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Art Dudley Listening - Stereophile Dec '09 Nordost

Reading this month's issue of Stereophile, I came across Art's monthly column - Listening. The overall theme was building a foundation for a given system, whether it be physical, mechanical, electrical, etc.

The Nordost boys came to his house with platforms, quantum field resonators, and Nordost cables. At the moment, I do not have the resources to investigate platforms or quantum field resonators even though in the article, they do work to some degree.

My question is concerning cabling. More specifically, Nordost cabling. The folks from Nordost recommended using cables within a similar line and performance specifications. For example, not using Valhalla speaker cables with Blue Heaven interconnects. What caught my attention, and seemed counter-intuitive, was the cabling they chose. From memory, they used Tyr Speaker cable, don't recall the IC, and Vishnu power cables. Basically, the highest, and therefore most expensive, cable was the speaker cables. Cheapest was the power cords.

When assembling my system, it seemed to me that I would be better off moving up the Nordost IC line, then SC, and finally PC's. Am I missing something here? My interconnects are Quattro Fil, speaker is Red Dawn, and PC is Shiva. Should I have gotten better SC and lower line IC's?
gherrera1

Showing 1 response by jvitez

jvitez
10 posts
 
Thought I'd add my 2 pennies. I spend oodles of time and money until I found Nordost heaven. I love them. I found the biggest difference was their power cables in accordance with Roy Gregory. I have all Valhalla power cables, and with each addition the sound steadily improved, though the least difference was from the wall plug to my Furman IT-Reference 15i. I tried Shiva, Vishnu, Brahma, then Valhalla power cables. Shiva were terrible, very thin and reedy compared to much less expensive Grant Fidelity PC's. Vishnu was nice, but Brahma gets you the good stuff, and the Valhalla, ahhhhh.

For IC's, I tried Baldur, Frey, and Tyr. Baldur were terrible. Glorious highs and no bass. It was a very unbalanced sound. Frey was where the good stuff starts. Tyr is better, but not a huge difference, though it's there. For my money, Frey and Brahma would be the best price/performance balance, though Frey/Vishnu would be good too. Source IC's were the most important. Speaker cables the least.

My system: Martin Logan Summits, Simaudio SuperNova CDP, Sonic Frontiers line stage preamp, Ayre V5-XE amp, Thorens TD166 Mk II, Blue Circle phono stage.

My all Nordost system sounded faster, with fabulous airy highs. I can see it being too much if you like a warmer, more rolled off sound. All Nordost with Krell/Bryston might be too much. YMMV.
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