How Is This Possible? Must be Counterfeits

I agree the problem is for the used market...clearly everyone who buys these new, know they are not real Odin 2 ... 

If a buyer on the used market is in doubt they can check the serial number with the manufacturer.

Stumbling upon AliExpress, is kinda like stumbling upon Amazon :)

Counterfeits galore…

But, there are original Chinese brands of cable that are very good for the money. 
 

I picked up a phono cable as I was having issues with noise with the one I was using. Problem solved. Sounds great and no noise. 
 

Wasn’t ready to spend $$$’s on a cable now, but for the comparative low cost of this cable - 150??? - the problem was fixed. At least now I know the issue was indeed w the cable. 
 

it’s also a great source for diy “bits”, if you’re into that. 
 

i bought a few of these about a year ago just for fun.  Not much money so why not.  Dude, those fake sound good. 

Not sure if anyone else has said this but maybe that's all it cost with some margin to make those things.  Imagine that!  lol

What a blasphemy!!!  Selling cables for their real worth. What has the world coming to?

+1 @bbarten 

Why.......of course, they’re counterfeit cables. There’s a gentleman of youtube who has acquired several of the fake, Chinese made cables, which are sold on-line on AliExpress, and proceeds to dissect them in order to demonstrate and confirm their inauthenticity. The gentleman points out the differences between the fake and the authentic cables. The gentleman also proceeds to audition and evaluate the fake cable in his own system. The gentleman states that the fake cables are exceptionally built, and their sound quality in his system, although obviously not on par with the real thing, are still some of the best he’s heard.  And boy do those fake cables look good.

Nordost selling a cable for $60k is not a scam if you believe that it makes your system sound better.

It is also true that no one will be able to rank any group of high-end cables by price, and you could probably include a few quality made Chinese knockoffs in that group along with them.

The question you have to ask about the fakes is, are they made as described in the product description details? If they are-- they just might be decent cables.

Honestly, anyone that believes they’re getting a real value for spending $60k on a cable, and has the money to do it -- well I’m pretty sure you’re what Nordost calls "a perfect customer".

Using excellent cables is important in any highly resolving audio system-- and a lot of cable companies take advantage of that situation by pricing their products crazy high -- because confirmation bias can be, with the right marketing, a gold mine.

What’s crazy to me, is not that there are fakes out there, but how many reviews I have read about how great they sound.

@curiousjim 

Have you ever considered that it might be true?

’Counterfeit’ is when product of inferior quality pretends to be a real thing. As far as I can tell, Chinese knockoff do no pretend and simply advertise as ’same schematics’ for amps or ’same materials and technology’.

Prices of ’real’ thing are not defined by quality or cost of materials. They are defined by how many units company can sell using its brand name. dCS sells DACs for $20K. Chinese can use same parts, they have same quality of engineers and FPGA programmers, China manufactures those 0.0001% tolerance parts so they can definitely replicate products at fraction of their brand name costs.

This is generally normal process in all industries. Eventually everyone can make your better mousetrap and it is no longer exclusive.

Selling the Bridge of San Francisco for a price as low as $ 60K is not a scam if you believe that you own the bridge and no one can contradict you because you live in Australia and it make you feel good.. Trust me i can sell it right now for this price...I will wait for those interested ...😊

Nordost selling a cable for $60k is not a scam if you believe that it makes your system sound better.

Cables with very high price appear to me as a scam of his own for very rich people able to call that a good deal because it make "a difference" ...

Anything can make a difference ... Legally or not ... Legitimate or not ...

How about my own cable i may sell 100K bucks only , why not ? i modified them with my secret mixture (shungite+quartz+copper ) ? 😊

Nobody ready to buy multi thousand dollars cable dare to try my simple experiment ... i trust myself ONLY my experiment ... At peanuts costs ...

@audphile1 I was given the kopi luwak beans as a gift, and i have to say, nothing special. 

A couple years ago I had some Cardas Cygnus speaker cables that I bought from a dealer new.  I wanted my interconnects to match but wasn't ready to shell out the cash so bought them from Ali.  I knew they were fake but thought why not try.  Part of the cable upgrade for me is aesthetics.  Well, the aesthetics were alright but the sound was NOT.  I had modest Audioquest King Cobra IC at the time and the sound got very shrill and lost life.  I was impressed that they allowed me to return them for a full refund without any fuss.  

