link that was being exposed by the Valhallas. We both know all our opinions revolve around personnal taste and system synergy, but I still think Nordost wires are vastly overrated and I don't accept the premise their so expensive because they are labor intense to manufacture. Hogwash! The critics say they love them and gave them great market value. I have at least three very good eared audiophile friends who did lengthy home audtions and could not believe how poor the sound to cost ratio was compared to other companies wires. So, I respect your opinion, you heard what you heard no doubt, I just hear it very differently than you.

Fatparrot, the reason I used the term "in your face", is twofold: 1) The soundstage in my system moved forward and lost depth at the same time. 2) I found the Valhallas to be very detailed but lacked natural sounding timbres and were somewhat bright in my system. That's one of the main reasons that individuals with somewhat layed back tubey sounding systems found them so appealing in my opinion. I recently upgraded from AZ Silver reference II/ Matrix referenceII and Satori speaker wire to Mr. Lee's new reference called the Absolute and have nothing but sonic pleasure from having them in my system. I posted a review here on the GON if you your interested in more details. Thanks for the fun and friendly discourse on this topic.

SteveOls4, thanks for sharing your opinion regarding your experiences with the Nordost, AZ, and Stealth cables. Just three questions and a statement concerning your post:1) What gear composed the system that you listened/compared the three wires on? 2) What is in my system gear wise that made you believe that the AZ would be a better match than the other wires? 3) You are the first person that I know who has ever stated that AZ sounds "rough" on vocals, which happens to be one of the cables great strenghs, so what music/vocals did you listen to when audtioning the different wires? 4) The statement. Do you realize that the Nordost/Stealth cables cost around 4 to 6 thousand dollars more than the top of the line AZ Absolute cables! They better sound better for the price difference, but this would go back to my postion regarding that Nordost is a seriously over priced regarding cost/performance ratio and the Stealth cables make the Nordost almost seem like a $ bargain. So, besides the always present factors of personnal taste/system synergy I would still suggest that Nordost is very overpriced when compared to performance vs. cost ratio when compared to other great sounding wires. Hope to hear from you regarding my questions, I will thank you in advance and wait for your response.