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In Reply to: Re: The review you quoted is for the interconnect cables... posted by Patrick82 on September 28, 2005 at 08:25:00:
The basic structure is what Nordost calls "mono micro filament". The speaker cable is a flat ribbon while the IC seems to be a "rolled" version of the ribbon, from the little info available.
Anytime you change geometry you would see some change in electrical behaviour. Also, speaker cables are used in a different electrical environment than interconnects. Similarities may still exist if the both cables were "voiced" to resemble each other.
As you may well know, there is no standard in high-end systems. Stellar performance in a particular system may be a feature of that one system and the same cables may not perform as well in other systems.
You further complicate the issue when you bring up a headphome application. Most headphones are not 8 ohms and they present a different electrical load than a typical single-driver or two-way speaker. Seems to me that the only way to tell how the Nordost cables would perform in such an environment is to actually install them and listen.
Another issue you should consider in headphone applications is shielding. With speakers, the cable are routed "out of the way" and are not moved around. That is not the case with headphones and you may find that shielding is required. The flat Nordost cables do not offer shielding, which might be a concern for this particular application.
Wow, a lot of "concerns"... If you have the cables already - just give them a try. You just never know!
Follow Ups:
Okay, so using interconnects instead of speaker cables is better because they have shielding?
I live next to radio broadcast towers so would that be a problem with speaker cables? Has anyone tried to use interconnects for their speakers?
Since I understand (from another post) that you have the Nordost ICs, you could make a quick adaptor and see for yourself if it sounds any good. If so, then you can "commit" a cable to this application by re-terminating it. The ICs will be a lot more user-friendly compared to the wide-ribbon speaker cables.
It is not uncommon to use small gauge cables for speaker wires at low power levels and high load impedance. In some cases this might be even preferable.
I don't have a spare Nordost Valhalla interconnect to try with, the only one I have is 50 cm long (between CD player and amp).
I guess you'll need two meters and that's no pocket change - for an experiment.
Now that I'm thinking more about it, the speaker cables may not work at all for headphones. They are practically straight wires in a ribbon arrangement. Driving two speakers, they go in opposite direction, so crosstalk is not an issue. With headphones, the two cables will be very close to each other, and they were not designed for that.
Interconnects are designed and tested to reside in close proximity, so they're less likely to have crosstalk issues.
But all that is only a guess and the ICs may not work well in this application. That would be a very expensive experiment... As I said, a tough call!
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