Nordost SuperFlatLine Speaker Cable Review

[pma]

7 years ago I measured Nordost Valhalla speaker cable. It happily catches all the HF EMI from the surroundings.

Valhalla 2 | Speaker Cables

Nordost, manufacturer of high technology cables including speaker / video cables and analog and digital interconnects. Brand names include the Supreme Reference Odin, Reference Valhalla and Tyr and others including Norse, Flatline and Sort Systems

nordost.com

 

[AudioSceptic]

7 years ago I measured Nordost Valhalla speaker cable. It happily catches all the HF EMI from the surroundings.

View attachment 292626

Valhalla 2 | Speaker Cables

Nordost, manufacturer of high technology cables including speaker / video cables and analog and digital interconnects. Brand names include the Supreme Reference Odin, Reference Valhalla and Tyr and others including Norse, Flatline and Sort Systems

nordost.com

I see that the insanely priced Odin Supreme Reference speaker cables have a similar construction. <https://nordost.com/odin-supreme-reference/odin/speaker-cable.php>. You might literally be better off with "bell wire", even ignoring the price.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Twice I've encountered expensive rigs with a hum problem. Both times they were using Nordost flat line interconnects. One case moderately long lengths, and one case in a very long lengths. I grabbed some cheap RG6 coax interconnect and voila' the hum was gone. What I couldn't do was get back the thousands of dollars gone for the hum prone stupidly designed interconnect. The look on the owners face when the hum disappeared with what were actually RGB video cables was worth something however.

 

[sarumbear]

View attachment 292605

...The terminations were surprisingly loose as I inserted them in the banana jacks of my Audio Precision analyzer.

Could it be the terminations are meant to be push through the cable opening on a binding post and then screwed tight? They don't look like the standard banana plug to me, more like this instead.

 

[xaviescacs]

A % of speed of light is a now a measure of propagation delay (time)? What if I place my speakers on the moon? What is the delay then? 91 % the speed of light?

 

[ObjectiveSubjectivist]

I wonder if the noise picked by this cable can influence the sound and indeed people hear the difference and call it "better"

 

[AudioSceptic]

Twice I've encountered expensive rigs with a hum problem. Both times they were using Nordost flat line interconnects. One case moderately long lengths, and one case in a very long lengths. I grabbed some cheap RG6 coax interconnect and voila' the hum was gone. What I couldn't do was get back the thousands of dollars gone for the hum prone stupidly designed interconnect. The look on the owners face when the hum disappeared with what were actually RGB video cables was worth something however.

I wish I could say that the stupid with so much money deserve to lose it, but in this case it goes to scam artists, not a worthwhile cause.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I wish I could say that the stupid with so much money deserve to lose it, but in this case it goes to scam artists, not a worthwhile cause.

No they weren't stupid. Yes, cables like this are stupid, but the people were not. Electronics and such simply were not their area of expertise. Any of us can make foolish decisions in an area where we aren't educated. An area we can be conned or scammed.

 

[HarmonicTHD]

It is 91% speed of light. I think that is good enough for audio.

The mere fact to put this onto a spec for a cable cracks me up and should be a dead giveaway that sth is fishy. (The other specs are at least somewhat technical but I guess that’s part of the pseudoscience scheme ).

 

[Blumlein 88]

The mere fact to put this onto a spec for a cable cracks me up and should be a dead giveaway that sth is fishy. (The other specs are at least somewhat technical but I guess that’s part of the pseudoscience scheme ).

It is a legitimate thing. No more or less relevant than copper purity, but a real thing.

 

[HighFutility]

The copper used is only .9999. The good stuff at .99999

 

[VintageFlanker]

The good stuff at .99999

No, it starts to getting serious with OCC 7N at .9999999%.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

About the only justification I could see for using something with this form factor would be to run them behind baseboard or under a rug... but it's too delicate for that, and doesn't have the right jacket material for in-wall use... so???

You could be on to something here.
Cable sinkers for under-rug use

 

[pjug]

Cannot see the resistance parameter.

They say 23 AWG for the conductors. 23 AWG has 0.258 mm^2 area. 8 conductors then has about 2.064 mm^2 area, or about the same as 14 AWG. That is better than I would have guessed. This if I read the AWG table correctly or otherwise flub something.

 

[theREALdotnet]

I doubt their promoted "propagation delay = 91% speed of light".

I found this surprising, too. A velocity factor of 0.9 is unusually large for a cable of this construction. But who knows?

It can actually be measured in a rather simple way, as Alan Wolke demonstrates here:

(He measures the length of the cable given its velocity factor, but with a known length the same procedure can be used to determine the velocity factor.)

 

[fpitas]

I definitely want a higher velocity factor. I don't want to wait around to hear my music.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

It is 91% speed of light. I think that is good enough for audio.

LOL -If you had a resolving hi-res system you'd notice the missing details (9 % that is) right away, you pleb!

 

[theREALdotnet]

It is 91% speed of light. I think that is good enough for audio.

Even when listening to this?

 

[Yasuo]

91% speed of light - sooo can I use this in poorly lit rooms? Mind you, even dark ones.

 

[RayDunzl]

What if I place my speakers on the moon?

Yeah, we need to measure speaker impedance in a vacuum, just in case.

I think I can guess the SPL, frequency response, phase, etc.