Nordost Blue Heaven AC Cord Review

[nawfal07]

Anybody can loan @amirm those £60,000 Nordost Odin power cables to review I would be very grateful. I'm almost making a decision today, between that or a generic power cable for kettles.

 

[amirm]

@amirm at this point does it just make sense to do no more reviews on rediculous power cables as the results are the same.

Yes, we need to keep testing them. Folks go and search for reviews of these products and if we don't test them, they will land on random youtuber singing the praises of the loaner cables they got. Whatever conclusion we have here requires hanging around and reading a lot which a lot of people will not be doing who are not members.

 

[amirm]

Anybody can loan @amirm those £60,000 Nordost Odin power cables to review I would be very grateful. I

Many people who have such cables rather not know how they measure! There is a way to get one though. Upscale Audio has them: https://upscaleaudio.com/products/nordost-odin-2-supreme-reference-interconnect

And they have a 60 day return period. So if one of you has that kind of limit on your credit card, you can buy and drop ship it to me. I will test and return back to Upscale for the refund if it doesn't do what they claim.

 

[amirm]

@amirm,
One area which may be worth your time, for community service, is to measure and show the effect of corrosion or poor connections on cables.

I imagine if you took lamp cord and set it outside for a month in Seattle and then compared it to freshly stripped wire, you could show measured differences.

Then it bridges the gap. If you heard differences, it may be corrosion that you cleared out, and thus the “free upgrade” is to re strip the wires or clean the contacts with deoxit.

People don't leave their power cords outside though. The cable I tested with has been sitting here unused for weeks or months. No issues with it. Needless to say, I can't do that with any member provided cable anyway.

 

[carlosmante]

This reminds me of when I was like 14-16yrs old. My side hustle outside of my real job was buying audio gear at estate sales/flea markets/online auctions from people that didn’t know what they had. I would repair any issues and then resell them.

In the process I amassed a pretty incredible collection of audiophool pieces (cables, equipment feet, cable risers, etc) that I got for dirt cheap.

They (aesthetically) looked amazing in my system, and I wasn’t preoccupied about the cost because I paid so little.

One morning I woke up with the revelation I am sitting on components with insane resale value that I paid next to nothing for, and they provide no real benefit to me except aesthetics which no one besides me ever saw, so I made a plethora of audiogon listings and then used that profit to fund tangible upgrades to my setup and investments.

"tangible upgrades"? Tangible upgrades in an Audio system means the improvement is Audible. Did you do some listening blind testing?

 

[Hart]

Gauge = 16 Gauge x 3 strands equals 11 gauge. You can look it up.

Right, hot/neutral/ground. You don't add them up cumulatively. If it contained nine 16 gauge wires
the wire would be about 3/4" thick.

 

[GXAlan]

People don't leave their power cords outside though. The cable I tested with has been sitting here unused for weeks or months. No issues with it. Needless to say, I can't do that with any member provided cable anyway.

I was thinking about speaker wire but power cable.

Lots of effort for SEO, but to show how far you have to go to generate an audible difference in sound…

The only strengthens SEO for all the negative results too .

 

[amirm]

I was thinking about speaker wire but power cable.

Someone has sent me speaker wire that turned green. I could use that but the challenge is that I need to terminate it so defeats that purpose.

 

[Hart]

I just keep re-stating my same old advice. A decent 12ga speaker wire is all you need for most (99%?)residential audio/theater systems. Most people would be shocked at how little voltage/current they use when listening to music. Home theater will up this some, but unless you have low sensitivity speakers, you are not using all that much. Yours ears are grateful that you are keeping it at recommended volume levels.

I have a welder of an amplifier and very inefficient speakers, Magnepan, and I rarely use more than 10 watts according to the meters.

 

[carlosmante]

As we say in Germany: Alles Lacksäufer.

Oktoberfest?

 

[ocinn]

"tangible upgrades"? Tangible upgrades in an Audio system means the improvement is Audible. Did you do some listening blind testing?

Um.....what?? I sold cables and tweaks for cash, which I used to purchase room treatment and the early miniDSP solutions. Which are very much real, and that's not even up for debate.

But to answer your question, no I did not have someone blindfold me, and then teleport around my room instantly taking down or replacing all of the wall treatment.... because that's not possible to do quickly or silently enough to allow persistence of memory to stick.

 

[rynberg]

I took part in this blind test of the Nordost Valhalla power cables back in 2004, at Jason Serinus's house. For the record, I got 6 out of 10 while guessing on every single answer.

Welcome Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity

Home Theater Systems and Audio Components | Audio Visual Equipment Product Reviews, Technical AV Guides, Home Theater Equipment and Product Reviews

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[Blahzot]

I went to one of those Nordost cable demonstrations at a hifi store. The Nordost guy played his cables from the cheapest upwards, each time a vague improvement could be heard by most people there. I asked him to play the cheapest cable again when he reached his most expensive cable (Valhalla?), but he refused, citing "time constraints".

 

[seank]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Nordost Blue Heaven AC Cord. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $417 at this length (2m).
View attachment 291720
This is "third-tier" product in Nordost line so naturally, it is not going to scream expensive. That is a good thing as the cable itself is kept to less than crazy thickness. It is flexible but doesn't want to rotate which is a requirement for AC cord. Fortunately the connectors are easy to plug in and the weight was not excessive enough to yank your gear off the table/rack. I like the beefy plugs that make it easy to handle the cord. Here are the marketing claims:
View attachment 291722

I must say, I had not heard of "high-speed" as something good in AC cables. After all, high-speed means no filter or else, it would not be high-speed! We will test for its speed in the measurement section. I got a chuckle out of the claim that their claims are "proven." Naturally no such proof was provided.

