As you all know, our industry had to cancel its trade shows this Spring, but that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t go to AXPONA! On Friday April 17th, the day AXPONA would have been held, Nordost took part in the AXPONA Livestream. We were represented by Nordost product trainer and International Sales Manager, Bjorn Bengtsson, who spoke to our good friend and dealer, Bes Nievero at Music Direct. If you missed Bjorn’s interview, you can still see (and share!) it on Facebook, but in case you would rather read your information, here is what we talked about during the Livestream!
Q: What is the state of things with Nordost given the Corona virus?
A: All Nordost retailers are well stocked with Nordost products! We prepared early for some sort of disturbance due to the coronavirus, and since all of our products are made in America, we were able to stock-up all of our retailers before things got serious. We can’t wait for things to get back to normal, but until then, we’re just happy we can still make people’s lives at home a little more bearable by making their hifi systems sound the best they can.
Q: Many people are using standard interconnects from their turntable to their phono amps. Why is it important to use a dedicated tonearm cable?
A: The task of a dedicated tonearm cable is different from that of a standard interconnect. That mostly has to do with the nature of signals that it transmits. The signal coming from a tonearm cartridge is incredibly small, delicate, and needs a massive amount of amplification—from 100x to as high as 1000x (MM to low output MC). It is very important that this signal being amplified is protected from both internal and external interferences. That kind of protection requires a dedicated cable design.
Q: How does the new Tonearm Cable + differ from the previous models that Nordost made?
A: Nordost’s tonearm cables have always aimed to protect the delicate signals being transmitted from the cartridge to the phono amp, but now we have expanded our way of doing that to make it even more effective. In the new Tonearm Cable + design, you still get Nordost’s patented technology, combined with solid core silver-plated conductors, and the high bandwidth and low capacitance that is always associated with Nordost, but now they are constructed using twisted-pair conductors making up left and right channels, which are then individually shielded. That way there is no inter-channel interference, and they are also protected from external interferences.
Q: Why is a group of smaller gauge wire better sounding than a larger core conductor?
A: Actually, a group of smaller gauge wire doesn’t sound better than a larger core conductor. You have a lot of strand interactions with a multi-stranded cable, which is why we choose to use solid core conductors.