This year Nordost has expanded its line of personal audio products to include a new, lower-cost alternative to the Heimdall 2 Headphone Cable: the Blue Heaven Headphone Cable. Upon hearing about this new addition to the after-market headphone line, Frank Iacone of HEADPHONE.GURU was excited to be one of the first reviewers to cover our newest product. Frank tried out the Blue Heaven Headphone Cable with several leaders in the headphone market, including the Sennheiser HD800, HiFiMan HE1000 and MrSpeakers Ether C, and he found the improvements to each pair of headphones transformative. 

 “Listening with the high quality Blue Heaven headphone cables removed the obstacles that are always present from lesser quality cables. The Blue Heaven delivers music without grain and lets each headphone perform at a higher level. The Blue Heaven offers non-compromised performance at a value price. If you want to see what your headphone is capable of producing you should check out the Blue Heaven cables. Highly Recommended.” –Frank Iacone

You can now read Frank’s full article, Nordost—Blue Heaven Headphone Cables—Terrific Value and Quality at an Affordable Price, on the review section of the Nordost website. 

This month, Dagogo.com highlighted a great review we received on our Sort Kones. In his article, Fred Crowder ran extensive listening tests using our AC, BC, and TC Kones on both a modest and reference system. The benefits that he experienced throughout our Sort Kone range were exponential, regardless of system cost. Going into this review already content with an alternative vibration control device, Fred was surprised to find a comparable, if not better solution, at a much lower price point in Nordost’s Sort Kones!

“Until now, the Finite Elemente Cerabases…have been for most purposes my favorite solution to the vibration problem; however, the Nordost Sort Kones provide a very substantial competition at a much lower price”

You can now read Fred’s full article, Nordost’s Sort Kones Review, on the review section of the Nordost website.

“The QBASE QB8 power distribution box along with the Tyr 2 power cords offered a staggering performance upgrade… They presented a clean, quiet foundation for the system, allowing each and every audio component to achieve its full potential.  The performance uplift was transformational, in some cases approaching what you would expect from upgrading some of the components.  Putting the Tyr 2 interconnects and speaker cables into play, further enriched the performance of the system, raising the performance bar of both my systems to the highest level I have yet experienced.”

Nordost is proud to share that our newest and most advanced cable range, Odin 2, was featured in the October issue of Hi-Fi+. In his much anticipated review, Alan Sircom shared his reactions as he finally introduced Odin 2 into his system. Needless to say, we were both pleased with the results.

In short, Nordost’s Odin 2 Cable doesn’t just push the envelope of how unforced audio can sound through a cable; it breaks the sound barrier. Nordost’s original Odin set high standards for cables, whether viewed individually, or in ideal circumstances taken as a complete system. And Odin 2 takes that to another level. The best that became ‘one of the best’ has just returned to its place at the head of the table. Wow!

— Alan Sircom, Hi-Fi+

You can now read Alan’s full article, Nordost Odin 2 Cable System, in the review section of the Nordost website.

In his article, Nordost QRT System Review, Fred Crowder shared his most recent experience working with QRT products with the readers of dagogo.com. There you will find Fred’s account of integrating a full array of QRT Power Products in two separate home sound systems. Fred does a wonderful job of going through the process of adding QRT to a system from beginning to end— from identifying the problem, to explaining the solution, to the order in which you should introduce our modular line of power products. After every step Fred becomes more taken with our QRT devices.

“…The sound was addictive. The overtones of metal instruments were easier to distinguish. The sound of plucked strings was particularly well delineated.”

You can now read Fred’s full article, Nordost QRT System Review, in the review section of the Nordost website.

The Nordost Heimdall 2 Headphone Cable has been making a tremendous impact in the personal audio world since it was first introduced in 2014. Reviewers, manufacturers and hifi thought-leaders have been very candid about their impressions of this transformative aftermarket headphone cable. Simply put, it is an outstanding upgrade.

In the past month, Nordost’s Heimdall 2 Headphone Cable has been featured in two fantastic reviews. The first review, authored by CNET’s Steve Guttenberg, was intended to focus on the Red Dawn Speaker Cable (which he was also taken with). However, when he auditioned Nordost’s headphone cable, he had to expand his original review! The second review, written by Danny Kaey, was a recent highlight in Positive Feedback. In his article, Danny details the dramatic improvements he experienced while using our Heimdall 2 Headphone cable with his Audeze LCD-X cans.

“…the Heimdall 2 worked their magic on the sound. The sound was less bright, more full-bodied and natural. I feel like I’m just now hearing the HE6 for the first time.”

                                                                        —Steve Guttenberg, CNET

“…upgrading to Heimdall 2 is nearly a revelation in heightened awareness…It’s not merely better resolved—attack, sustain, decay—it simply carries far more weight and heft making the entire presentation that much more impactful.”

                                                                       —Danny Kaey, Positive Feedback

Read the full reviews here!

