Are Nordost really the Rolls Royce of cables?

NO.
Rolls Royce: The Siltech Compass Lake G5 interconnects. The Transparent Opus speaker cables.

You must have a thick wallet to own these. If you want to experience Nordost there are many on the used market.

My limited experience with Nordost speaker cables echo the experiences of Philjolet. To make that clear, I've never tried their interconnects.

Their speaker cables came across as being fast and lean sounding but lack liquidity and warmth in the systems that i've tried them in. In my experience, this directly affects "musicality" or "pace" in a negative manner even though the sound is very clean, crisp and detailed. These cables tend to highlight the leading edge of transients, making things sound very "sharp" or "focused". If you've already got a system that is running on the verge of being "etched" or "brittle", these cables would probably put it over the edge.

If one had a slow sounding system that was warm and mushy, installing a set of Nordost's might be the perfect compliment. While this is not meant to be a slag towards tube gear, owners of such gear or say that all tube based systems sound "slow and fat", i find that many tube based systems work very well with Nordost products. The tube "bloom" helps to fill out the noticeably lean mid-bass or "warmth" region that the Nordost seems to be lacking while the Nordost increases the apparent speed of the tubes as frequency climbs. In effect, you have what is known as a "complimentary colouraton".

While we may talk of trying to achieve "neutrality" and NOT using cables as "tone controls", EVERY product that goes into your system has some characteristic that it brings with it. As such, you might was well install products that compliment each other or help you to achieve the results that you are looking for. With that in mind, using components that are HEAVILY "flavoured" will only lower total resolution as far as i'm concerned and make it harder to achieve a good system match in the long run.

Having said that and believing that cables can be very system dependent, i've only ever run across one brand of speaker cables that i could find no suitable use for within the confines of ANY system. Those cables were not Nordost. As such, all you can do is try a cable ( Nordost or any other brand ) within the confines of your system and see if you like the results. Sean
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I often question comments like Natalie's ??

Generalistic statments never impress me. Cables that work or do not work are a question of Synergy in your system, having said that, the cost of Nordost are relative, not to price but to performance..

If you have your system optimized but missing that extra touch to put you over the edge due to cables, and Nordost give you that extra 10% hit (or 2%) in better performance, and you have hit Audio Nirvana that you have been longing for, then I say they are worth every penny.

And from what I hear, Nordost do this more often then not !!

thanks !
Matt
http://members.rogers.com/mzn50/

It's foolish to hype any one manufacturer's cables as the "Rolls Royce" of anything. I use Purist Dominus in my system, which is a very expensive cable, and love it, but that is as much or more a function of the way Dominus interacts with the specific components in my system as anything else. I got to Purist (from Cardas and then NBS) by listening to descriptions of the type of sound their cables tended to produce in a system and, given my taste and the way the system leans, going out to listen to them. Recently, an audition in my system of a single (obscenely expensive!) Kharma Enigma cable suggested I might like that even more. Who knows what else is out there? Nordost might be as good (never tried them in my system, although I did hear Valhallas in a so-so system at a dealer, where they sounded so-so, of course), but THE Rolls Royce? That takes in a whole lot of territory, and none of us has time and money enough to explore it all.

Valhallas are the best I've used.