Nordost Frey 2; what should I expect?

Postscript

NORDOST does have dealer demo cables available (they have a green sleeve).

Your existing CARDAS cables are fine cables themselves, full stop.... you are not considering moving up from Home Depot POS quality level crap. What’s driving the possible change? A brief summary of your system components would help.
My experiences showed that a full FREY cable array (ICs and speaker cables) was the strong leader choice, when compared to an ad-hoc swap-in of just the ICs or the just speaker cables alone.

If you cannot arrange a personal take-them-home overnight audition with the demo cables, or even have an at-the-dealer personal audition, then I would heartily recommend a phone or email consult with a NORDOST dealer that carries both brands for his two cents worth.

FWIW, up here in Toronto, AUDIO EDEN carry both and will give you a fair and even-handed comparative opinion on the respective cables and hopefully answer your questions better.

Audioeden.com

The main thing you should notice about the Nordost is that they present the music in a very real way ...meaning that horns are not up in your face they are in the back where the drums are and the whole presentation is portrayed evenly without any one thing standing out...very invisible, you will also have instruments and musicians (not just boxes playing music) in your listening room. The Nordost are one of the least colored cables and blows Cardas away in terms of transparency and the ability to get out of the way of your components (which better be good)!


Matt M

components are quite good. I'm trying to slightly brighten things up without edge. Hope vocal sibilance isn't highlighted. 

mattmiller: what about sense of depth behind the speakers

I sold Nordost for over 9 years of time. I owned and sold Valhalla a lot. But in stage depth you always will loose depth when you bring in Nordost.

You need to use Nordost just for a part. A whole Nordost loom will be incomplete.

You need to understand that each brand in cables own their own DNA. This means that the stage and sound differs a lot between brands.

I always called Nordost incomplete. Because it is not the best in stage depth. Beside this you will not create a sharp and intimate individual focus of voices and instruments. I sold it a lot with Kimber interconnects.

During blind shootouts all clients prefered the combo of Nordost and Kimber to a whole Nordost loom. It is very easy to explain why?

Because you add properties so it makes it more complete.