G'day folks! We are in winter now and things are looking pretty cool...
The weather has been very erratic, nearly everyone was down with the flu at the office, and eventually I got it! Back on deck now, fully recovered.
Speaking on "fully recovered" I must agree with those who have used far lesser priced cables vs. more expensive ones. I have omitted one Nordost power cord from my main power strip to the Thor power conditioner, replaced it with a custom made high grade power cord, locally made from a well respected chap in Melbourne. This guy also makes interconnects and speaker cable, they sound superb! For a fraction of the cost, I am extremely pleased with this power cord. In fact, the dealer whom I ordered and bought from, uses a wide array of these in all demo components. These include ARC, Rega, EAT, Sonus Faber, Ambience, MA, Kharma, and Kondo amps. Even on the 200 grand reference system, which has all ARC gear with SF Strads, they're using these custom made power cords/interconnects however, the speaker wire is from Nordost(Valhalla).
I'm currently using a 300B SE integrated to drive the Quads, and with the Nordost, DH-Labs + Custom made power cords, the system seems to have "fully recovered" from some sort of veil that was ever present and didn't sound this good after departing with the ACT2 & Classic 60SE. With the cj gear, this was not so much an issue I noticed, and the ACT2 + Classic 60SE was well capable of driving the Quads to superb level of realism. When I initially used the 300B amp, I noticed at once the lack of impact, unless I was to turn up the level, which would then cause the whole presentation to get muddy since 8 watts of SE would run out of steam. However, after placing this power cord into several points in the system between power strip/power conditioner/amplifier to QX4/Qx4 to power strip- the full impact and presence is all there, without having to turn up the level. Now I have 3 Nordost power cords laying in their boxes, and using Nordost only for the CD player and phone stages.
Now I'm not saying Nordost is bad nor over priced and all those negative comments, rather I strongly believe it is system dependent after all. On the cj gear, the Nordost was superb, but on this particular amplifier, the custom made is better. Of course Frey and Odin would be far superior, I definitely know, since I have tried both but at that price point it is something I am not willing to spend on. I do have other priorities other than spending 30 grand on cables.
We also ran a Kondo integrated (Overture) with this power cord driving the Strads and it was outstanding. I was very interested on the Overture but again at 20 grand for a 32 w/ch integrated, again something way beyond my budget. I must say the Nordost range does have some good value but then again so does DHLabs and Crystal cable and so on, I would think this is very system dependent, there is definitely "no one best type of cable" in the world.
Another new range worth trying is the Clear reference from Cardas, very neutral and flat response, lets the music flow very nicely, and very realistic price range.
Cheers and happy cabling!
RJ