As people may (or may not, it has been awhile) remember - we have been trying to determine how effectatious, sonically, it is to burn in the ElRod power cords on the Nordost ViDar cable burn-in device.

The short and sweet is… not that much.

We tried this on the low-power ELROD EPS-2 Signature power cables. One was on the ViDar for 2 weeks or so. One wasn’t. For this test we put both in the system for two weeks and then compared them - trying them both on the Emm Labs CDSA player and both on the Audio Note CDT3 transport.

Neli heard no difference and I thought the un-vidar’ed power cord might have a wee little better separation and emotion… in both tests … but un-ViDar’ed cord was always tried after the other cord and maybe I was just settling into the song a little better? Perhaps. In any case, the differences are so subtle, compared to what we usually talk about on this blog, as to be insignificant.

Anyway, the conclusions we reached was that the ViDar, designed for low power interconnects and cables, on which the ViDar kicks tush - does not seem to have much effect on correspondingly high current power cords. At least not these cords on these components.

In fact, the taking off of the power cord, and letting its internal capacitors discharge for about 30 seconds during our swap in and outs during this test (as we rushed one upstairs and the other downstairs to quickly put them on the other system during this test - trying to keep them charged up] might have had more effect on the sound. Hard to tell.

So that is our next test for the ELRODs - charged versus un-charged. It takes about 3 - 7 days for the power cord’s capacitance to fully charge, so we will compare one that has been in the system for awhile versus one that has not. A test that does not allow us to go back and forth - i.e. to repeat the test except once every seven days. And it requires us to have a power cord just sitting around doing nothing - not something that we can afford here these days with all four systems fully operational.

But I guess we are doing it anyway.

The power cord with the ‘V’ tag Neli put on it to designated its ViDar’ed status. Otherwise things might get a wee bit confusing… now WHICH cord was that again?

The EPS-2 Signatures are about 1/2 the size of the high-powered ELRODs.

The cord on the back of the EMMLabs CDSA.

The Audio Note CDT-Three transport. It is not hooked up because…

… several of our HRS M3 Isolation Bases and Neli were out on audition during this photo shoot. So the HRS SXR and MXR racks were looking like Macy’s the day after Christmas [OK, yes, so I have been watching a lot of old movies lately].

We have so many things in the queue … so many things lined up to try, that it gets a little overwhelming. The exact sequence of things gets a lot of discussion and seems to be updated on an almost hourly basis.

We have:

1. Compare the charged ELROD powercord that has been on the Nordost ViDar cable burner to a charged ELROD that has not been on the burner - i.e. How does the ViDar affect performance? We already did the cold (uncharged) Vidar’ed ELROD compared to the hot (charged) un-ViDar’ed ELROD. [Note, ELRODs take about 3 days or so to charge up their capacitors]. While this was ijntersting, and we will report on it, not being the brightest bears in the woods, we finally realized that this was kind of confusing [I bet you are confused, too, by now ], overloading the charged versus uncharged test with the Vidar’ed versus un-Vidar’ed test.

I said it was fun. But it also requires a degree in Research Methods… apparently.

2. Compare the Kegon Balanced with the old high-gain Kegons. We can do this on the Kharma Mini Exquisites - which we anticipate will show that 1) … well, let’s not make any predictions [see, I’m getting smarter. Maybe there is hope…]. But the Kharma is actually quite hard to drive, especially the bass - especially if you want that big open Kharma sound [Kharmas always sound exciting and delicious and big, but not always that room pressurizing wrap-around that many people crave like hot butter on potatoes].

3. Compare the Nordost ODIN speaker cable to the Jorma Design PRIME speaker cable on the Marten Coltrane Supremes. This will be… well, there may not be a winner. I expect the ODIN to be more dynamic, which the Supremes love, and the PRIME to be more detailed, which the Supremes love. But for all I know I am getting it exactly backwards. That’s what shootouts are for. Proving it one way or another [at least with respect to the equipment we have here - we do try to perform part of a shootout on a completely different system to make sure that out results more or less reflect the general case].

