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Nordost Blue Heaven Headphone Cables

Audiophile

Showing 1 of 32 conversations about:

Nordost Blue Heaven Headphone Cables

ProfessorPat

380

Feb 28, 2018

Nordost? Really? We already have Cardas' crap here, why do we need another overpriced cable company's spin heavy marketing polluting things? At least we get to hear something other than "quad-eutectic" and "golden ratio" now...
I've heard things through Audioquest (at least they make some things that aren't all nonsense) cables and Cardas cables of varying "quality" levels. Not sure I've actually heard Nordost firsthand, but I'm already at a confirmed 2/2 for underwhelming results for the price asked. Not a good start on the high end cable front.
None of it was anything particularly special. The gear it was connected to was simply good enough that you could claim the cables were a big part of the sound and some people might believe you. I will not claim that there are zero differences between cables. My stance is that cables make a difference, but often a very subtle difference, and none of these differences justify the costs of replacing a cable with an identical length and termination combo from most of these companies. I want to replace my HD6XX and M1060 cables, but only because they're 1/8" plugs on short cables, not because there's magic to be had by paying more than I did for the headphones themselves.
If cables were such a magical and dramatic improvement, we wouldn't be seeing all of the praise we do for new headphones. A HD650 with a $6-700 cable would still manage to sit above the pile of crap Audeze just sold you for $4000 with those awful stock cables. All of these reviews would be relative to an older model with the "mandatory mod" of a new cable if this were really the case. Given that it's not, we're back to my assertion. The changes are fairly minor. How much is that tiny improvement worth to you? Would you not rather just fund better gear at these prices? Sure, $3-400 on those $4000 LCD4s isn't as ridiculous as $400 on a $200 headphone, but $400 will buy you a decent chunk of new music if nothing else, which... you know, is the thing you bought them for in the first place.

dashdsrdash

Mar 1, 2018

ProfessorPatIf new cables make an audible difference in your listening experience, there is something wrong with one or both sets of cables that you are using.

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SGva

Mar 3, 2018

ProfessorPatDon’t fret, if you don’t think you are discriminating enough, don’t spend the money. Don’t want to try something your ears will approve of? Then hold on to you cash. These cables will pretty dramatically improve the performance of your headphones but if you aren’t willing to investigate this or even accept the possibility of this, then pass. It’s okay.

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ProfessorPat

380

Mar 3, 2018

SGvaI’ve heard highly praised cables in loudspeaker systems. The changes are minute. Not nonexistent, I can hear changes in speakers, but not enough to justify a multi thousand dollar wire over a hundred dollars or so.
I haven’t managed to hear anything as dramatic in any level of cable so far when doing similar tests in headphones. It’s a shorter run, a higher impedance driver, and a lot less power. All of these things make any changes a lot more subtle, if not completely inaudible, depending on the setup.
Couple that with the prices being absolutely ridiculous relative to the price of the actual headphones, and any justification I could have potentially had for experimenting with overpriced cables from brands that bank on buzzwords and flowery stories to push their product is gone.
Without even hearing this specific cable, I can assure you I would not find the change dramatic. I never have, with any cable, unless the one being replaced was actual junk.
I’ll stick to my more than affordable, 99% as good or better cheapo wires in various cables. Music isn’t cheap. I’m not wasting that kind of money on a 0.25% improvement to be perfect when I could be hearing new things with my 99.75% as good as they can be headphones, and still saving money.

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Uzuzu

1431

Mar 4, 2018

ProfessorPatcables make zero difference, unless they're 20,000 ohms resistance and corroded from the inside-out, lol. Any decent quality cable copper or silver, sound identical. Only place where a cable might sound better is when you get some cables made from sketchy grade metal in china, and it's greatening the resistance factor, and even then most cheap, 15 dollar chinese cables are of enough quality they'll sound identical to these cables being peddled, 100 percent.

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ProfessorPat

380

Mar 4, 2018

UzuzuWhat’s the justification for the much more expensive silver wire then? Better yet, why aren’t we using aluminum wire in most things? If making a connection were actually all that mattered, we could use terrible conductors in most things given how ridiculously large these paths are relative to the signal being passed through them. I can shove a stainless steel butter knife between two terminals and get an output that isn’t plagued by resistance issues at the lower levels half of this stuff uses.
That’s also assuming conductivity is the only thing that affects signal transfer, which is not true in any capacity. You run into a lot more changes than resistance per meter specs when changing your connection.
It’s also not going to be 100% identical. It may be hundreds of thousandths of a percent different, but any change in any parameter that affects signal transmission is instantly going to deviate from 100% identical transfer. Two wires made to the same spec aren’t identical. Any deviation is potentially audible. Any potential case for audibility renders these assertions that there is zero change pointless.
Negligible, minute, trace, etc. All of these words could be used to describe the changes in most swaps. I consistently argue that the changes are almost never worth your money, but none of those words mean zero, true zero, where the counterpoint has no case. If you want to claim there’s no benefit, then do that, but don’t make assertions that are actually wrong. Zero and 100% are very absolute things, and using either in this argument is an oversimplification that just ruins your case.
But all of that is assuming anyone cares to actually debate it logically, with that level of absolution being important, rather than insist that their ways are correct and anything to the contrary is wrong. And we’re on the internet, so that assumption is pretty stupid I suppose.

