Monthly Archives: December 2019

Hi-Fi+ Reviews the Purple Flare USB Cable

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When Michael Mercer from Hi-Fi+ reviewed Nordost’s Purple Flare USB Cable, he was so impressed that he nominated it for the Digital Audio Cable of the Year (an award that it won, of course!). While the Purple Flare USB Cable is Nordost’s entry-level USB cable, the only thing entry-level about it is its price-point.

“Transparency and coherence are the name of the game with Purple Flare USB. Hi-hats glisten and dissipate effortlessly into a black background. Drums are authoritative and lifelike. Vocals are realistically rendered in size and tonality. Transients race across the soundstage with precision and flare (pun intended). Purple Flare gives you top-tier performance at an incredibly affordable price.” – Michael Mercer, HiFi+

As the only USB cable in Nordost’s line-up to offer Standard A (2.0) or Standard B (2.0) to Mini B (2.0) or Micro B (2.0) termination options, they are the perfect solution for hifi audio enthusiasts trying to accommodate DACs that require micro-B and mini-B connectors!

Michael’s review is available to read here:  Nordost Purple Flare USB Cable

You can find more great Nordost reviews on our Reviews Page.

Dealer Spotlight: Audio Synthèse

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   By Dennis Bonotto

On the right bank of the river Seine, between the bohemian Le Marais and the large Bercy park, the Quinze-Vingts neighborhood in Paris has seen the Bastille fall and is to this day home to many great authentic French spots. It was here that Audio Synthèse settled a couple of decades ago to become the largest and most respected hifi shop in France.

Twice a year, at the beginning of the summer and at the beginning of winter, Audio Synthèse hosts a 3-day Nordost-exclusive event to an engaging audience.

Several sessions per day allow customers and hifi enthusiasts to check out for themselves both the new products and the fundamental concepts of putting together an audio system from the ground up. This year of course we focused on the new QSOURCE and QPOINT which were an immediate hit in France.

If you really needed any new reason to visit Paris, make sure to catch us next time at Audio Synthèse. Frédéric Vedel and the team will make sure you have a great time, and if you’re lucky you might even meet Michel Roger, our local distributor who seems to hang out there all the time and is an expert in the local delicatessen.

 

Audio Synthèse

8 Rue de Prague

75012 Paris

+33 01 43 07 07 01

https://www.audio-synthese.fr

 

 

Tonearm Cable + now available in Blue Heaven, Heimdall 2, Frey 2, and Tyr 2!

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The tonearm cable is the most critical and sensitive cable in any vinyl-sourced hifi system. The delicate signals generated by pick-up cartridges in these systems demand purpose-built, low-capacitance cables, in order to protect from signal loss and image smearing. However, to truly get the most from a tonearm cable, proper attention must be paid to grounding as well. Without proper grounding, the noise that could be picked up could render a system virtually unlistenable. To combat this, Nordost’s new Tonearm Cable + redesign optimizes every aspect of tonearm cable construction, from conductor layout and shielding to grounding capability, in order to ensure the fidelity of signal transfer and reveal subtle musical nuances, while completely eliminating noise from the signal chain. Nordost’s Blue Heaven, Heimdall 2, Frey 2, and Tyr 2 Tonearm Cable + provide the best analog connection for every system, no matter the price-point.

The design for Nordost’s new line of tonearm cables comes directly from the recent Valahalla 2 tonearm cable redesign. As with the V2 Tonearm Cable +, which was released in the summer of 2019, Nordost’s new tonearm cables are constructed using four, silver-plated, solid core OFC conductors, arranged in a twisted pair design. Using a twisted pair design on its own naturally helps to minimize noise. However, Nordost now goes the extra mile, separately wrapping the left and right channels with silver, braided shielding, in order to completely eliminate inter-channel cross-talk.

One signature trait that all Nordost cables share is extremely fast signal transfer speed. We achieve this, in part, by implementing our patented Mono-Filament technology. This technology is found in our new Tonearm Cable + designs, starting with the Heimdall 2 Tonearm Cable +. This requires each conductor to be intricately and uniformly wrapped in either a single “Micro” strand or two twisted “Dual” strands of FEP Mono-Filament, before being encased in an extruded layer of high-quality FEP. By using this technology, insulation contact with the conductors is reduced by 80% or 85%, respectively.