4. Compare the Kharma Mini Exquisites to the Audio Note SEC High Efficiency Signature speakers. OK, yes, completely different… but both are 2-ways and, well they were the same price but now the Minis are $60K [seen the dollar lately?] and, well the AN speakers are… we’ll know when Neli gets the price list out [uh, oh, she’s gonna smack me when she reads this… I am already bracing for the impact… hurry up and finish this so I can delete it before she sees it ]. I expect the Kharmas to be more detailed and the AN more dynamic. Duh. AN is almost horn-like and Kharma has that legendary midrange resolution. But what else will we hear?

5. Compare the M1 phono stage to the Lamm LP2 phono preamplifier. OK, Neli thinks this test is stupid too… but I want to hear the difference in character between the two. We’ve had a number of other inexpensive and expensive phono stages in here, so this is not all THAT outrageous.

6. Compare the old EMM Labs CDSA to the new one with the upgraded transport and feet. We should be getting close to getting 700 hours on the new CDSA soon now, one would think [I don;t have a little 700 hours cooking timer on it or anything].

7. Oh yeah, we still have to do the interconnect shootout where the signal is quite large, between the preamp and the amp. We actually point to a system periodically and say ‘oh, this would be a convenient time and configuration to perform the aforementioned test’ [well, we don’t use the word ‘aforementioned’ in casual conversation, sorry]. But do we sit down and do the shootout? Noooooooo. It does take about 6 or 7 hours of focused concentrated listening, so it is hard to find the time. But soon….

8. We want to compare the high-power ELROD powercords to the low-powered ones on the Lamm ML2.1. At what point to low-powered amps draw high-power? Just what IS the difference in sound between the two?

9. I am sure there is a 9. And 10….

We have to jury rig the Vidar in order to burn in power cords.

The Vidar passes a very complex sequence of low power signals over cables when it is burning them in. We have run two full cycles, about 8 - 9 days, s far.

How this works for power cords, which one might think would like to be broken in with, say, a monstrous 10 amp signal, we’ll see in the upcoming shootout between this and the exact same powercord that has just been sitting in the system on a transport.

We will probably have to do two shootouts, because it takes about 3 days for an Elrod power cable to full charge up, because they have a large amount of capacitance.

So two shootouts, unless the Vidar’d powercord is obviously better: one with the Vidar’d power cord straight off the burner,. and one with the Vidar’d power cord sitting in the system somewhere charging up for 3 days so that both it and the UN-Vidar’d powercord are BOTH charged up.

Hard work these shootouts…. or maybe just hard work sometimes explaining them

A digital cable shootout without any digital cables… but we won’t let THAT stop us…

The room showing the listening couch (I sat in the sweet spot behind the couch on a chair that puts my ears on a good level].

Neli, Kevin (thanks! Kevin) and I shot out 7 (SEVEN!) cables last night in a marathon listening session.

The cables were each substituted, some of them twice, between the Audio Note CDT Three transport and DAC 4.1x Balanced. The signal then ran through a Valhalla interconnect into a Lamm L2 Reference line stage. From there through 10 meters of Valhalla to the Marten Coltrane Supreme loudspeaker’s crossover box. Then through Nordost ODIN into the Lamm ML2.1 amps. Finally, that nice old signal completed its mission through Jorma Design PRIME speaker cables.

We played, over and over again till we was about to die, three cuts: Mark Knophler’s Sailing to Philadelphia track #2, Rachmaninoff track #6, and Radiohead Amnesiac track #2. Neli and I know these cuts REAL well, and Kevin knew one of them [and now all of them ] really well, so these particular cuts helped us focus more on learning about how the songs sounded versus on learning the songs themselves. We played CD 1, then 2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 1 in this pattern so that we would here some of the tracks back to back on different cables.

The PALLAS is still on the system this morning.

Neli did all the cable swapping, about 10 swaps in all. It took about 6+ hours. They went and got Vietnamese take out at about 2/3 of the way through. Yes, there WERE complaints about chewing sounds getting in the way of the listening. For my part, I just could not IMAGINE what Neli was chewing that would make such a noise. But, to rapidly continue on….

