Nordost SPM vs. Quatro Fil

i recently visited a friend in rhode island who shares my audio interests. while i was at his home, i participated in his auditioning nordost quatrofil ic's as possible replacements for his spm. he has only a single pair of ic's in his system, running between an accuphase dp-75v directly to a rowland model 10. (BTW, we both have avalon eidolons, so i'm quite familiar with the speakers that were being used.) the balanced spm was compared to both balanced and single-ended quatrofil. both pairs of quatrofil were superior to the spm. the single-ended quatrofil, in this system, sounded better than the balanced quatrofil. to my ears the quatrofil is more detailed than the spm, without being clinical or sterile. bass extension and control was also improved, as was the apprent depth of the soundstage. the most noticable difference between the spm and quatrofil was in the all-important mid-range. voices were better resolved, allowing clear placement and definition of each singer in a multi-voice recording, such as the corrs "unplugged." the spm is very fine in my view but, in the system i was hearing, the quatrofil was better. is the quatrofil worth the price differential over the spm? that, only you can decide. i would suggest you look for used product on audiogon; it shows up with some frequency. good hunting. -kelly

just visted the nordost website, which i should have done before posting. nordost uses the spelling "Quattro Fil" for the ic under discussion. guess we were both wrong.

The quattro fil is very much worth the price. I used to have the balanced SPM before but once I heard the quattro fil I got rid of the SPM in a heartbeat. It betters the SPM in everyway.

Greetings! Am finding my system's ound a little too lean in the lower mids, and "clicky" on transients. Am using RedDawn throughout. Should I try SPM between CDP (RCA) and Aleph P, or switch to another "warmer" family?
(A local dealer suggested that Quattro-Fil was produced by Nordost upon urging from heavy-volume New York dealer who was complaining about shield-less SPM's problems in NYC, and NOT to be better than SPM! As I've not heard either I submit this heresay as such, and nothing more!)
Thanks for any suggestions. Ernie

Hey Subaru,
Using the aleph P and aleph 2's. I swapped out a 2 meter red dawn rca for a 2 meter spm xlr. I noticed a fairly large improvement in the systems level of detail and quietness. Could have been the switching to balanced cable.
John.

Entered this today. Notice today it has a -4,-2 rating. Whoever found this offensive, could you please explain your reasoning? Go ahead and use a fake email id.

john_l: the rating stuff is crazy. we've all had perfectly innocent posts like yours receive negative votes. don't let it get to you. -kelly

I think people are going to all the threads and posts by an author that says something they don't like and giving negs to drag their overall count down. Of course it is people like this that the ratings system is supposed to weed out. Good thing the A-gon guys read the posts before banning someone. Hope this post does not offend anyone or else -2pts will go in my permanent record. +2s for for John and Cornfed just becuz.

Thanks guys. It doesn't bug me so much. I just found it amazing that TWO people took offense to the above! I have a feeling it's a handful of lurkers out there.
cheers,
John.

I just went from SPM to Quattro Fil ICs. My dealer told me the QC had as much/more resolution as SPM, was fuller thru mids and had better bass. I've had my ICs in for 2 weeks and he was right. I'm using RCAs.

I had the same problem on another thread, everything I posted no matter what the guy would vote -2,-2. John, gave you a +2,2 to even it out!

Well guys, my earlier post now has one of the highest ratings of any of my posts. (i.e it's above zero) Thanks !

On the topic of audio, I just rewired my entire system with quattro-fil and spm speaker cables. Bought a valhalla bound guy's entire set. They replaced a mishmash of spm, red dawn, and oval 9 speaker cables.

The quattro-fil is quite a bit better - my system has even more transparency and clarity than before. I could easily tell the difference sight unseen. It's an ARC ref1/vt100m2 tube system, but now it is pretty close to the detail level of my friends spectral/mit (with the $6000 mit speaker cables) system. Frankly, I was amazed at the improvement. It was quite a bit greater than I had been anticipating -and that was going from a 2 meter spm to a six meter quattro-fil i/c between the amp and preamp !

The jump from red dawn to spm is about equivalent to the jump from spm to quattro fil. When I swap one interconnect at a time, I can tell it has greater detail in about 30 seconds. I think the jump was actually greater than the difference I heard when I swapped my spm for a friend's transparent reference i/c. I didn't have the transparent cable on hand for a comparison.