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Uzuzu

1431

Mar 5, 2018

ProfessorPatOk, mr literal. Good to see the Sith is still going strong with their absolutes. That's picking at straws. None of that is audible and if it were it would be less than the variation between your drivers or between different headphones of the same model, which often sound identical. You can nitpick me for claiming .000001 and .000002 are "the same" because to the human ear, the differences that exist at these levels are inaudible. They will not change your perception of the sound when compared to another. I'm pretty sure we all know there are trace differences in audio cables of the same make (BAHAHAHA), your argument makes so sense. I'm not talking about using anything other than copper/silver, but they sound the same, silver costs more because it's a more expensive metal and because it's labelled as premium (snakeoil). I'm not going to call you stupid like you did me, but......

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ProfessorPat

380

Mar 5, 2018

UzuzuI mention absolutes in an attempt to defend my personal experience in hearing audible shifts in some cable swaps. Nothing consistent nor dramatic, yet audible nonetheless. The numbers on those changes are probably negligible, but certainly not zero, which is the point of it all. Being non-zero, how can you so definitively say that there is no change to be had in any cable swap? That is the entirety of my argument. It’s not zero change, and nothing is 100% identical, so changing things shouldn’t instantly be declared this completely fruitless pursuit 100% of the time.
And I called myself stupid for expecting anyone to take absolutes as such, but I guess I should expect that to be taken as an insult. I never said you were stupid. The lols, the bahahas, the little jokes, they all convey this feeling of superiority I find annoying, which is why most of my comments are dry and probably end up sounding more condescending without all the little additions, but I still don’t think you’re stupid here. You’re agreeing with me as to the significance of most changes, while completely disagreeing with me on my main point regarding any potential change, which is more than I can say for most conversations I’ve come across.

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Uzuzu

1431

Mar 5, 2018

ProfessorPatI said there's no change of cable swap in cables of decent quality, which is my own personal experience. I have heard differences in cable, but ONLY from cheap Chinese cables. When using the proper wire there'll be no discernible difference between that 40 dollar and 1000 dollar cable. But cheap Chinese cables shouldn't even even be a thing.

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Urano_Metria

658

Apr 29, 2018

ProfessorPatI'd put money down on a bet (not an insignificant amount either) that you couldn't hear the difference between your own cables in a double-blind test.

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SGva

Jun 24, 2018

Urano_MetriaWhat we have here are tin ears. Non-discriminating ones at that. So, you two aren’t ”critical” listeners; and that’s okay, I listen to the music and can appreciate any improvements but I don’t obsess over them either. I’m in for musical enjoyment and better quality cables heighten that experience for me. If not for you, that’s okay too. It’s not imagination, it’s for real. I, too, was once a non-believer until I actively evaluated step up cables over 30 years ago. Catch up if you dare (and believe in your own ears).

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Urano_Metria

658

Jun 24, 2018

SGvaThat's probably the most pretentious and offensive comment I've read regarding audio in a long time. Your definition of "tin ears" is fundamentally wrong here on top of that.
tin ear (noun) 1. an insensitivity to melodic, rhythmic, and harmonic variety in music 2. an insensitivity to subtlety or appropriateness in verbal expression
Having tin ears has absolutely nothing to do with the preservation of the 1's and 0's in your audio signal, nor about the bitrate. It's about the creative quality of music itself and subtleties in human speech. Someone who is autistic might be said to have tin ears to interaction. Someone who can't tell the difference between an audio signal that is 99.999% accurate and one that is 99.995% accurate does not have tin ears.

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SGva

Jun 24, 2018

Urano_MetriaYou’re hopeless! One’s and zero’s. Really, is that the best you can come up with. What about jitter, impedance inconsistencies and on and on? And let’s talk inductance, capacitance and resistance in cables. And how about skin effect and, bleed through of the signal into the dielectric? You really think it is just 1’s and 0’s? That’s pathetic and you deserve ridicule whether you find it pretentious or offensive. Yes, tin ears due to insensitivity to subtlety, melodic differences, etc. Sorry if you are insulted. The truth hurts sometimes.

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Urano_Metria

658

Jun 25, 2018

SGvaUnfortunately, you're fundamentally incorrect. Obviously just arguing antagonistically for the sake of enjoyment. I would expect nothing less from a pretentious audiophool who believes they are better than everyone else and dedicates their life to gatekeeping the audio world. I hear about people like you not only in the audiophile world, but the "elites" in other hobbies as well.
You didn't critically read my last comment at all. You took it completely at face value and used it only as ammunition to further insult me. Unfortunately for you here as well, I've been on the internet for decades and I won't waste my time on that kind of dead end. If you reply to this comment, I won't reply. I won't even read it.
I'll leave you with this. If you had used even an ounce of reading comprehension you would have been able to realize my mention of "1's and 0's" was only part of it. The part to describe that there are differences between the quality of an audio/sound signal, and the quality of the content, the music, that is contained in that signal. Tin ears refers to the content of the signal, not the quality of the signal itself. Only holier than thou audiophile gatekeepers use it the way you did.
Enjoy your bitter life, just don't expect us peasants to stand beneath you to prop up your industry. Luckily and thankfully, the new generation of audiophiles understands that there are substantial quality differences between a $100 beginner headphone amp and a really great quality one in the $400-500 range, but the difference between a $500 amp and a $5,000 amp leaves at least $3,000 left over that went to pure snake oil.