The cables finished the shootout in this order. Note the 3-way tie *(which we can help break for you based on your individual preferences, perhaps) and how the SOOTTO seemed to do better as a low-signal turntable cable compared to this one (that may be because this system, the Coltrane Supremes specifically, really likes to show off top-to-bottom detail and clarity - the SOOTTO being more about solidity and dynamics and color. As mentioned below, after some thought, it is perhaps the Kharmas love of dynamics that boosted the SOOTTO into a tie for first in that system]:

[[[Nordost Odin, Jorma Design PRIME, Audio Note PALLAS]]], Audio Note SOOTTO, Nordost Valhalla, Stealth INDRA, Audio Note SOGON.

Hopefully I will add some photos here… but… oh, I am!

*** Nordost ODIN. ***

Both the Odin and the PALLAS were doing things that we all found a little hard to get our ears around. I think that is both because they are relatively new here and that they are both breaking new ground in terms of what they can do.

The Odin was the clearly the overall audiophile performance winner. Front to back depth and separation was so good it took some time to get used to. The clarity was other worldly. The even-handedness up and down the frequency spectrum. The precise imaging. Precise harmonics. This is the only ‘competent’ interconnect, just like the Coltrane Supremes are the only competent loudspeaker - they just do the things they should be doing - nothing less, nothing more.

So why the 3-way tie then?

Was it just because we were tired of getting dry-mouth, forgetting to close them during all the ooohs and ahhhhs as we listened to the ODIN?

Yes.

But it was also because we really liked the intense color and apparent humanity of the human voice when using the PRIME (Kevin called it ‘Vivid’), and the ‘rightness’ and cohesiveness of the PALLAS.

We are very familiar with the PRIME, and the sound was therefore more accessible to all of us - it sounded like our system was sounding REALLY EXCELLENT with these cables. With the PALLAS it was like being there (especially the Rachmaninoff) and communicated much more of what I thought the musicians were trying to communicate - their interplay, the threads of melody, the stage - much more like REALLY being there than I have ever heard.

The Odin was more like… WTF! So THIS is what this recording sounds like. Seems like we need to reposition the speakers because we are getting some soundstage fuzziness… there… and THERE! [True.We do. The bass towers between the main towers is just not working out so well where we have them. We either need to to move the bass towers back or to the outside of the main towers].

We would be happy with any three of these cables. They all sounded excellent. The 10th time we played each song was as entrancing as the first - even though my brain was melting and it was hard to analyze what I was hearing at the very end anynore [but the last few songs were just a confirmation pass - yes we DID hear what we heard during the first pass, and yes, it is still quite nice thank you].

The Odin would, however, push us to optimize the rest of the system a little sooner - it being such a good window on what is actually on the source media. Just like the Supremes have forced us to continually improve our system. These definitely are pushing the audiophile envelope - raising the bar of what CAN be done with a high-end audio system.

*** The Jorma Design PRIME ***

Neli says there is chocolate on the Prime, and then she looks at ME(!) Now I ask the world, who is the chocolate addict in our house? No it is not me [But I guess I do eat protein bars that have a chocolate coating… Oh no! Banished to the audiophile penalty box!]

This will be the hardest to write, I think, because we are SO familiar with the sound - I will have a tendency to skip over some of its attributes. On the other hand, Kevin was there, and he brought up things about this sound that was a reminder to me… Oh yeah, they DO do that don’t they.

That said, each time these cables were put on was a joy. We have NOT grown tired of what they do. In fact, it was still a WOW experience.

First off, the voices. The voices on Radiohead, for example - but the Knopler too, were clearly better than the voices with any other cable. The HUMANITY of the voice stood out. This sounds like a real person! Somehow the balance of the frequencies and resolution just works. The throat and chest and gutturalness was just perfect.

There was also a lot of color to the harmonics. Not overly much - in fact just the amount that I want to hear. For example: A lot of notes in music are just plain ‘fun notes’. If you had a button and it made this sound when you pushed it - you’d be sitting there all day pushing it over and over and over because it sounded so cool. Knopler ’s guitar, a lot of the sounds [but not all ] on Radiohead, some of the violins on Rachmaninoff. Just like a kid we would be. Pushing that button over and over. But a lot of our systems leave out the ‘fun stuff’ in notes. This cable emphasizes the fun stuff.

