How Is This Possible? Must be Counterfeits

Let me tell you my story wt Chinese clones.

Three years ago I bought some Chinbese Odin for $150 for a friend's system. Of course it sounded "okay", looking mysteriously close to the OEM. But the main body's plastic wouldn't flex as does pure FEP (Teflon). Indeed, it was cheap extruded PE...milk jugs! But I decided to explore further, buying a meter of the stuff and comparing jumpers made from it on my ref speakers, which had "enjoyed" Nordost SPM for decades. Couldn't pass an AB/X. So I carefully slit off ALL the outer cheap PE body, leaving a loose ribbon of individual plated Cu conductors that indeed had a very thin FEP cover on each. Huh...at least they paid lip service to that inner dielectric. Further, the coiled synthetic red "spacer" was identical to Nordost's. So I taped up these now-semi-naked strands and repeated the demos. Still no delta. Finally, I skinned off ALL the FEP  and red spiral-wrap, gently and lightly taping the flat and naked array in the same geometry as original (and OEM). STILL no difference in sound.  Eventually I bought some pure solid 20AWG silver strands, stuffed them in air tubes, wrapped as a star-quad (net 14AWG), using nice spades, and VOILA, all the solver-PLATED-copper crap I'd been listening to disappeared! Ok...this isn't a thread about conductor metals nor my ArgentPur startup, but about the extent to which a Chinese shop cloned Odin...except for the big bulky carcass. But to this day I continue to have disdain for ANY and all plated conductors.

I bought a bi-amp speaker cable set from Aliexpress  , so four cables, the Odin branded with the wood block and spade connectors. The cables arrived within a week, so that’s a good start

Before the cables were used, it was worth to test the cables for polarity and resistance. So the red had to match with red, and black with black, all cool there.

The resistance measurement told the truth on how these particular cables were made. The resistance measured with a Fluke 289 in relative mode varied from 1 ohm to 80 ohms. The branded Furutech connector was heatshrinked onto the cable, and the clamping screw just spun and stripped, so clamping the cable was useless.

The vendor was sceptical that the readings wouldn’t affect the sound, but eventually saw reason and granted a full refund. They paid for the return shipping to a local agent.

So now, have bought Furutech a36 diy cable, connectors, and the same spade furutech connectors as the Odin, let’s see how that works.

These cable brands mentioned on here do not manufacture cables in the first place but buy from actual manufacturers (or import from China) and resell them.

Do not buy fake cables though. Buy no brand cables or WBC/Canare cables on Amazon so that you can return for a full refund. Cable burn-in is totally fake. Just be smart and don't waste money.

As an update , the Furutech cable, connectors arrived. The spade connectors still stripped at the cable support, but held firm on the actual conductor connection. Resistance values are all below 1 ohm now. The new cables are a different sound than with the SPC 10 AWG, not worse for sure, more relaxed, certainly no loss of fidelity. Can listen for hours without fatigue.

The cable itself is marked Furutech and dimensions match the specified sheet from Furutech. Are they fake or just surplus from.an older design, I’d go with the latter.

I purchased a half dozen of the higher quality Odin 2 power cables from Ali (RM Digital store), to compare against real Heimdall 2 power cables. There are cheaper versions of the Odin 2 but they looked poor quality.

Let me first say that for $150 USD, the sound, and build quality of these cables is exceptional. The connectors are perfectly made, amazing quality. The sound is just excellent, nothing at this price will even come close.

But compared to Heimdall 2, the real Nordost was better on every audiophile metric except for bass. The Odin 2 has 3x the gauge current capacity of the Heimdall, so that would be the reason for the great bass, especially with power amps. But apart from that it was no contest.

So I have never heard a real Odin 2, but based on this test I have no doubt the real thing would destroy the Aliexpress clone. Don't kid yourself this is even close to the real thing.

I also did this same test with fake Stillpoints Ultra SS footers. The gap between real Stillpoints and the fakes was even wider than the power cable test. Not even in the same ballpark, the fakes were only 30-40% of the real thing. But the fakes were still good footers for the price.