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Nordost Odin or Valhalla 2

Folks, 

Do you feel Nordost cables are worth it's asking price?  What's the proportionate amount one should spent on cables? 

After hearing them at RMAF 2015 and few other brands of cables, I decided to look into the upgrade cost.  I own a decent HT setup and invested over $125K in my pursuit of audio nirvana.  

So I contacted a Nordost dealer to get an estimate on my setup.  The dealer came back with an estimate of $110K on Valhalla 2.  Needless to say, I didn't even bothered to ask the cost of Odin in my setup.  

No offense to the dealers, but I started to wonder the profit markups on high end cables.  I do hear stories about some unscrupulous dealers who sell high end products to get spiffs from big manufacturers in shape of exotic vacations, free products and so forth if they sell more widgets.  Isn't this corporate hi-fi that only seeks to show returns for shareholders.  To me its pure business, where is the passion for audio?If they are only focusing on providing expensive audio jewelry and targeting individuals with deep pockets then I say, mission accomplished.  

I have much better experience with smaller companies who are dedicated and committed to providing 'magical' listening experience without taking a second mortgage on your home.  I thought the whole idea of audio art is to create aural magic.  

IMO most cables regardless of price point, will get you 80% of the performance of super expensive cables.   So is it really worth spending thousands of dollars more to achieve that 20% or 10% of performance? 

I would like to hear from folks who owns Odin or Valhalla 2 or other comparable brand of cables, what was decided factor in their choice, what other cables did you compare before settling with Odin or Valhalla 2.  

I don't have any hidden agenda or personal vendetta against high priced cables or dealers engaged in selling high end products.  The idea here is to gauge performance vs. cost of super expensive cables. 

Happy Listening!!!

128x128lalitk
jbomber
10 posts
 
I hear from so many vendors and retailers that the high-end is dying; that the number of people willing to invest in their sound is growing fewer and older.  Sounds like high-end hifi is suffering the same fate as local symphony and ballet operations.  It's really an issue of making great sounding reproduced music relevant, methinks.

Okay, so here's what I don't get.  A new, fully loaded, 2018 Mercedes E-Class can be purchased for the same price as a 4M set of Odin speaker cables.  Sure, they're the Odin 2, and the Mercedes is only the E-Class, and not the S-Class, but still...

When you look at the 2 items; the cost of materials and manufacturing -- and it's not as though Germans are cheap labor -- how does 12 feet of silver-plated copper wire with some string and a plastic coating, regardless of precision, possibly justify its cost compared to the materials and labor that go into manufacturing a high-end automobile.  Simple: it doesn't.  Someone -- or everyone along the "food chain" is making a LOT of money, and everyone knows it.

I can buy a touch-screen laptop with all the bells and whistles, B&O sound, blah blah blah, for about $1500.  Some kid who loves his music and his computer is going to look at two pieces of electronics, both of which give him great pleasure, and see one that costs $1500, and is considered top-of-the-line, and one that costs $1500 and is considered entry level, and to achieve truly great, "gob-smack" sound, it will cost roughly a mortgage on a nice home.  I'd venture to guess that one-in-a million of those kids will ever venture any further into the high end.

And so it goes.  We're getting older and fewer and less willing to buy new gear in the pursuit of our love of reproduced music.  I don't know where this ends, but if the industry is dying, or being given away to overseas cheap manufacturing, then something needs to change.


woofy7
3 posts
 
The industry is not dying... that's silly...  just try and get top end Chord products and see the wait list...    now if your spending 200K or more there's few people that will do that... 
schubert
4,867 posts
 
If it wasn't dying there would be no wait list .
joecasey
365 posts
 
Okay, so here's what I don't get. A new, fully loaded, 2018 Mercedes E-Class can be purchased for the same price as a 4M set of Odin speaker cables. Sure, they're the Odin 2, and the Mercedes is only the E-Class, and not the S-Class, but still...

When you look at the 2 items; the cost of materials and manufacturing -- and it's not as though Germans are cheap labor -- how does 12 feet of silver-plated copper wire with some string and a plastic coating, regardless of precision, possibly justify its cost compared to the materials and labor that go into manufacturing a high-end automobile. Simple: it doesn't. Someone -- or everyone along the "food chain" is making a LOT of money, and everyone knows it.

I can buy a touch-screen laptop with all the bells and whistles, B&O sound, blah blah blah, for about $1500. Some kid who loves his music and his computer is going to look at two pieces of electronics, both of which give him great pleasure, and see one that costs $1500, and is considered top-of-the-line, and one that costs $1500 and is considered entry level, and to achieve truly great, "gob-smack" sound, it will cost roughly a mortgage on a nice home. I'd venture to guess that one-in-a million of those kids will ever venture any further into the high end.
Simple, there's demand for it.
And so it goes. We're getting older and fewer and less willing to buy new gear in the pursuit of our love of reproduced music. I don't know where this ends, but if the industry is dying, or being given away to overseas cheap manufacturing, then something needs to change.
Industry is growing if price is rising.   Only dying for ones sitting outside priced out of the market. 
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astewart8944
353 posts
 
Prices rising doesn't necessarily mean industry is "growing." Clearly there are different ways to make money on goods. One is to treat them as luxury made to order items understanding that the market will be relatively small, the cost of "raw" materials higher than if purchasing in mass quantities and the margin required on each sale much higher due to lower volumes. I believe this is jbomber's point. Of course, as long as a goods company is profitably in business it indicates a marketplace somewhere. But that does not mean the marketplace is expanding. It may, in fact, be contracting. Value is usually measured by two separate markets--the initial marketplace--what are new buyers willing to pay--and the secondary market--what are used buyers willing to pay. In the US, Porsche has robust initial and secondary markets. Maserati does not. Porsche sells more units in the US  than Maserati--by a lot. Maserati's are cool but you are going to have a hard time unloading one on the secondary US market. Porsche's are cool too--and have great relative US resale value. I don't know whether Nordost is more like Porsche or Maserati. It seems used Nordost trade thin on Audiogon, but I don't follow them closely. This much is true--the more you charge for your good, the smaller the potential market. But higher prices increase brand eliteness and that is clearly where many hifi companies are aiming their products. Are they doing it because the overall marketplace cannot support a sufficiently large production business model? That I don't know.     
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