This cable also had excellent separation, side-to-side and front-to-back. details were sufficiently plentiful that it kept us engaged as we continued to find new ones - new depth and characteristics of the performance - after the 10th [1000th] time we heard the track, etc. etc. [See, I TOLD you this is hard to write down everything we know].

Not as delicate sounding, not as much finesse, as the other two top contenders [something we thought we’d never hear ourselves say about the PRIME, which has details out the wazoo compared to most anything else on this planet here].

This was the most exuberant cable of the top three. Happy Happy. Enchanting. The PALLAS was joyous and romantic. The Odin was kind of like all emotions mixed together , being VERY emotional and engaging - but nothing stood out.

This cable is probably best, out of the ones we tested here - for people who love those audiophile-like performance characteristics, who want their system to sound really, really good - but don’t want to, or aren’t ready to, push the envelope and re-evaluate what they know about system setup and configuration and just what can… be… done… with the ODIN. [The ODIN *WILL* show you what your system sounds like - not in a harsh way, unless you have a bright system and are upgrading from something like CARDAS - but in a Oh! That is the contribution of my amp! Oh! That is my CD player. Hmmm… needs some vibration control to tighten THAT up a little bit. OK let’s do that. Oooooooooh. That sounds awesome. OK, sounds like the speakers need to be moved a wee bit to starboard… Yeah. Like that. OMG!].

*** Audio Note U.K. PALLAS ***

Confusing this one is, Luke.

In some ways that I did not understand, this one had a sound-stage stability and a lack of compression and a separation that equaled or bettered the Odin - but with an entirely different kind of presentation.

Lots of delicacy, so detail and micro-dynamics were there almost as extreme as with the Odin.

The solidity though was not as impressive as with the other two top contenders. This was definitely more of a light weight, in comparison, kind of presentation.

What I kept coming back to was the ‘Rightness’ about this sound. The soundstage was laid out in a realistic manner - but it was hard to care much. Each violin could be picked out [this was really quite fun], more or less right… THERE IT IS! But it was just like at a concert, where you can point at the musicians, but not know if they are wearing underwear or not. Or maybe this is another result of our non-optimal positioning of the speakers and we will hear more, like with the Odin, when we adjust this some.

Funny, the first few seconds of all these 3 cables was like an AAAAAAhhhhhhhh experience. “How pleasant it is to hear this sound after all the others. THIS is my favorite”.

Though this cable rivals or betters the other two cables in audiophile attribute checklisting, it seems to be more a music lover’s cable. It doesn’t ASTOUND one as much as the others.

The ODIN is for being Astounded and for helping make our system sound its very best - leaving others in the audiophile history bin. Do you want to build your system into a state-of-the-art WTF [e.g. a non-denominational OMG] system?

The PRIME is a plug-and-play conversion kit to make your system into a freaking-awesome-sounding system. Do you just want to make your system sound excellent?

The PALLAS is for listening to music on a system that matches or betters all others in audiophiledom, but doesn’t flaunt it. Do you just want to listen to and grok The Music?

*** Audio Note U.K. SOOTTO ***

Like with our previous shootout, this is a super-charged version of the SOGON. If you like SOGON, you HAVE to hear this.

After the second pass through the other cables, it was evident that this had greater macro-dynamics and more solidity of any of the other cables, which is saying something. Knoffler’s guitar sounded EXACTLY the way one would want it to sound. Made me want to put on Pink Floyd which is chock full of soulful and very colorful guitar. So, yes, this is also a very colorful / harmonically available cable. Not as much color as perhaps the PRIME, but the PRIME is almost psychedelic.

But the solidity, it is like the amp is taking more control of the speakers - each note is forcefully placed into the air. The musicians sound like they are in perfect control of their instruments.

And the interplay between musicians was also communicated better with these cables - which Kevin also independently mentioned - so the both of us noticed, on the Rachmoninoff, the back an forth and interplay between the musicians… something I was hard pressed to identify later on the other cables.

Why didn’t it score higher? There was some air missing, perhaps? Some slight lack of detail in the upper mids? A little bit of rounding? Last night we were just in the mood for something a little more copasetic with the Supremes - which really, really like Resolution. Downstairs on the Kharma Mini Exquisites a few weeks ago, in the other shootout, it was a slightly different story - the Kharmas really being partial to anything which makes them more dynamic.

