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Chinese fake cables How fake, how good?

I have noted a number of warnings about cheap Chinese fake cables on this site but curiosity led me to the Aliexpress site where I found a number of presumably fake big name cables from predominantly Cardas, Nordost and Siltech at about 15% of the USA or Australian price. I found Cardas Clear Light interconnects at about US$100 and decided what the heck let's give them a try at that price. Before buying I asked the seller the daft question as to whether they were genuine and got the reply that they were an OEM and constructed the interconnects from genuine Cardas cables and connectors. They arrived in a plastic bag rather than the Cardas box , not a great start but the cables looked real, and when connected, much to my surprise, they sounded really good. After 100hours or so burn in they sounded great and better than the Nordost Quatre Fils I had been using. I then took them to an Australian hi end dealer who sold real Cardas and asked rather ingenuously whether my cables were the real deal. The dealer would not commit but agreed to compare them to the real thing on a set up costing at a guess around A$100,00. Neither I nor the sales person could tell any difference so he then tried them against the Cardas Clear. Then there was some difference, not extreme but subtle, and certainly IMO not worth the price difference even if you bought the genuine Cardas Clear Light. So are these cables really fake and even if they are given my experience they are well worth a try. Maybe I'll try Nordost Odin or Siltech 770i next.
128x128mazian
213runnin
914 posts
 
China has been infiltrating just about every single industry and manufacturing sector out there, including audio.  Rather than get their brilliant people to R&D products that they refine over the course of decades, they steal technologies, designs, inventions and methods.  

It's disgusting.  Every company that has a factory in China is getting ripped off.  Then they flood a marketplace with cheaper alternatives to put the legitimate manufacturers out of business.  They've done this already with clothing, electronics and medications, for instance.  

And this OP wants to ignore all that, and say, yeah, maybe it's stealing, but hey, this one fake cable sounds better than the other one.  You can go get bent, fella.
zombiedad's avatar
zombiedad
27 posts
 
The thing is this is not high end electronic stuffs. That might be hard to make a good copy.
This is only a cable. How hard will it be to locate the source material? I don’t think any of these high end brand make their own copper. Audioquest buys copper from Cardas to make their speaker cables. Its easy to find a place in China that sell good cooper, plated goods....etc. So basically making a highend speaker cables, interconnect, digital coaxial is extremely easy. These China factory can absolutely make good stunning cables which is same quality as the Nordost, Audience...etc. By using the top notch material inside. They just need to wrap with the nice package outside. Then it will look exactly like the real thing. And they do sound extremely good. You can’t tell the difference at all. So why bother spending $10 grants on a highend speaker cable instead of $300.

ebm
9,311 posts
 
I love my new Egg Roll cables.
sgordon1
437 posts
 
Last week I received a 1m "Nodost Odin 1" from China.
It looked and sounded good right out of the well wrapped box.
After a few hours it sounded very good.

So I placed an order yesterday for a 2m version
for $200.  I'm a believer, at least in this case, and the
2-3 week shipping time is the only disadvantage.
XSSH is the company, on aliexpress.com.
ebm
9,311 posts
 
Im upgrading to the Lo Mein cables dudes!!
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