While the plugs have UL/CE marks on them, the whole assembly has no mention of safety regulation either on the packaging or the marketing material. Only conclusion then is that the cable is not certified which is a sad thing when it comes to something that handles high current/high voltage and can cause safety risk.

Nordost Blue Heaven Measurements
Every time I go into one of these tests I think about how to expand our testing and come at the product from a different angle. While some of this testing may seem familiar, some are new. As usual, comparison is against a generic cable I had handy. In this case, I had a white AC cable that is marked as "I-SHENG" and comes with UL mark on the cabling. Company website says:

"Isheng Electronics is a world-class manufacturer of AC power cords. We offer a wide range of power cords including different NEMA AC power cords and different International power cord configurations. "

There is mention of speed of proven technologies; only that they are safe.

As usual, I perform my high-voltage tests by sensing the wavefrom using a B&K high-voltage differential probe with 100:1 attenuator. Here is my AC waveform using the I-SHENG generic AC cord:
View attachment 291724

We see that the tops of the AC waveform are deformed resulting in a lot of harmonic distortion and noise. Treating this as if the power company is an amplifier, its SINAD is 31 dB. Let's swap in the Nordost Blue Heaven and see if it makes a difference:
View attachment 291725
It doesn't make any difference. Everything bad that was there continues to be bad.

Some say my power is clean. I don't know how anyone could say the above is clean but let's use my B&K AC generator to create a highly distorted waveform, simulating what a dimmer would do:

View attachment 291727

Let's agree that is one bad AC waveform! Our SINAD has now sank to just 5.3 dB! Let's pump that into the Nordost Blue Heaven and see if it does anything to it:
View attachment 291728
Once again it doesn't.

While we are here and have an AC waveform that has nice sharp transitions, let's look at it in time domain with bandwidth of the analyzer expanded to 1 MHz. Here is the comparison:
View attachment 291731
There are actually two waveforms there: one in blue for Nordost and another in red for generic cable. As you see, every pixel has landed on the other demonstrating that there is no difference in any aspect of that AC waveform including its sharp rise and fall time.

So far we have measured the AC waveform. Contrary to what Nordost claims, your audio gear doesn't run on AC. That input waveform is converted to DC and filtered heavily before use. It then drives the electronics that makes audio signal. That is all we care about as that is what we hear, not the AC waveform. So let's test for that.

Topping A90 Power Cord Measurements
Let's use the Topping A90 preamplifier/headphone amp that is on my desk to test the difference starting with generic AC cord:
View attachment 291729

Once again we get the superlative performance we expect. Now let's switch cables to Nordost:
View attachment 291730
Once again no difference.

Let's finish with a proof point of why AC tweaks don't work. I used the chopped dimmer AC waveform and fed it to Topping A90 with the generic cord. Here is the output:
View attachment 291732

Yup, there is not a hair out of place! We have the same superb performance coming out of headphone amplifier even though we nearly destroyed the AC waveform! That chopped up waveform in blue when it, and what came out was the red.

Conclusions
Both our old and new tests prove once again that power cords make no difference (as long as they are thick enough to handle the currents you need). We expanded our tests into time domain and saw no improvement with the Nordost cable. If the cable can't change the AC signal, surely it means that the output of our audio gear remains the same and that was indeed the case. We then proved our conclusions by supplying our test audio product with highly distorted AC waveform and its performance didn't change.

You can buy an AC cord on Amazon for about $10. It won't look as fancy as the Nordost but you can sleep easy knowing that it is safety tested and costs 40 times less!

As an aside, the owner was sold on this cable by an audio salesman that made it sound like his gear would not be complete without it. He couldn't hear a difference so sent it to me for testing.

I can't recommend the Nordost Blue Heaven Power cord.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

"There is mention of speed of proven technologies; only that they are safe." Did you mean "There is NO mention...."

 

[spigot]

I suspect the more outrageously priced cables aren't expected to sell, they're designed to give the impression that there are levels to this game. So, even if you buy one of their cheaper offerings you're still getting an 'upgrade.' It's psychological warfare aimed at tinkerers.

 

[thecheapseats]

...If you don’t care about safety certification and you just want the aesthetics of fancy cables (which is totally valid IMO) aliexpress has thousands of replicas of these. For 1/10,000th the price....

nothing better than a knockoff of a useless device... perhaps they can all be "bundled" for sale with a fire extinguisher...

 

[Zensō]

I suspect the more outrageously priced cables aren't expected to sell, they're designed to give the impression that there are levels to this game. So, even if you buy one of their cheaper offerings you're still getting an 'upgrade.' It's psychological warfare aimed at tinkerers.

Yup. Price anchoring…

https://www.inc.com/the-build-network/the-anchoring-effect.html

 

[amirm]

"There is mention of speed of proven technologies; only that they are safe." Did you mean "There is NO mention...."

Wow, I really butchered that sentence! I fixed it in the review to say that they don't talk about speed but do emphasize safety.

 

[Yuhasz01]

Let people buy what they want and can pay for. Produce reviews and data . If they choose to disregard so be it. Lots of morons in all hobbies. Just check their crap every time with facts .

 

[audiotron]

The "high-speed, low-low loss Micro Mono-Filament" does it for me