Nordost SuperFlatLine Speaker Cable Review

[pseudoid]

Thank you for the review, @amirm
I had bought 50feet of flat 12AWG cable at some garage sale, few decades ago.
They were to go under the carpet... but we ended up tearing out the carpetting before getting a chance to use them.
[NOTE to SELF: Remember to wrap them with aluminum-foil before stuffing them under carpetting... if/when!]

 

[Ken Tajalli]

I do! . . .Just saw that they will be attending the local audio show. Was thinking of taking them back then.

I would go with my body builder cousin!

 

[Ken Tajalli]

Can you measure between amp and power cube and run power sweeps and multitone? Just for completeness of having high current tests as well.

Can you please, not bother.
Those who buy these kinds of products, will never get convinced by measurements, science . . . and we already know, what's what.
You got nothing useful to measure? take a breather, more gardening.
Take the Mrs. shopping.

 

[Hart]

An interconnect review from Enjoy the Music.com:

Conclusion
My experience with the Nordost cables leaves me speechless, if that is even possible. Overall, the difference is nothing short of spectacular. In fact, during the review several friends and colleagues remarked that the reference system for this review has never sounded nearly as good. Personally, I have to agree with them wholeheartedly. I thought the old cables made a huge difference in my system, but the new ones overshadow them exponentially. In conclusion, if you are looking to build a new system or upgrade an existing system, you owe it to yourself to audition these cables. They represent a serious value and stellar performance within their price range. In my case, they have left me with the unchanging fact that I need to upgrade my cables to at least this level, because anything less would be unthinkable.

Speechless even. I used to read these guys a long time ago. Now I think they are out of their minds.

 

[tarikuz]

Hmm is the "Articulation" concept snake oil ? Please check the attached doc.
Your thoughts ?

 

[CDMC]

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

Not even close. Just wait, I am about to release my FTL cables developed using martian technology captured by the US Military and secretly declassified. They will be available for $1000 per foot, require signing a NDA, and labeled as “Beldin 12 gauge” so that others are not let in on the secret. Benefits include listening to music before it has even been composed and recorded.

 

[xaviescacs]

cable length in units of lightyear/91% will give you the delay (in year)

Standard units are m/s² though But the delay in seconds of a 6 feet cable isn't as fancy as 0.91c isn't it? In years it may be harder to sell... not sure...

It's true however that on the quoted table says velocity of propagation, I had only read the website posted afterwards.

 

[Billy Budapest]

No, it’s not flat, but this stuff has been my speaker cable of choice for a long time. The quality of the materials is really nice—rugged and just looks and feels to be high quality. And, oh yeah, $0.50/foot.

Amazon Basics 12-Gauge Audio Speaker Wire Cable - 99.9% Oxygen-Free Copper, 100 Feet https://a.co/d/ehoVUG8

 

[John_Siau]

That I could do. I thought they wanted me to repeat whatever test they did and I have not had the patience to read and see what that was.

It is important to place a low-impedance load, such as a 4-Ohm load resistor, on the end of the speaker cable. This will reveal the high-frequency attenuation that can be caused by excessive cable inductance.

If the center-to-center spacing of the cable conductors is large, the cable inductance will be high and there will be a significant attenuation of the high frequencies. Cables with large conductors and/or thick insulation will do very poorly on this test. Zip cord will outperform welding cable when it comes to performance near 10 or 20 kHz, because the closely spaced zip cord conductors have a much lower inductance. Smaller gauges of zip cord will have lower inductance than larger gauges, meaning that the smaller gauges will perform better at high frequencies. Zip cord with thin insulation will work much better than zip cord with thick insulation, when it comes to reducing the inductance.

On the other hand, if you place a speaker or speaker simulation network on the end of the cable, then you will see the effects of the series resistance of the conductors working against the impedance curve of the speaker. In this test, the welding cable will look much better than the zip cord. There is just not enough copper in the zip cord.

For speaker cables, you need a combination of low series resistance and low inductance. Capacitance is generally not an issue unless the amplifier is very poorly designed.

With a 10-foot speaker cable, the differences between cables are relatively small, but if you have to run 50 or 100 feet, the change in frequency response can be audible. For long runs, the best cable I have measured is a 25-pair CAT3 cable with all 25 pairs wired in parallel. This cable is nearly perfect at 100 feet into a 4-ohm load. The 24-GA pairs are closely spaced and this keeps the inductance low. Wiring the pairs in parallel reduces the series resistance and series inductance. The hot must be connected to one side of each pair and the return must be wired to the other side of each pair. This multi-pair cable is not easy to terminate, but it functions very well.