 

The most exciting feature found in all of Nordost’s new tonearm cables comes in the form of a new, comprehensive grounding solution. This two-part design is guaranteed to provide proper and complete grounding, offering a solution for every combination of components and connections found between all the different turntables and phono stages on the market. Part one is a completely isolated, silver-plated bond wire. This bond wire is wrapped in Micro Mono-Filament before being extruded in FEP insulation and separately shielded within the cable jacket. Part two consists of two, detachable, silver-plated ground whips, complete with Micro Mono-Filament technology, which are included with each cable. When needed, these ground whips connect to the cable’s shielding, totally eliminating any noise that could be introduced during signal transfer.


Each Tonearm Cable + is available with straight or 90० low-mass MoonGlo® 5-pin Din, RCA, or XLR terminations. All ground whips and bond wires are terminated with gold-plated 5mm spades. Like all Nordost cables, the Blue Heaven, Heimdall 2, Frey 2, and Tyr 2 Tonearm Cable + are handmade in the USA, ensuring a superior level of production quality and precision– all necessary requirements when manufacturing the most crucial signal cables in a sound system.


 

BLUE HEAVEN

Insulation: Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene (FEP)
Conductors: 4 x 28 AWG
Construction: 2 Twisted pairs individually shielded.
Material: Silver plated 99.9999% OFC Solid Core Conductors
Bond / Grounding Whips: 24 AWG silver-plated, stranded OFC, Micro Mono-Filament.
Termination: MoonGlo® Straight or 90० low-mass 5-pin Din, RCA, or XLR connectors. Whips and bond wire terminated with gold-plated 5mm spades.

HEIMDALL 2

Insulation: Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene (FEP)
Conductors: 4 x 28 AWG
Construction: 2 Twisted pairs individually shielded. Mechanically tuned lay and lengths. Micro Mono-Filament.
Material: Silver plated 99.99999% OFC Solid Core Conductors
Bond / Grounding Whips: 24 AWG silver-plated, stranded OFC, Micro Mono-Filament.
Termination: MoonGlo® Straight or 90० low-mass 5-pin Din, RCA, or XLR connectors. Whips and bond wire terminated with gold-plated 5mm spades.

FREY 2

Insulation: Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene (FEP)
Conductors: 4 x 26 AWG
Construction: 2 Twisted pairs individually shielded. Mechanically tuned lay and lengths. Dual Mono-Filament. Twisted pairs individually shielded.
Material: Silver plated 99.99999% OFC Solid Core Conductors
Bond / Grounding Whips: 24 AWG silver-plated, stranded OFC, Micro Mono-Filament.
Termination: MoonGlo® Straight or 90० low-mass 5-pin Din, RCA, or XLR connectors. Whips and bond wire terminated with gold-plated 5mm spades.

TYR 2

Insulation: Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene (FEP)
Conductors: 4 x 25 AWG
Construction: 2 Twisted pairs individually shielded. Mechanically tuned lay and lengths. Dual Mono-Filament.
Material: Silver plated 99.99999% OFC Solid Core Conductors
Bond / Grounding Whips: 24 AWG silver-plated, stranded OFC, Micro Mono-Filament.
Termination: MoonGlo® Straight or 90० low-mass 5-pin Din, RCA, or XLR connectors. Whips and bond wire terminated with gold-plated 5mm spades.

Nordost Playlist – December 2019

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Nordost is lucky to have a wonderful team of representatives and product trainers who travel around the world educating and demonstrating the effects of Nordost’s products. As part of these demonstrations, it is our job to find an interesting and diverse selection of music to showcase our cables, power devices, sort system and accessories. Whether at shows, visiting our dealers and distributors or even in our own listening room in our headquarters in Holliston, we are constantly getting asked what music we are playing (or if our audience is not so bold to ask, we can see their Shazams working overtime). So we thought this would be a perfect opportunity to share our favorite songs of the moment. Some may be classics, some may be brand new, some may not even be to your taste, but one thing is for sure …it’s all great music.

Here are some of the songs that we will have on rotation this December.

You can now listen to our monthly playlist here:  TIDAL  |  SPOTIFY  |  QOBUZ

  1. The Very Thought Of You-Live—Jon Batiste, Rachael Price—Anatomy Of Angels: Live At The Village Vanguard
  2. Oiseau Sauvage—Dom La Nena—Oiseau Sauvage
  3. everything i wanted—Billie Eilish—everything i wanted
  4. Riding For The Feeling—Bill Callahan—Apocalypse
  5. Stronger Magic—Leslie Odom Jr.—Mr
  6. Soul Sista—Bilal, Raphael Saadiq—Queen & Slim: The Soundtrack
  7. Time Machine—Alicia Keys—Time Machine
  8. Uneventful Days—Beck—Hyperspace
  9. Pantomima—Greg Dulli—Pantomima
  10. Play the Ponies—Jo Blankenburg—Clandestine