Nordost SuperFlatLine Speaker Cable Review

[pseudoid]

Yet this is none of the things he mentioned.....

He did mention "etc."

 

[pseudoid]

I have this ($19.99 new old stock on E-Bay, works fine, is paintable):View attachment 337282

I see your pile of copper and raise you:

 

[Audiofire]

My experience with the Nordost cables leaves me speechless, if that is even possible.

Drop-dead gorgeous cables at best. Super flatline is technically correct though, because the snake oil cable does not deserve to have a music waveform passed through it.

 

[Chrispy]

Drop-dead gorgeous cables at best. Super flatline is technically correct though, because the snake oil cable does not deserve to have a music waveform passed through it.

Aesthetic of cabling is just weird in the first place. Drop dead gorgeous is not possible knowing their marketing, just makes it a POS.

 

[Audiofire]

Aesthetic of cabling is just weird in the first place. Drop dead gorgeous is not possible knowing their marketing, just makes it a POS.

Nordost means Northern cheese in Danish (nord ost). Technically correct that Nordost is cheesy ...

 

[Chrispy]

Nordost means Northern cheese in Danish (nord ost). Technically correct that Nordost is cheesy ...

LOL good to know. Such a cheesy brand

 

[Descartes]

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Nordost SuperFlatLine speaker cable. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $360.
View attachment 292605
As you see, the cable name is fully descriptive with parallel copper traces running from one end to the other. The edges of the cable are somewhat sharp and overall the cable feels somewhat delicate (think flex PCB if you are an engineer). The terminations were surprisingly loose as I inserted them in the banana jacks of my Audio Precision analyzer.

Company provides a set of "specifications" which are hardly useful:
View attachment 292606

Nordost SuperFlatLine Speaker Cable Measurements
I tested the cable as if it were an interconnect (and hence with higher impedance than it would see in real life). There, the SuperFlatLine showed transparency with analyzer's internal bypass:
View attachment 292607
Seeing the large surface area of the cable and audiophiles always worrying about noise intrusion in cables, I put my usual test transformer at 90 degrees to the cable. This induce fair bit of mains noise:
View attachment 292608

I then switched the cable to a generic 12 gauge I bought form Amazon a while ago:

View attachment 292609

As you see, the induced noise level is much less now. The SuperFlatLine cable was so sensitive that having the transformer 12 inches away from it still induced fair amount of noise.

Note again that these are high impedance tests. With typical low impedance amplifier and speakers, it will be much harder to inject noise into a speaker cable. Still, all else being equal, the Nordost cable is much worse in this regard due to simple physics of its construction.

I also ran the classic frequency response test showing no difference between the cables (and no cable):
View attachment 292612

For grins, I set the analyzer to 1 MHz and pumped a 10 kHz squarewave into the cables:
View attachment 292613
As you see, there is not the slightest difference even though this signal is "illegal" in 44.1 kHz or even higher sampling rates.

Conclusions
The Norodost SuperFlatLine cable clearly falls in the category of paying more and getting less. It is much more susceptible to noise pick up, and its physical construction is a bit of a pain to deal with.

Needless to say, I can't recommend the Nordost SuperFlatLine cable.
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I had a dealer trying to sell me their pure silver cables “Tyr 2 cables by Nordost”
after I told him that I wanted to demo them against my self terminated Mogami W3104 he said
”Oh that’s not even a comparison!”

So I borrowed them and plugged them in my home system and felt they were doing something wrong with the sound so I brought them back and was polite by telling him that they were not my cup of tea!!

What a massive ripoff these high end cables are!$6,400 for the pair

 

[Spkrdctr]

I see your pile of copper and raise you:
View attachment 337526

We all know that nothing beats the pure sound of a highly corroded copper wire. It seems the corrosion lends the wire near magical properties. I's say to sell them at 5 times the original price! Fantastic old wire pics.

 

[rank]

For less than 350$ I bought my main preamp with a XLR input + his dedicated class AB 2 X 100W real watts amp complete with remote in a hifi shop some years ago. This is a scam !!!

 

[solderdude]

For less than 350$ I bought my main preamp with a XLR input + his dedicated class AB 2 X 100W real watts amp complete with remote in a hifi shop some years ago. This is a scam !!!

Yes it certainly is... just not to owners who believe it sounds better using them and that's who cable manufacturers get their money from and owners happily give them their money. It is how the biggest part of the high-end AV works.

 

[rank]

During the 1980s, I was employed part-time in two stores owned by two brothers, there were Monster and other brands whose products sold because they were quite pretty and well finished but the prices were reasonable. We tried MIT (which will bring back memories for the older ones (cough cough). What a laugh with their boxes full of...NOTHING.
Unfortunately their male cinch sockets did not fit into all those of the device chassis.

 

[wwenze]

I need to sell a cable that you put beside a cable

 

[pseudoid]

I need to sell a cable that you put beside a cable

You haf to include some fancy (but cheap) connectors that go to nowhere!

 

[Chrispy]

You haf to include some fancy (but cheap) connectors that go to nowhere!

Which "nowheres"?

 

[pseudoid]

Which "nowheres"?

Make one up..., it don't matter..., every snake-oil haf to have some mystery built-in for it to sell in volumes.

 

[Count Dacula]

I like a cable that is physically ideal first and aesthetically pleasing second. That said, we really only see speaker wire, and there are indeed a lot of choices. All things considered, this smoky black frosted copper jacket 12ga for dirt cheap is the top of the heap, looking more expensive than it is. Pic doesn't even do it justice. Nice soft jacket too.

I don't mind nicely colored wires, especially those baby blue Esoterics pictured above, but WAF and other things considered.... like $0.25c a foot

https://www.ebay.com/itm/232382244692

 

[Holmz]

"Even my wife heard the difference, which was day and night, and she was in the kitchen, in another building...."

Of course she was in the kitchen, I mean where else would one keep em?

 

[TLEDDY]

I said “ Not terrible”due to a specific application in a tertiary system. I had to run underneath a carpet and the flat architecture was needed.
Suited my purpose at the time… I might (!) even still have them in a long-forgotten box of cables!

 

[rank]

Alpha Core Goertz also makes flat cable. But I believe it's a little cheaper at Cable Company. I'm looking for colored power cables (of course at an extremely low price - there's one at Furutech but more than $60!). I just have two vaguely transparent ones (Audio Agile "power cord" and a "TKD" - which looks like an Olflex-) + a blue Eupen and a brown Audioquest (the fabulous AC 12, special preamp). I had bought cable sheaths, what a scam, impossible to attach except at the ends with super glue, rather ugly, wires only coming in by forcing... Not happy.

 

[egellings]

You haf to include some fancy (but cheap) connectors that go to nowhere!

Also, the cable needs exotic cable lifts placed a foot apart under the cable, and then you need little platforms to set the lifts upon to shield the lifts and the cable they support from destructive static charges lurking in that carpet. Cable lift ESD protectors! We could start a whole new audiophile-grade product line!