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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
williewonka
3,075 posts
 
@freediver - in addition to the many comments above regarding purity of conductors and different material types - I believe a couple of other factors in cable performance is the "geometry" and "size" of the conductors

Geometry: is how the conductors are placed withing the actual "cable" itself e,g, one of the most well known geometries is braided - as in Kimber Kables.

Size: of late there is now a growing trend to use a different gauge conductors for signal and neutral conductors.

Personally, after a lot of trial (and error) experimentation - I now use a "helix" cable, where the neutral is twice the gauge of signal conductor and is wrapped around the signal conductor. See link below

http://image99.net/blog/files/d048bbacfce9bcad4a025be804771d9a-76.html

My thought process is that this design eliminates any noise transfer (by inductance) from the signal conductor into the neutral conductor, which can occur with cables where the two conductors lie side-by-side inside a sleeve.

The noise transferred into the neutral is fed back into the neutral side of the amp and interferes with its operation , so removing that noise enhances clarity. Enhanced clarity also improves the "phase effect" between left and right channels which improves the Imaging.

I’ve found the Helix design provides exceptional clarity and superb 3D imaging along with a more detailed and deeper bass performance.

My thought process may be "flawed", but the Helix Cables works exceptionally well :-)

Anyhow - I believe geometry is just one more thing to consider when selecting ALL cables.

Regards - Steve
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uberwaltz's avatar
uberwaltz
13,381 posts
 
@jmcgrogan2
I have come to regard all cables as some form of tone control along with any other aspects they may enhance in ones system.
Just me but it is easier and usually cheaper to swap cables around than gear.
However my next plan is trying out a Lyngdorf with room correction which hopefully will eliminate any need for "tone control" surgery.....we will see
dave_b's avatar
dave_b
3,159 posts
 
Listening to Robert Hall Lewis on my system....the Transparent Gen 5 Ultras are astounding! If you frequent the symphony or live music in general, what the Transparent cables convey is just simply jaw droppingly right across the frequency range. From triangles to double bass....and the tympani :(). Oh my!!
freediver OP
1,122 posts
 
Well I've had the Ryan 610's set up for a day.The combination of Quad VA-One,Red Dawn Rev.II and Norse Bi Wire Jumpers is very very pleasing,no hardness whatsoever,although they aren't disappearing like the tiny Dyn's but I don't think they are well broke in yet...
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