[vintage_tube]

A brief review:

My current rig is all Wireworld Platinum Electra/Eclipse. They are by far the best cables I have had the pleasure of owning. Great build quality, excellent bass, soundstage, dynamics, and mids and vocals to die for -- so clear and crisp (& not bright in any way).

Having said that of the WW's though, the left devil and right angel on each shoulder kept arguing with each other every day after the Raidho C3.1's arrived. You see, the Raidhos are wired internally with Nordost Odin cabling. How would the addition of their SC's accentuate the speakers as fed from the MC2301's. That was a good question & not one of the 3 of us knew the answer.

So, after speaking with my dealer, he arranged for Nordost to send me Odin PC's and a 4M pair of Odin SC's for a week. I wasn't expecting the PC's, but caved in and asked for 3 -- one for each amp at first, then afterwards amps and pre. After a few days, move them off the amps and onto the dCS DAC and Transport, leaving the one on the preamp. At this stage, the SC's sat in their nice box.

Let me say first & foremost. Odins are luxuriously expensive. Crazy money to put it mildly & if you won at monopoly, with the proceeds, if real, you could probably afford what my rig requires. At $15K for a single 2.5M PC and $29K for 2.5M SC’s, these cables will do more than melt a credit card and you’re one brave individual to mention their cost to anyone.

The power cords are pretty and are heavy. Constructed of seven 15-AWG conductors of the same design and FEP jacket. Connectors are carbon fiber Furutech with rhodium-plated contacts. The Odin power cord is the first Nordost cable that is shielded. They are quite stiff & an real pain to wrestle & twist the AC plug around in the event it doesn’t happen to line up at the socket.

The SC’s are are ribbons. Twenty-four 20-AWG seven-nines copper conductors, each plated with 85 microns of silver and wrapped with a helical "dual mono-filament" of fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP). A jacket of FEP is extruded over the array of conductors, and the result of using the monofilament spacer is that the dielectric surrounding the actual conductors is almost entirely air. The extrusion process requires tremendous precision in order to get the spacing of FEP to the precise level of microns demanded by the design brief. Terminators are triple-rhodium-plated Furutech spade connectors or optional Nordost Z plugs.

So, on the amps the PC's went and after a day or so, no gigantic improvement but there was improved resolution immediately. I continued listening over that time & noted bass was deeper and width of the soundstage improved, only slightly though. An upgrade never the less (and expensive one too).

Okay, onto the preamp with the 3d cable. Now we are talking. With the PC's on the amps and preamp, the end of day conclusion was more enthusiastic with more body and again an improvement on definition. Every note played was more realistic and prompt. Soundstage improved and there was a beginning of refinement in distinguishing & imagining instrument placement on the stage.

Now, at this point, wished there were more PC's available to attached to the other components.

The next step was to remove the PC's off the amps and move each to the dCS DAC and Transport with the PC remaining on the VAC Signature MK IIa preamp. With time getting short, I jumped and grabbed the SC's and on the MC2301's & Raidho C3.1's they went.

What I experienced was short of unbelievable. There was very noticeable and much deeper bass. It’s like I had bass tone controls and bumped it a few notches. There was more body to voices and the Raidho C3.1’s sensed to have a higher extension and definite increase in dynamics. I'll try and explain with two examples that I believe will give you some sense to these cables.

In this demo, I happened to play a particular track throughout the previous days. In it there is a very deep bass violin note every 8 or so seconds. As the musician strums the cord, there is 8-10 seconds before he strikes the cord again. As the first note is heard, sitting in the sweet spot, there is a sense of a big audio wave coming at you from each note and as it decays, I got the sense of the note wrapping around your back & moving you towards the stage. The next note comes, again, a wavy air mass coming directly at you and as the sound expires, it sucks you back towards its origination. One of the weirdest audio experiences I have ever experienced. Cool Beans. I enjoyed it and wanted more, but time was running short.

The second instance though proves it in spades. There is an instance where a finger slide is being used and as the musician plays, it moves very fast across the strings & a significant screech is heard. Plain as a sunny day in Florida.

When I returned the rig to WW’s with the Nordost Odins Supreme Reference packed up for shipment, I had most of the morning to play with the system as it was prior to Odins arrival.

After several hours, I sat down and listened to that song over and over again. The bass violin wave and the resulting decay with the WW Platinum Electra/Eclipse was there, but nowhere near as realistic and definitely not as pronounced.

Okay, not a fair fight as one would say & I'll be the first to agree wholeheartedly. But,

What about the musician and his slide? I played the song the first time and missed it -- it was so faint, I didn't even hear it. I was in disbelief as I knew where it was supposed to be in the song. I listened thru the song and hit repeat. I know where it comes on -- about 2:43 into the song. This time, I'm staring at the elapsed time on the dCS Transport. Ah, there it is – very weak and so much so you had to give attention to hearing it. Nothing like with the Odins that is for sure. With them it was so obvious and had so much gutsiness and speed is ridiculous.

So there, I was very much impressed with the 3 PC's and SC's and if I was fortunate, I'd have 3 PC's placed on those 3 components and a pair of their SC's. It has been said & worthy to note for those able to afford these cables, it was readily apparent, the more Nordost Odin Supreme Reference cables in a system, the more it offered in total.

I appreciate my dealer and Nordost for the opportunity to try these marvelous cables. The 10 years of development Nordost spent on Odins will eventually, like all their products and like the industry itself, eventually trickle down to something affordable.

Happy Holidays Folks,

Bob