As I stated earlier in the thread, I purchased a set of Chinese "Neardost" Odin Gold IC's (RCA) recently and then purchased an additional 5 pairs of them as they significantly bettered a much pricier IC, which I simply sold off (two pairs) recently for about 3X more than I paid for the 6 pairs of Ali Express cables.
Did an interesting comparison at a friend's place yesterday; his system is considerably more "upmarket" than mine is, consisting of a Clearaudio Innovation table & Charisma cartridge, an Allnic phono preamp (forget the model), an Allnic L-10000 preamp, Bryston 14B Cubed power amp and B&W 802D3 speakers.
This was not an apples to apples comparison (ie. Chinese Odin Gold vs. the real thing) but we did compare the Chinese Odin Gold in his system to genuine (older) Nordost Valhalla V1. I took two sets of the Chinese OG over and they simply replaced the two sets of Valhalla running between his phono preamp/preamp and preamp/power amp.
For music, we listened to a copy of Lloyd Cole's Antidepressant as well as an "Audiophile Series" half speed master of Supertramp's Crime of the Century.
This was not a blind test, but sighted, and there were 4 of us there including me.
The 3 others preferred the Valhalla but personally, I did not like it as much as the Chinese knockoff Golds. The others found the Valhalla to be more detailed (which I can understand) and also felt that it sounded fuller, which I could not understand and definitely disagreed with.
The strengths of the Valhalla were in high frequency extension (by comparison the Gold knockoffs sounded slightly rolled off) and they sounded tighter and more controlled in the bass. But they also sounded considerably thinner (to me only, which I thought was a bit strange) and that thinness contributed to what I perceived to be a "sense" of more detail that you often get with a cable that does sound slightly thinner with what I think is an emphasis on the upper midrange.
By comparison, the Gold knockoffs sounded to me quite a bit fuller/richer in the midrange (some might possibly find them too "bloomy" there but I certainly did not) but bass was not quite as tight and there was slightly less treble energy. They had a slightly more "mid hall" presentation than the Valhallas as far as I was concerned.
One of the others commented, for example, that he felt that a sax solo sounded more detailed on the Valhallas and I would agree that leading and trailing edge of notes certainly had more apparent detail, but at the expense of body and richness of sound from the sax itself.
Similarly, the Valhalla also seemed to "highlight" vocals a bit more, isolating them in space but also sounding slightly sibilant to me.
In the end, none of us really know what the master tape sounds like so it comes down to subjective preferences in many cases. To some, differences are more pronounced to others and those subjective preferences come into play.
So differences were heard and preferences expressed. The one comment from the group that was unanimously agreed upon was that the price differential made absolutely no sense: $100 Cnd. for the two sets of Gold knockoffs vs. the new retail price of two sets of the Valhalla at the time (I believe my friend purchased used) of around $8000 Cnd. And that the overall presentation of both interconnects was much closer than would be expected at the price points.
Thinking afterward, I also thought that if my friends preferred the Valhallas overall presentation that the straight knockoff Odin might be preferable to them as opposed to the Gold, which is supposed to have a warmer tonal balance and different presentation vs. the non-Gold knockoffs (and why I ordered the Golds in the first place).
