I have noted a number of warnings about cheap Chinese fake cables on this site but curiosity led me to the Aliexpress site where I found a number of presumably fake big name cables from predominantly Cardas, Nordost and Siltech at about 15% of the USA or Australian price. I found Cardas Clear Light interconnects at about US$100 and decided what the heck let's give them a try at that price. Before buying I asked the seller the daft question as to whether they were genuine and got the reply that they were an OEM and constructed the interconnects from genuine Cardas cables and connectors. They arrived in a plastic bag rather than the Cardas box , not a great start but the cables looked real, and when connected, much to my surprise, they sounded really good. After 100hours or so burn in they sounded great and better than the Nordost Quatre Fils I had been using. I then took them to an Australian hi end dealer who sold real Cardas and asked rather ingenuously whether my cables were the real deal. The dealer would not commit but agreed to compare them to the real thing on a set up costing at a guess around A$100,00. Neither I nor the sales person could tell any difference so he then tried them against the Cardas Clear. Then there was some difference, not extreme but subtle, and certainly IMO not worth the price difference even if you bought the genuine Cardas Clear Light. So are these cables really fake and even if they are given my experience they are well worth a try. Maybe I'll try Nordost Odin or Siltech 770i next.
Hi, Please bear with me, This may be a little off topic. I'm in a way a noob at this, My system was in storage for 15 years. Before that I was very active in Audio. I have Nordost Red Dawn -- the old flatline. I decided I wanted to upgrade cables to Heimdall 2. I found a pair of 2 meter XLR at a very good price from a dealer. He said they where dealer demos. I thought I was getting a pair of regular cables, When I got them they had green sleeving on one end. They sleeve said "Dealer Demo-Not for Resale" with a serial number. Other end said Heimdall 2. I didn't know dealer demos were a different cable. Looking around I noticed sellable Heimdall 2 had black and red on both ends. Me being somewhat new at this I think I got caught up in not knowing what Iwas buying. I did not know that Nordost marked there cables differently. I think he probably got samples from Nordost to see if he wanted to sell them (not listed on the Nordost site as a dealer) as he has only two other Nordost items. (One, a pair of Frey 2 XLR with the green sleeve. The other biwire jumpers.) He probably decided not to become a dealer. I'm assuming that these are not fake. Am I not supposed to own them? Is this in some way illegal? Are they actually owned by Nordost? I guess if the price was to good to be true. BTW no returns on used items. Any comments would be appreciated.
re rlb61 post. Neither you nor I know if the cables in China are assembled by child labour but almost certainly they used cheap labour, at least cheaper than the USA. But on the morality issue are you really sure your sneakers, shirts, pants etc etc are not made using child or cheap labour in Mexico, India ,Thailand, Indonesia etc - the list goes on?
You probably got lucky and bought the premium faux cables ... you know, the ones made by little kids paid at $0.03 per day rather than the crappy fake cables made by kids paid at $0.01 per day.
@geoffkait Can you point out a flaw in my pricing of Nordost Odin cable? Because I do not see more than $400 of raw materials in them. What do they sell for? $25K. Pretty sweet racket.
I'm fairly positive that if they can provide half of worlds 4G and 5G networks, they can craft a cable just as they can craft an iPhone. Mine looks pretty polished to me.
@geoffkait Clearly, the culture that invented carving and polishing jade is incapable of creating jewel like finish.
And how would they lose money? Breaking down the cost of Nordost Odin speaker cable is about $10 a foot of wire and insulation. Yes, 20 gauge, 99.999999% OFC silver coated single crystal wire can be had for about .30 a foot x 26 is $7.80. Teflon is pretty cheap. Total cost of material for 2 x 10ft Odin cables is about $200. Everything else is fluff, but no more than another $200 wholesale.
Without knowing the invisible details and without using exactly the same high performance materials what chance do they have? It’s not as if you can reverse engineer these things. One thing I’m pretty sure the Chinese can’t duplicate is jewel like finish. Of, course if someone never saw the real thing he might be easily fooled. And even if someone was able to make an EXACT COPY they would lose money unless they charged $$$$$. I mean, come on! At the same time, I suspect the fake Chinese cables get good feedback. 😀
China's companies over the years have done a lot of manufacturing "off the books" meaning the item may be made on the same line as the legit product but simply is not shown in the accouting sent to the company requesting the work. Its very easy for them to hide extra runs of a product if the company - which is usually in the USA - doesn't have someone on site. This goes on in many industries, not only high-end audio. These products never go into the dealer network and therefore cannot be accounted for. I've heard the comment that authorized dealers sell excess inventory and create "Gray Market" products. That may occassionally occur but what happens more often, and on a much bigger scale, is the Chinese manufacturer is simply selling directly to an exporter the extra product it manufactured off the books. They count on doing this and often calculate it into their quotes when pricing a cost for manufacturing a product. So is it "counterfeit"? The answer is yes but it may be the exact same product you would buy from an authorized dealer.
I'm not sure how strong the laws are in China against counterfeiting, if they exist at all. I believe this is one of the subjects of the current talks between our countries. OTOH, there are several companies marketing products here that slap their brands on much cheaper Chinese products and sell them at a big markup. That's not illegal, but caveat emptor.
Anything that is a fake is not worth a try because you are supporting an illegal, unlawful, prohibited behavior at the cost, expense, and harm to legitimate designers, manufacturers, and distributors.
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