As a general rule, don't waste money on cables!

 

[fpitas]

Well, that was easy. This is the supplier of the bulk cable. Identical down to the red stripe on one side.

https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256803179825007.html?

So WORST case: $22 of cable, $5 of plugs and heat-shrink, and 30mins of labor. Selling for $360 . Incredible.

I'm shocked

 

[EJ3]

What? But the velocity of propagation is 91%. How can this be? Did you try cable lifters to raise it off the floor?

Edit: typo

Perfect typo! I LOVE it!

 

[fatoldgit]

That's a great antenna! It proofs that you don't need any funky cables for hifi an that generic cables are tried and tested boring designs that just work.

Indeed they are.

Back in the early 2000's I tried the Mark 1 Nordost Blue Heaven speaker cables and low and behold, all I could hear on my system were FM radio stations (even though I didnt have a tuner).

Very bad

Peter

 

[fpitas]

Indeed they are.

Back in the early 2000's I tried the Mark 1 Nordost Blue Heaven speaker cables and low and behold, all I could hear on my system were FM radio stations (even though I didnt have a tuner).

Very bad

Peter

Still, you saved money not needing a tuner.

 

[fatoldgit]

Still, you saved money not needing a tuner.

true but changing stations would be hassle

Peter

 

[MinMan]

I installed some of this very labor intensive DIY cable 15+ years ago for up to 30 Ft. long speaker cable runs at my 5.1 HT system: https://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ubyte2e.html

I managed to convince myself that this was a worthy effort. I "believed" my 4 Ohm Cabasse MTM speakers sounded better than they did as previously installed w/ Home Depot 12 Ga. speaker wire.

I've still got enough of the Belden 89259 RG59 leftover to send Amirm a 20 Ft. sample length of this assembled DIY speaker cable for testing.
(BTW - "https://www.patchcordsonline.com/rg59-coax-cable-plm-20awg-95-bc-braid" - might be current RG59 cable selection)

Is there much interest out there for such an exercise?
Would this fool be prone to repeating a needless waste of time to use this DIY cable when upgrading to my new HT with 30 - 40 Ft. long speaker cable runs?

Inquiring minds want to know.

 

[amirm]

It is important to place a low-impedance load, such as a 4-Ohm load resistor, on the end of the speaker cable.

First, it is good to see you again John. As I noted earlier, I have run these tests and with a real speaker no less. I have done very deep dives on cables including null tests and such. I have shifted now to taking a bit of break from that methodology and doing quicker tests as the answer doesn't change.

 

[MacClintock]

Was it tested on cable-lifters? What power cable did you use? Was the current purified before testing? Because otherwise the result is not valid.

 

[ObjectiveSubjectivist]

First, it is good to see you again John. As I noted earlier, I have run these tests and with a real speaker no less. I have done very deep dives on cables including null tests and such. I have shifted now to taking a bit of break from that methodology and doing quicker tests as the answer doesn't change.

Still would be nice to do such tests to shut the mouth for doubters. I think.

 

[MacClintock]

An interconnect review from Enjoy the Music.com:

Conclusion
My experience with the Nordost cables leaves me speechless, if that is even possible. Overall, the difference is nothing short of spectacular. In fact, during the review several friends and colleagues remarked that the reference system for this review has never sounded nearly as good. Personally, I have to agree with them wholeheartedly. I thought the old cables made a huge difference in my system, but the new ones overshadow them exponentially. In conclusion, if you are looking to build a new system or upgrade an existing system, you owe it to yourself to audition these cables. They represent a serious value and stellar performance within their price range. In my case, they have left me with the unchanging fact that I need to upgrade my cables to at least this level, because anything less would be unthinkable.

Speechless even. I used to read these guys a long time ago. Now I think they are out of their minds.

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

 

[pseudoid]

As I noted earlier, I have run these tests and with a real speaker no less. I have done very deep dives on cables including null tests and such. I have shifted now to taking a bit of break from that methodology and doing quicker tests as the answer doesn't change.

I was thinking your punchline was going to be that you will never do another cable test again!
Q.E.D.