AUDITIONING NORDOST CABLES: DO SPEAKER CABLES HAVE A ‘SOUND’? – Steve Guttenberg

NORDOST HEIMDALL HEADPHONE CABLE – Danny Kaey

As easy as it is to get swept away by new and exciting ranges and technologies, it’s important to remember all of the other amazing Nordost products that are still leaving major impressions on reviewers and consumers years after their releases! Valhalla 2 Cables have been in the spotlight since they were launched in 2013 and that doesn’t seem to be changing any time soon.

The most recent V2 review can be found in the July/August issue of The Absolute Sound. In his article entitled “Nordost Valhalla 2 Reference Interconnect, Speaker Cable, and Power Cable: Fast, Quiet, Clear”, Jacob Heilbrunn did a fantastic job describing the auditory enhancements gained through incorporating Valhalla 2 into a hifi audio system. Heilbrunn writes:

…the outcome of using the Valhalla 2 is truly prodigious. Everything instantly improved as a result of this dynamically unconstrained cable. It was easy to detect that the Valhalla lowered the noise floor, and that the bass notes became more defined and stygian… In other words, the bennies were evident across the sonic spectrum, in ways both large and small.  

To read Jacob’s Valhalla 2 Review in its entirety CLICK HERE or visit the review section on the Nordost website.

In addition to producing stellar American-made hifi audio cables, Nordost also produces an acclaimed range of Resonance Control Devices.  Nordost’s Sort System includes the Sort Füt and four varieties of Sort Kones. Unlike isolation “points”, these mechanically tuned resonance control devices not only prevent external vibrations from impacting the sound quality of your audio components, but act as a mechanical diodes, allowing a one-way exit point for the vibrations being generated by the components themselves. For more on the difference between resonance control and isolation devices CLICK HERE

Nordost has always done a spectacular job demonstrating the efficacy of these devices on components, speakers, audio racks and even power products at trade shows and industry events and over the years reviewers and industry leaders have taken notice of these Sort Kone and Füt Units. The December issue of The Absolute Sound recently published an article entitled “New Methods for Quantifying Sonic Performance”. In Part two of the article, “How to Use Subjective and Objective Methods to Quantify System Performance”, authors Charles Zellig and Jay Clawson made a comparison of several cones and were quite taken with the Sort Kone. When describing the effects of the Nordost Titanium/Ceramic Sort Kone they wrote:

An emotional threshold was crossed with involuntary toe-tapping and singing along with the music, greater clarity, vocal articulation, harmonic detail and overtone structure, ambiance retrieval, stage width, and focus of soloist, choir, instruments consistent over 7 different high resolution recordings…

You can now read the section “Cones, Cones and More Cones—Mechanical Decoupling and Vibration Control” on the Nordost Reviews page here:

New Methods for Quantifying Sonic Performance

Throughout this past year Nordost has been highly recognized by industry leaders and journalists with a slew of fabulous reviews. But the recognition did stop at articles. In 2014 Nordost’s products, ranging from Leif to Norse 2 to Reference, have also received awards. The Blue Heaven USB 2.0 was awarded hi-finews Outstanding Product and our Heimdall 2 loom received the CANDA HiFi Editor’s Choice. Now we can add one more to our collection!

This past week the 11^th Annual Positive Feedback Writer’s Choice Awards for 2014 were released, and Nordost was once again acknowledged. For Guido Corona the Valhalla 2 cables were an easy choice for the PF Writer’s Choice Award.

“The wires achieve the goals of my quest for that all too often elusive beauty—a supremely refined musical neutrality, where solid images are anchored on a vast stage; where vocal parameters enhance the magic of reality, but never distort it by the incongruous; where a graceful treble extends upwards into apparent infinity without a trace of intermodulative hardness; where a supremely textured midrange is the ultimate window on a magic performance: it is not wan, nor is it artificially warm; where the bass is endlessly deep and harmonically defined down to the lower 20Hz region.”

To read the full list of Positive Feedback Writers’ Choice Awards for 2014, including Valhalla 2, click HERE

We are pleased to share that the Nordost Heimdall 2 Range has been awarded the CANADA HiFi Magazine Editor’s Choice Award! In his article, featured this month in Canada HiFi, George de Sa’s article, “Upgrading an Audio System With Nordost Norse 2 Heimdall 2 Cables”, describes the transformation of his system as he integrates an entire loom of Heimdall 2 into his set-up. The result was apparent:

“[With Heimdall 2] intricacies of the soundstage and venue were laid bare in a most eloquent manner and I was drawn-in closer to re-living the live experience than I’ve ever experienced in my room before”

– George de Sa, CANADA HiFi

You can now see George’s Heimdall 2 Cable Review here:   

Upgrading an Audio System With Nordost Norse 2 Heimdall 2 Cables

(or on the Nordost website under Reviews)