*** Nordost Valhalla ***

The old champion. How technology has advanced. Still hanging in there though. A little rough sounding compared to the others, good midi-dynamics though. Separation is good in a macro sense, but details are smushed together compared to the others.

*** Stealth INDRA ***

A delicate sounding cable. Very pretty midi-dynamics, but not much macro dynamics. A little more congested than the others.

*** Audio Note U.K. SOGON 50 ***

A little more laid back than the others. If we hadn’t heard the others…. But not as exciting as the others on our system.

*** More Others ***

From previous shootouts, we know we like the Nordost Valhalla interconnect better than the Valhalla digital cable. We like the Valhalla digital very slightly better than the Jorma Design digital.

Getting the picture?

Digital cables are not performing as well as their siblings who are just ordinary interconnects.

I took 6 pages of large scribbley notes - most of which I still have to add to this post. So, stay tuned….!

————————————————–
Notes:

ODIN: A larger impact than expected perhaps 75% of the performance boost of putting it in as a regular interconnect? ENGAGING. Emotion. Pacing.

PALLAS: Not as forward. Great integration, image stability, presence, sound-staging. Less aggressive. Emphatic (Kevin). Balls [Neli]. Great sound-stage fill-in. Softer and more delicacy. Romance. Not quite as good PRaT. A little congested in the mids. Better sense of the music. “Rightness”.

SOOTTO: Not as clear. Very pleasant. More like a classic recording sound. Clearer view into interplay between instruments (Kevin aslso). Not as transparent. More solid. Awesome control over the speaker. Guitar is S-O-L-I-D. Not as engaging. Some of the instruments in the background are more forward (Kevin also).

PRIME: Solidty of voice! Not as delicate as Pallas or Odin. Separation alsmost as good as Pallas and Odin. Happy Happy. Almost as forward as Odin. Good PRaT, tonal color. Happy. Great transparency.

INDRA: Congestion on complex passages. Less midi-dynamics. More focused on speakers. In the delicate-sounding cable category. Constipated. [these do a lot better on stronger signal areas of the signal chain like between pre and amp]. Some emotion. A nice audiophile sound - but not great resolution [compared to the other uber resolution cables here!].

VALHALLA: Rougher than Indra, but more emotion, suspense. Less resolution. More separation, more midi-dynamics. Louder. Less finesse. Made Indra sound too polite. Less transparent. More compressive on macro dynamics. Focused on speakers and center stage. [This is the cable we usually use in this position - as it WAS better than all the other cables we had tried before - not wanting to know, perhaps, what these more expensive cables could do in this little corner of the system - until now of course].

ROUND TWO ——–

ODIN: Amazing separation and CLEAN. The incredible depth of the soundstage, more than we are used to, throwing off perception transparency a little? [I know, almost a complete sentence in my notes!]. Harder to integrate into a whole. A RELIEF [like Valhalla used to be for us - no B.S.]. Pretty, uncompressed. Not at all focused on speaker. Good PRaT.

PRIME: Singer more human. Better presence. Less separation. This amount of congestion / compression / constipation is comforting because we are so used to it? More like a stereo system [than real]? Very enchanting.

PALLAS: Beyond separation - more like spreaderation - an evenness to the spread of soundstaging, of the management of the distance between notes. Uncompressed. Rightness. Less digital. PRaT. Happy. Natural. Wide natural soundstage. Lighter weight on the guitar than the other two.

We just put the Valhalla power cables on the equipment: Audio Note Ongaku integrated amp and DAC 4.1x Balanced DAC and CDTThree transport.

Still evaluating. The equipment was off for several hours, so our listening must continue… but, so far, on some tracks the performance was improved and on some, not. Pretty much like any top-notch power cord.

So far we’ve tried Shunyata and now Valhalla. Elrod is next, and then Acrolink.

But can’t help but think what Odin power cords are going to sound like. And how much they are going to cost… *whine*.

This testing of the Odin with different power cords, then different components, will be necessary, I think, to get a feel for the overall performance curve of the Odin.

