Nordost cable evaluation.


I shall now "eat my hat".

Quite a while ago Sean was expounding on the virtues of flat wire speaker cables. I was skeptical. Rather than trying to talk me into submission Sean simply offered to send me some wires to check out. It being summer, I have been very slow getting around to testing these wires, but today I did it.

There is not the slightest doubt that Nordost Flatline Gold MK II, three meters, is dramatically better than a similar length of AWG 14 stranded "speaker wire". I was concerned that I would not be able to hear a difference, or that extensive listening would be necessary, but it was immediately obvious that the Nordost cable was better.

To test the wires I threw together a temporary system consisting of a pair of Dynaudio Gemini monitors and a pair of Kenwood LO7M power amps. I used a Tandberg 3008 preamp (which has a MONO switch and BALANCE control) and a HDCD recording of Mozart Piano concertos played on my Denon 2900 (Mod) player. One speaker was connected with a Nordost cable, and the other with ordinary AWG14 speaker wire. After checking that all signals were working properly, I pushed the MONO button, and swept the balance control left and right. In a matter of seconds I knew the Nordost cables were better. The sound was just clearer, and more "open". It was not subtle.

Of course I confirmed the results by swaping channels around, in case(for example) one power amp or speaker was working better.

This doesn't mean that the Nordost cables are the best: after all they were compared only with elcheapo 14AWG stranded. But it does convince me that speaker cables are not all created equal. I guess I need to upgrade.
eldartford

Showing 1 response by jimmy2615

Interesting analysis Sean - I wanted to post a question I've had for some time in this area that perhaps can't really be answered (I'll beat you to it - so why ask it? Perhaps someone can provide some illumination on this).

Anyway, I often wonder if the 'electrical' properties of a cable (in reference to the system components) might have much more significance in desirability/sound than the cable's "cutting edge" technology (teflon, gold, silver, solid crystal, 'golden ratio', DBS, you name it, etc etc) that most are marketed by.

Now take that a step further - many companies as far as I can tell, like Transparent, offer entry level priced cables all the way up to the un-godly priced crazy stuff, but yet they don't do much to explain what's inside, and many of their entry level cables (take a $250 IC compared to a $500 to the $1,000) don't seem all that different except for some nylon black braiding on the outside and the ever-mysterious network box. Other companies, like Cardas, actually say on their website what the electrical properties of the cable are.

SO - the question - for those of us that are mainly 'layman' and don't really understand electrical engineering (let alone what the corresponding properties are of the componentry we happen to be using) how in the world could you know how to use a more scientific approach to mating cables and components that is best?

And then, are we really supposed to just keep buying cables and listening to them to see what's best? I kknow that's what most of us do but it seems awfully silly if there was a better way - and sooo expensive !

And lastly (and this may be mainly rhetorical), why should I pay twice the amount for a cable to upgrade to it's "biger brother" when all it does is to add nylon braiding AND the company can't even tell you why it's better...?

I know, nebulous question perhaps, but this whole cable thing can be frustrating...especially when you do in fact often hear differences between cables that are positive but can't ever possibly "try" or have access to all of them out there, and have no other criteria to select on besides "sexy" technology that purportedly reinvents the wheel with every new product.