Review: Nordost Red Dawn 1M Interconnect

Category: Cables

I listen mostly to jazz and vocals. These cables immediatley brought forth a lightness and clarity in the music which I enjoyed tremendously. Like most high end equipment you have to feed them a good signal as they will not hide bad recordings. Voices are clear and detailed, note decay is excellent and very transparent. I learned from a Nordost tech that most of their cables do not work well in lengths under 1m. These cables are so efficient that lenghts of <1m have impedance matching problems and cause the sound to be out of phase. I now buy all my interconnects in lenghs of 1m or more, no matter who makes them. The connectors are very robust and have a unique locking mechanism which feels very sturdy. In my experience with cables (and I've had lots of them) this is one of the best all around performers for the money. It will never sound harsh, just detailed, open and very fast. The only concern I have with these cables is the fact that they are completely unshielded and am not sure how much noise i'm letting in as a result of this. The sound however is very clean and musical, so for me this is not important for the time being. I will soon replace my Nordost Blue Heaven speaker cables with Red Dawns, knowing that I will have some of the best cabling available for a very decent price (I buy all my hi-fi gear from the classifieds in audiogon).

Associated gear
Linar 250w/ch power amp, Sony DVP-S900Es DVD/SACD/CD player, Dunlavy SC-III speakers

Similar products
Most high end brands