But, as a sneak preview, it is my impression that the Odin interconnect is the bargain [I know, I’ve gone from $7K bargain Jorma Prime interconnect to $16K Odin interconnects… but…] For some reason interconnects, perhaps because they carry the most delicate part of the signal chain, seem to have the most impact.

And the Odin interconnect is in the spirit of Ultimate harmonic detail, perfection and cleanliness personified. The Odin speaker cable is all about ease, dynamics and the darkest blackest background you can imagine personified.

It is strange… people who did not like Valhalla are going to LOVE the Odin speaker cable, I think.

And everyone is going to love the interconnect.

I guess, in a nutshell, not much to complain about

It is hard to capture in a photo, but the Valhalla power cords, they, uh, don’t behave. They go this-a-way and that-a-way.

And with the white carpet and silver cables, it is actually kind of attractive to look at during the listening.

Kind of looks like a madman’s roller coaster

….

Hope everybody is setup for a nice Holiday!

At this time of year we get preoccupied with CES, what to take, how to get it there, what to ship and what to put in the car, will there be SNOW between us and Vegas, and how MUCH….

The Odin is still settling in on Kharma system. After such an intense burn-in process, it helps to just leave them in one place for a week or two.

We put the Emm Labs CDSA on the system with the ODIN, so we have CDSA -> Audio Note Ongaku. A little more detail, a little less warmth.

Detail fans are just going to go ga-ga over the Odin, especially the interconnect. There is so much more on the CD and LP than I ever had imagined - and I thought we had pretty high resolution here before …

And, as you can quite imagine, looking at Nordost’s line of cables as it extends up through Valhalla - the ODIN has w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l tone.

The Jorma Prime might have more emotion (though we haven’t done the shootout yet) but the musicality and tone on the Odin is way, Waaaay out there - very close to the real thing - recorded electric guitars really invoke the sound of my old electric guitar and amp [over and over again, it is not like it sounded like this once, on one CD, but many times, many CDs, springing out at me when I was just listening casually], significantly unlike anything I have heard.

Kind of duplicating the whole process that we took with the UN-broken in Odin, 1st one interconnect, then the speakers cable, then as a digital cable, for a 100% ODIN solution.

Immediate impressions similar to the first time:

Louder
Bigger
More dynamic
More balanced
More resolution

New things I noticed:

Really engrossing. After checking the imaging and soundstaging out [It is awesomely clear and stable. Apparently, the better the cables, the less awkward the positioning is, positioning being just being a way to use a room to compensate for problematic system components and cables. Goes against established truths, I know, but…] I got bored and just listened and spaced out - but was drawn back to the performance.

The gestalt was very much that this was a ‘Performance… For… Me’. Or perhaps a ‘Creation’ for me [being that Radiohead KidA was one of the CDs, that being much more of a creation than a performance, and Neli having lost my *2nd* copy of Radiohead Amnesiac. Well, if I can’t find it, it is by definition LOST. ].

Even on classical music, the variations on a theme were almost playful, the clarity of purpose of the composer revealed in a way that did not require intellectual participation - or less so anyway. Just like our systems bring us to greater depths of enjoyment and appreciation compared to a decent car stereo, so do these cables.

OK, trying to stay away from the generalizations here. My text is and should always be too terse to be classified as hyperbole, hopefully, but as a hifi system’s clarity [separation, correct note formation blah blah blah] brings us more enjoyment than a system, like my car stereo, that has good tone, modest separation, and is enjoyable [as one can indeed determine and enjoy the melody is that is playing], so a system with really quality components, properly cabled, can give us an equally improved experience compared to that system with more modest cables.

It is THAT big of a difference.

It is THAT addicting.

I, personally, have only felt this way a few times before. Well, only once, when I met the Audio Note U.K. Kegons for the first time [the Coltrane Supremes speakers made us hallucinate, kind of scary, and anyway, hallucinogenics aren’t addicting - and the Triolons were kind of just much better Campaniles - and the original Cogent horns… well, that is too close to call but they certainly had their problems].

The Coltrane Supremes are like food and water. Not much choice if we want to have competent sound reproduction as part of our lives. But, when it comes to the choices we get to make….

I will NOT live without my Kegons (or Ongaku. or Gaku On. But you get what I mean).

