Acoustic Zen vs. Nordost

Find a dealer that will allow you to evaluate both of them in your system. It is the ONLY way to know. Pay no attention to price and/or published reviews; let your ears be the judge.
Good listening!!

The Nordost cables with Solid State Gear make me think of the Triangle Speaker Sound. Thin, Fast, yet Mechanical and hard sounding. Completely unenjoyable in my book.

With your system, I would be looking at the Acoustic ZEN, Audience, or even the higher end Cardas stuff...

KiD

Teajay, thanks for clarifying that you did indeed try the Valhallas. You state:

We both know all our opinions revolve around personal taste and system synergy...

Bravo! This is one of the simplest yet least understood tenant in obtaining audio nirvana!

So, what do you mean by the term "in your face"?

Why were the Valhallas the least favorite that you and your friends auditioned? Is your negative experience due to the actual sonics, or could your opinion of overpricing possibly have biased your results [this is NOT a put-down of your audio experience or expertise, it's simply human nature! That's why "double-blind" testing is so important for achieving objective results!]

Which AZ model did you chose? What other cables did you think beat the Valhallas? I might try doing a shootout on my own system.

Fatparrot, the reason I used the term "in your face", is twofold: 1) The soundstage in my system moved forward and lost depth at the same time. 2) I found the Valhallas to be very detailed but lacked natural sounding timbres and were somewhat bright in my system. That's one of the main reasons that individuals with somewhat layed back tubey sounding systems found them so appealing in my opinion. I recently upgraded from AZ Silver reference II/ Matrix referenceII and Satori speaker wire to Mr. Lee's new reference called the Absolute and have nothing but sonic pleasure from having them in my system. I posted a review here on the GON if you your interested in more details. Thanks for the fun and friendly discourse on this topic.

Jec...I have compared the Hologram II with the Satori (mono), and in my setup, I find the Hologram II to be more open, offering greater depth in the soundstage, and just sounding a little more engaging. I have not tried comparing the shotgun bi-wire versions.

Note: I am an AZ dealer