Let me tell you my story wt Chinese clones.

Three years ago I bought some Chinbese Odin for $150 for a friend's system. Of course it sounded "okay", looking mysteriously close to the OEM. But the main body's plastic wouldn't flex as does pure FEP (Teflon). Indeed, it was cheap extruded PE...milk jugs! But I decided to explore further, buying a meter of the stuff and comparing jumpers made from it on my ref speakers, which had "enjoyed" Nordost SPM for decades. Couldn't pass an AB/X. So I carefully slit off ALL the outer cheap PE body, leaving a loose ribbon of individual plated Cu conductors that indeed had a very thin FEP cover on each. Huh...at least they paid lip service to that inner dielectric. Further, the coiled synthetic red "spacer" was identical to Nordost's. So I taped up these now-semi-naked strands and repeated the demos. Still no delta. Finally, I skinned off ALL the FEP  and red spiral-wrap, gently and lightly taping the flat and naked array in the same geometry as original (and OEM). STILL no difference in sound.  Eventually I bought some pure solid 20AWG silver strands, stuffed them in air tubes, wrapped as a star-quad (net 14AWG), using nice spades, and VOILA, all the solver-PLATED-copper crap I'd been listening to disappeared! Ok...this isn't a thread about conductor metals nor my ArgentPur startup, but about the extent to which a Chinese shop cloned Odin...except for the big bulky carcass. But to this day I continue to have disdain for ANY and all plated conductors.

I bought a bi-amp speaker cable set from Aliexpress  , so four cables, the Odin branded with the wood block and spade connectors. The cables arrived within a week, so that’s a good start

Before the cables were used, it was worth to test the cables for polarity and resistance. So the red had to match with red, and black with black, all cool there.

The resistance measurement told the truth on how these particular cables were made. The resistance measured with a Fluke 289 in relative mode varied from 1 ohm to 80 ohms. The branded Furutech connector was heatshrinked onto the cable, and the clamping screw just spun and stripped, so clamping the cable was useless.

The vendor was sceptical that the readings wouldn’t affect the sound, but eventually saw reason and granted a full refund. They paid for the return shipping to a local agent.

So now, have bought Furutech a36 diy cable, connectors, and the same spade furutech connectors as the Odin, let’s see how that works.

These cable brands mentioned on here do not manufacture cables in the first place but buy from actual manufacturers (or import from China) and resell them.

Do not buy fake cables though. Buy no brand cables or WBC/Canare cables on Amazon so that you can return for a full refund. Cable burn-in is totally fake. Just be smart and don't waste money.

As an update , the Furutech cable, connectors arrived. The spade connectors still stripped at the cable support, but held firm on the actual conductor connection. Resistance values are all below 1 ohm now. The new cables are a different sound than with the SPC 10 AWG, not worse for sure, more relaxed, certainly no loss of fidelity. Can listen for hours without fatigue.

The cable itself is marked Furutech and dimensions match the specified sheet from Furutech. Are they fake or just surplus from.an older design, I’d go with the latter.

I purchased a half dozen of the higher quality Odin 2 power cables from Ali (RM Digital store), to compare against real Heimdall 2 power cables. There are cheaper versions of the Odin 2 but they looked poor quality.

Let me first say that for $150 USD, the sound, and build quality of these cables is exceptional. The connectors are perfectly made, amazing quality. The sound is just excellent, nothing at this price will even come close.

But compared to Heimdall 2, the real Nordost was better on every audiophile metric except for bass. The Odin 2 has 3x the gauge current capacity of the Heimdall, so that would be the reason for the great bass, especially with power amps. But apart from that it was no contest.

So I have never heard a real Odin 2, but based on this test I have no doubt the real thing would destroy the Aliexpress clone. Don't kid yourself this is even close to the real thing.

I also did this same test with fake Stillpoints Ultra SS footers. The gap between real Stillpoints and the fakes was even wider than the power cable test. Not even in the same ballpark, the fakes were only 30-40% of the real thing. But the fakes were still good footers for the price.

One of the brands that seems to be copied extensively is Furutech. The Chinese knock offs are not that easy to spot, plus they duplicate the plugs well. Unfortunately, there are loads of Furutech cables out there that are being sold as legit, when in fact they are all knock-offs.