Clarity,detail,accuracy

none

I am not a reviewer,nor do I play one on T.V. When ever I give a review,I just try to give my honest opinion. The Nordost Blue Heaven are the best interconnects I have heard.I never gave much credence to interconnects. The reason is that all the other cables I had either tried or demoed sounded very similar. So I had always gone with the cheapest one. This all changed when I heard the Blue Heaven Interconnect. It really does(in my system)make a substanial difference.It gets my highest praise.

Similar Products Used:

Audio Quest,Vampire Wire,Kimber Kable,The Chord Company

Sound

Great product with no obvious weakness. Completely transparent. Great buy of impeccable quality and sound. Even price seems OK to value/performance.

Similar Products Used:

Monster

Clarity,detail,crispness

none,did what I needed them to.

I really like these interconnects. Now I have read how some people think there too bright. Fine but to score them low is funny to me. This is a design feature,not a flaw. If there too bright don't buy them. In my opionion Interconnects are the icing on the cake. They help you finish the system off. You think your system is a little warm buy these. If your system is a little too bright buy Audio Quest. To many times on this web page I read how because a product didn't sound good in my system it isn't good. NO! this does not mean it isn't good, it just means it isn't good in your system. Or that its sound dosen't suit your personal tastes. To any one that needs some added brightness and detail,neutral midband, great bass detail I can not recomend another product as high as the BLUE HEAVEN INTERCONNECTS!

Similar Products Used:

Kimber,Audio Quest,Vampire Wire ,The Chord Co.

speed, detail

easy to fold

good dymanics, speed, lively, musical

Similar Products Used:

wire world , eclipse

Associated Equipment:Krell KAV-300i
Teac VRDS-T1
Audio Alchemy DTI v2.0
Audio Alchemy DDE v3.0
Infinity Compositions P-FR
Sunfire True Subwoofer
Power Line Conditioning by Panamax, Rotel, and Adcom
Cabling by Canare

I have never been a big fan of expensive cables, but recently a friend lent me some Straight Wire Sonata which was better in some ways than my (great for the price) Canare and not as good in others. With the Straight Wire there was more detail and the bass was tighter, but the sound stage seemed to shrink in size and depth. This got me thinking that maybe my cabling was holding me back and that I should invest in some better stuff. It was about that time that I won second prize in this website's Audio "fi"le contest which included a pair of Nordost Blue Heaven interconnect.

When my Blue Heaven arrived I hooked it up between my DAC and amp not expecting much. What I heard was an improvement in all areas. The sound stage was very large with good depth and had a nice rich overall sound (like with the Canare), but there was also more detail and air around each voice and instrument and the bass was quicker and tighter (much like with the Straight Wire). Along with the improvement in detail, the Blue Heaven seemed to clear everything up, lifting another veil and allowing me to hear deeper into the music. Very nice I thought, but Nordost recommends that these cables be burned in for quite a while.

So what happened after a few weeks of burn in? More of the same. Vocals like Diana Krall's on Love Scenes or Jewel's Pieces of You were no longer slightly fuzzy and seemed more palpable. Complex recordings which also contain subtle details like Dadawa's Sister Drum or well recorded orchestral pieces (try some of Reference Recordings excellent CD's especially if you have HDCD) had well defined instruments and vocals with plenty of air and a real sense of the recorded space. Thinking back to what my system sounded like with the Canare, there was no doubt that the Blue Heaven was more transparent. The sound was now very quick and detailed, yet still rich and musical.

I liked the Blue Heaven so much that I decided to try Nordost speaker cable and found the same benefits. In fact, I ended up getting a set of Super Flatline with my own hard earned cash. Nordost's products aren't inexpensive, but they appear to well engineered and manufactured and sound great. Check out Nordost's website to find out more about their products and their design philosophy and try them out before possibly going out and spending a lot more (or a little less) money on cabling.

The Blue Heaven Speaker cables sound very 'natural'. They are very detailed and yet not etched. I cannot detect a particular 'cable sound', which is a very positive trait. This was not the case with other cables, which, to some extenth interferred with the sound, imposing somewhat their own signature.

Intro:
Well, here it is... another cable review. The good thing is, I won't be writing another one for a long time. The Nordost Blue Heaven interconnects and speaker cables are only 2 of the few "high end" wires that fall under John Dunlavy's definition of well engineered cables. Low capacitance and impedance, they're supposed to match most components quite well. The good thing is they do. I can go on and on about how good they perform in my system but I would rather keep it short by saying that these will be the last expensive wires I ever bought. The look and feel of the wires are unusual. They seem very light and not well built but a closer look would reveal a great degree of detail that goes in the manufacturing process. You still have to handle them with care though.

Sound:

NEUTRAL, very well balanced and accurate. Cables are usually separated into two categories: 1) Noisy ones with lots of detail 2) Ones with rolled of treble to eliminate noise. This is why some of them sound worse than cheap Radio Shack wires. The Blue Heavens sound open, extended, and yet without any excessive noise. Very satisfying indeed. I have not tried the interconnects or speaker cables independent from each other so I don't know how well they would perform separately. But it doesn't matter, for me the search is over... for analog wires that is.

Associated Components:
Krell KAV-300i & Bryston B-60
Totem 1 & Dynaudio Contour 1.3 II
Camelot Arthur 3.0 DAC
AA DTIPro 32

I've had the Nordost Blue Heaven speaker cables in my system for about 1 year now. My previous cables were Tara Labs Master 5000 Gen II which were good but the Blue Heaven's were better - at least to my taste. They were somewhat leaner sounding but that resulted in a tight and fast bass, the whole presentation is coherent, fast and musical. The cables may be bright (tipped toward high frequency would be a more accurate discription) on the wrong system but sounds wonderfully lyrical on mine. I hope to move up to the Red Dawn cables next.Associated Equipment:
Amp: Symphonic Line RG 1 MK III
Pre: Sonic Frontier Line 2
Phono: Audio Note RIAA M1
Turntable: Nortingham Analogue Space Deck and arm
Cart: Audio Note IQ II
Interconnects: XLO Singature 1.1 and XLO Pro 100
Speakers : Digital Phase AP 4

Wanted to improve my Cambridge Audio CD6 and tried the Nordost Blue Heavcn and Red Dawn. The Red Dawn won, but at double the price ($350 vs $175) I settled on the Blue Heaven. No complaints though, very nice cable. The detail and stage really expanded compared with the OEM cables. I also tried the Nordost Blue Angel at about $100. It is also very good for those on a smaller budget.

This company started out making conductors for the military and computer industries, which is probably why their cables look the way they do. I suspect they are just utilizing their existing machinery and processes.Anyhow, I suppose they noticed the lucrative hi-fi market and decided to dive in several years ago.
These guys really seem to understand what is important in signal transmission. Even their cheapest product, Flatline, is way better than many upmarket products from other companies. In fact, Flatline offers much of what the Blue Angel has, but with less smoothness on top.
The Blue Angels really made my system come alive, and I no longer feel that I need to upgrade my amplification. I never heard soundstaging before using these cables.
I am powering Apogee Centaur speakers through a Denon 125WPC integrated amp. Also using a Velodyne subwoofer. Program material mostly my tuner and turntable (Rega Planar 3). I'd be surprised if there was a much better cable in this price range.