Comparison


Anyone using or ever compared Nordost Flatline MKII speaker wires to Kimber Kable 4TC (black and blue) with all bananas? Which one do you prefer?
polk432
I used Flatline II cables until I bought speakers whose manufacturer (Shahinian Acoustics) recommended (among others) Kimber. Since I was finding my new (used) speakers a bit harsh in the highs, I figured a switch to Kimber might be just the thing, so I got a pair of 4TC for my treble and 8TC for the bass (biwired then later biamped.)
First of all, I thought both brands worked well in my system with no obvious differences between them. I even found that I could her no definite differences between the Kimber types 4 and 8, except that the 8TC, having twice as much capacity as the 4TC, did seem to support a touch more dynamics in the bass, though this could be psych-acoustic since it was very obviously what one would expect. The system sounded more or less the same with either set. They are all excellent cables.
I listen to acoustical music, mostly classical orchestras. My highest ideal in reproduction is a negative: Do as little damage as possible to the beauty of the "real thing." (That beauty includes dynamics and detail and all the rest of it but none of the other stuff matters to me if one of the greatest of all reasons to hear music, the simple beauty of the instruments and voices, is compromised. All sound reproduction systems now known to man or beast sound obviously, to one degree or another, artificial. Don't forget, cables do not of themselves "sound" at all. What I can say, as one who has actually used extensively the two cables you are curious about, is that neither the Kimbers nor the Nordosts contributed differently to the beauty of the sound, which remained lacking.
As for my harsh highs, the Kimbers did nothing to alleviate the problem.
I used Flatline II cables until I bought speakers whose manufacturer (Shahinian Acoustics) recommended (among others) Kimber. Since I was finding my new (used) speakers a bit harsh in the highs, I figured a switch to Kimber might be just the thing, so I got a pair of 4TC for my treble and 8TC for the bass (biwired then later biamped.)
First of all, I thought both brands worked well in my system with no obvious differences between them. I even found that I could her no definite differences between the Kimber types 4 and 8, except that the 8TC, having twice as much capacity as the 4TC, did seem to support a touch more dynamics in the bass, though this could be psych-acoustic since it was very obviously what one would expect. The system sounded more or less the same with either set. They are all excellent cables.
I listen to acoustical music, mostly classical orchestras. My highest ideal in reproduction is a negative: Do as little damage as possible to the beauty of the "real thing." (That beauty includes dynamics and detail and all the rest of it but none of the other stuff matters to me if one of the greatest of all reasons to hear music, the simple beauty of the instruments and voices, is compromised. All sound reproduction systems now known to man or beast sound obviously, to one degree or another, artificial. Don't forget, cables do not of themselves "sound" at all. What I can say, as one who has actually used extensively the two cables you are curious about, is that neither the Kimbers nor the Nordosts contributed differently to the beauty of the sound, which remained lacking.
As for my harsh highs, the Kimbers did nothing to alleviate the problem.