I should add that I continued to prefer the Audio Note AN-Vx interconnect as a source to preamp cord-the only application to which the 1.5m pair I own can be reasonably put, in any event. Suffice it to say that I was completely satisfied. I'm sadly unqualified to comment on the cable's image-location performance, afflicted as I am with a seemingly incurable case of don't-give-a-shit-itis when it comes to that and other effects that some hobbyists obsess over so. With recording after recording it did seemingly everything well, with a conspicuously wide frequency range and apparent freedom from colorations of any sort. Only with the Valhalla speaker cables in place could I hear precisely what the horns and the back-row percussionists were doing in recordings such as a typically fine Speakers Corner reissue of Ruggiero Ricci performing Saint-Saëns' Havanaise, Op.83, and Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, Op.28 (LP, Decca/Speakers Corner SXL 2197).īeyond that and the addition of a bit of artificial texture-itself the most obvious and audible difference, I thought-the less expensive cable was a close second, and was downright brilliant in its own right. That said, and knowing that I'm paid to do more than just have a nice time, it's my duty to say that there was an audible difference between the Valhalla and Heimdall speaker cables in the way that my system let me, er, hear into, um, things. I actively dislike such things as trying to "hear into the stage" real though those sonic effects may be, they usually distract my attention from the meaning of the music, which is what I'd much rather focus on. Until now, the Valhallas had been supreme in that sense.ĭifferences between the speaker cables struck me as more distinct: Going from the Heimdalls to the Valhallas was like turning the Music knob clockwise: The Heimdalls gave me a lot, the Valhallas even more. That was true with both of the Nordost Micro Mono-Filament cable lines-well beyond everything else I have in-house.īut of all the areas in which the performance of the long Heimdall interconnects matched that of the long Valhallas, perhaps the most pleasing was the fact that, with these budget cables in place, my system's sense of presence wasn't diminished one whit. After weeks of switching back and forth between the 6m Valhalla interconnect and the 6m Heimdall, I'm still not sure I can reliably hear more than the most ephemeral difference, if any, between them.Īn example: On a brilliant new Cisco Music LP of the Heifetz-Piatigorsky recording of the Brahms Double Concerto, Op.102 (LDS-2513, footnote 3), Piatigorsky's "Batta" Stradivari cello was right there in virtually every sense of realism: spatial, timbral, and textural, as well as sheer size and scale. The Heimdall system was natural, easy, and wide open.Īs to individual cable applications, my experience told me that the Heimdall interconnect, in generous lengths and used between preamp and power amps, is the family's biggest bargain. With the Heimdalls, my music system breathed naturally: There were no constrictions, no sense of the music being squeezed out, strained out, or shot out at me. The Heimdalls were as uncolored, as tonally neutral, as any other wires I've heard, and did nothing to detract from the qualities I prize in the components I've bought over the years. To begin with the latter, the Heimdall cable system was beautifully listenable, and very much in keeping with the qualities that the Nordost Valhallas have led me to expect. Over the past several weeks I've listened to the new Nordost products in various combinations: sometimes just the speaker cables, with all my usual interconnects in place sometimes just one interconnect pair at a time, in combination with all the other usual cables and sometimes-in fact, most of the time-the whole Heimdall pantheon, all at once. The speaker cables reviewed were 2m Heimdalls, with spades on the source end to suit my Lamm monoblocks, and the excellent Nordost Z-Plugs (a number of which I bought years ago for installing on my other cables) at the loudspeaker end. I used 1m and 1.5m samples of the Heimdall interconnect for my source components. Thus, substituting an identical length of the Heimdall interconnect seemed a pretty fair review comparison, the only other difference being the upgrade to those fancy WBT phono plugs. Also during those three years, my main interconnect has been a borrowed 6m pair of Nordost Valhallas: the best-sounding long interconnect I've used.
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