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Curious How These Nordost Speaker Cables Do What They Do

For a day and a half I’ve been listening to Nordost Red Dawn Rev.II cables in my system(Quad VA-One and Dynaudio Excite X14),courtesy of a friend who is in turn demo’ing some ungodly expensive upgrade...My reference are the Acoustic Zen Epoch..What these cables have brought to my system are:
The first thing I noticed is the music seems to come easier,ie:a touch louder than normal at low levels and it’s so clean I find I’m listening louder..
wider,deeper,and sharper defined imaging and staging...deeper,better defined and tonally richer bass...increased low level detail retrieval...a treble that is not as easy on the ears but seems better defined,almost sharp and I can see where some systems could move way to far into bright with these cables...
So I attribute the cleaner/sharper tone to the addition of high purity silver to the cable but I wonder what it is about the materials and construction that allow the bass,imaging and staging changes and especially the ease which music seems to come now?Any comments(from those who have found cables do matter)and NOT from those who believe they are snake oil PLEASE!!!
freediver
chefhat
19 posts
 
Blimey - that’s a bold statement by a manufacturer:

"Although the cable signal is an alternating current, small impurities in the conductor act as diodes allowing signal flow to be better in one direction over time. This effect is also called quantum tunneling, w hich has been observed in experiments over 25 years ago. Regardless of the purity of the metal used, there are still diode effects in all conductors."

Whilst Quantum Tunneling is offered as an explainaion for certain phenomena (and tunnel diodes do indeed exist), I haven’t seen any evidence to link impurities in metals with this effect. Either way, how would they know in which direction these impurites were arranged? I wonder how they came up with that??!!


geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Eggs Ackly! Not only that, for typical and ubiquitous very high purity conductors the amount of the impurities is inconsequential. One millionth. Besides, if Nordost’s theory of directionality were true then fuses would exhibit the same phenomenon. But they don’t! That Nordost theory is actually what HiFi Tuning’s theory was, a long time ago - that wire directionality was dertermined by the break in process.  But now HiFi Tuning understands that the manufacturing process determines the directionality of fuses (and wire in general).
uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
I am now onto the Heimdal series and for my system and my ears each step up the Nordost line has brought benefits.
Bass bloom has been much reduced compared to the all copper speaker cables I was previously employing, speed and detail is enhanced but not to the point it is tiring and wearisome ( at least not yet). I generally listen to music 4 to 6 hours a day.
All of my Nordost cables have been purchased used so two benefits in that, cost saving and already broken in (hopefully).
Will I continue to upgrade further? Maybe not as even used prices on higher product like Valhalla are quite prohibitive right now.
But am I happy with my present loom of Heimdal, heck yes!
dave_b's avatar
dave_b
3,159 posts
 
God forbid you have any natural bass bloom or overtones like actual instruments do in an orchestra!!  That would be sooo distracting
jayctoy's avatar
jayctoy
4,203 posts
 
John maybe 99% is way too high? Maybe 80%? In general, on their own system maybe? John , I never plan to have two systems , although 90% of my gear and cables are used, In some way I am fortunate but the downside I end up comparing my two system, it’ get complicated. It never stop. Your post will help a lot here , it’s very accurate...Uberwaltz you won’t regret with the Heimdalls, they are very good , I do have the Speaker cable heimdall 2, and the ic heimdall 1, and the Vishnu pc.just let them settle for at least 6 days...
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