And I will NOT live without my [sorry Neli, OUR ] Odin cables.

You know, it might be a good thing that most high-end audio dealers suck. Otherwise, in Central Park, people’d get mugged by people wanting money not to buy drugs, but buy $16K interconnects. And $57K amps. And 3-box line-stages….

The Vidar has little lights, four of them, that light up after each stage has been completed, from left to right. Three are lit up at the present time, as seen in the photos.. Each pass takes about a day to complete.

There are another set of LEDs for the speaker cable section. Here we see them without a flash and in full, albeit somewhat blurry, color.

I’m glad we spent a few days listening to the ODIN cables before we put them on the burner. Otherwise, I’d never have the patience to sit through these last eight days.

Interesting to see how much difference their is to the sound of the cables.

Every time I hear the systems without them, I think about how it would sound with them. Especially when we have people up here who really emphasize soundstaging.

We don’t, ourselves, and we have been moving things around and testing various amps / preamps, digital on the Coltrane Supremes and Kharmas, etc. And, of course, different equipment is going to want the speakers to be in different positions (optimally).

But we have been focusing on overall musicality and not precise soundstaging and imaging. This is where people have it a lot easier in their own homes, where they do not change out equipment every day or so. Then again, they never get to optimize the sound of their system like this either - just their soundstaging.

Anyway, Nordost Odin DOES soundstaging unlike anything else - and this would be a great way for us, as a dealer, to get darn good soundstaging without having to spend the time to reposition the speakers after every little change to a system. [And, truth to tell, this changing equipment around, seeing what different combos sound like gets old after awhile. Not just because equipment is HEAVY, but they all treat ground differently *hummmmmmm*, with different gains and different power cording requirements… its a lot of work].

One more day… what to do…. maybe we should put the Audio Note Kegons on in place of the Edge upstairs on the Supremes….?

The Nordost Vidar cable burner arrived back yesterday from its repair after the lighting strike.

So just some photos. We got about 8 days of burning in to do.

We did manage to get the two sets of interconnects and the one pair of bi-wire speaker cables on at one time.

The lights go blinky blinky as the Vidar works.

Are they done yet? Are they done yet?

… if 4 days of burning in equals one century of playing, then 3.75 hours of burn-in equals…. well they must be burned in pretty good already, right? Right???

A few notes…

First, the bass on the Kharma Mini Exquisite speakers is much improved with the Odin, especially with music that has a lot of bass at frequencies that the speaker is tuned for, i.e. around the port frequency. But, as we all know, the bass between the port frequency and about 35 Hz, say is not as strong and will never be as strong as that of a larger speaker.

Second, there is some relationship between dynamic compression and (multi-dimensional: frequency, imaging, dynamics, etc.) congestion. These cables, removing these, makes one wonder how they got there in the first place. One possibility is that, because problems often can be heard even on very well recorded, yet not very complex music, near or at loud notes, that it is the red-lining during the recording processes, maxing out the dynamics of the media, that most cables find hard to deal with. They can’t disambiguate the signal very well at all when there is not a lot of dynamic headroom - but that the Odin, being more sensitive, and consistent, can.

We put the Odin on as a digital cable between the transport and DAC. It did indeed improve the sound in the same character as when we inserted it between the DAC and integrated - but not to the same degree. But don’t take this as the final word on where that all important first / best cable should be inserted into a system. Although it makes sense that having more cable that the signal goes through the more of the character of that cable the sound will have, the opposite makes sense too - that the smaller signal needs the most help. Anyway, there is some interaction between the Valhalla and Audio Note SOOTTO (much more musical) as compared to the ODIN and SOOTTO (much more competent), that throws the test results askew.

The system was then outfitted with 100% ODIN. Very intense, and quite enjoyable, and they only have a few hours on them now.

Speaking of competent, Neli came up with it first, but these cables are the first really competent cables, like the Coltrane Supremes being the first, real competent speakers. They just do the job - plain and simple, but unlike anything that came before them, nothing else has been able to just do the darned job of carrying a signal without mucking with it.

And once you hear them, once you try them in a decent system that you are familiar with, you are… ruined.

Next, putting a cable or two in the Marten Coltrane Supreme system.