Are you ready for a £7500 kettle lead?

magick · 14 Dec 2008 at 14:18

The new Nordost Odin Supreme Reference Power Cord.

http://www.nordost.com/images/products/A-ODPWR1.5M-US_550.jpg

Yes that's right £7500 for a 1.2 meter kettle lead. That's more than most hi-end amps and CD players cost. I saw a review in the latest Hi Fi+ and the review claims as he replaced these leads with his old £3000 kettle leads the sound improved dramaticaly. Is this the emporers clothes or what?

Don't hot link

magick · 14 Dec 2008 at 16:40

PsychomIKE said:
Mate, you've got to learn to shop around. It's only £7,095,75 here and that includes free shipping!

semi-pro waster said:
Post #10, ok it's actually £7,095 inc delivery but that's not too far off the quoted figure.

That's mail order prices. I bet if you went to a Hi End dealer with shop premisis you'd pay the full retail price. But who'd seriously buy a £7100 kettle lead by mail order? I mean if you rich and stupid enough to spend that sort of money you'd spend the extra £400 and goto a showroom surely?

Incidently I wonder if you could goto a dealer posing as potential buyer with 3 kettle leads off your PC and ask to compare them and see if they justify the £22,500 premium for 3 needed on a preamp, power amp and DAC.

magick · 14 Dec 2008 at 16:46

IcE-ColD said:
I bet this guy would buy some.

http://blog.audiovideointeriors.com/208great/

My god. Total overkill. He could have a *killer* home cinema for $500k and spend the other 5.5 million on a good yacht, bugati veyron, still have a million left and live the movie lifestyle in real time rather than watching people do it on a screen.

magick · 14 Dec 2008 at 21:00

Raikiri said:
To be fair magick, as mental as this is I don't think you can really comment on how daft some peoples beliefs are.

There's a big difference in believing the existance of higher beings in the universe or that theres conspiracies going on at government level to believing that buying a £7500 kettle lead will improve the sound quality of an amp or cd player.

magick · 14 Dec 2008 at 22:35

Trixxy said:
heh, I was thinking the same thing while reading the thread (although I'd lower that figure to around £100).

Thing is an expensive Rolex watch carries some real status in the world and also attract the attention of the oppoesite sex.

Buying a cable like the one above says you'r a complete fool.

magick · 14 Dec 2008 at 22:50

caff said:
I'm going to play devil's advocate -

Yes it is silly money, and it won't directly improve the quality of your sound - but if you were building a top-end digital recording studio and wanted shielded cables that didn't detract from the quality of inputs / outputs from other equipment, might you consider these?

Ok the answer is probably still no but

Yeah the answer is defintely no. Most people in pro audio laugh at audiophiles spending silly money on cables like this. Goto a pro-audio forum like http://www.gearslutz.com/board/ and check some of the cable threads there. You'd be suprised how little top studios spend on there cables.

magick · 15 Dec 2008 at 11:41

oli collett said:
how about some regulation so that any piece of Hi-Fi equipment costing over £100 has to include results of a double blind listening test or something similar? Speakers could be exempt though. These companies are just con artists in my mind.

Noble idea, but will never happen. Most cable companies are very reluctant to stage double blind listening tests because they know most people won't be able to tell any difference.

oli collet said:
Funny thing is about the double blind test - one of the editors of stereophile magazine did one and he rubbished the test later because he was unable to tell the difference between 3 different types of amplifier. He later claimed that after swapping the amplifier himself and listening the differences became obvious. He put this down to psychological effects of the test itself. Hmm. Right.

I was reading about a DBT on a link in one of your threads. At Hi-End show this year DBT tests were conducted using an expensive valve amp and a cheap denon amp hardly no one could tell the difference. I always thought amps added perceptible sonic flavours to the sound. Does this mean that those £20k Krell amps people rave on about don't actualy add anything to the sound?

I was speaking about this to someone who was involved in the manufacture of pro audio equipment by email recently and he said Krell are making a fortune ripping people off and they know it. I know cables are a scam but I thought amps do actualy make a difference.

magick · 15 Dec 2008 at 11:55

oli collett said:
I'm afraid that seems to be the case.

Amplifiers are of course not that simple. If you start with a very good pair of speakers, they will probably require a fairly large amount of power. To produce that power with reasonably low distortion and flat frequency response you need a good amplifier. I would not have thought you need to spend more than £1K to acheive this for stereo speakers. But the idea that amplifiers effect the character of the sound is unproven and i believe it only started to come around in the late 70s which i think was around the same time the Japanese manufacturers came along with the cheaper amps doing the same thing as the british manufacturers.

Interesting. Do you think the same is also true with CD players? Again in one of your links someone who is a sceptic admits there maybe differences in quality between budget and high end cd players when it comes to stereo imaging and more expensive cd players do produce a more holographic sound. And the person who said this was a hi-end sceptic.

magick · 15 Dec 2008 at 11:58

oli collett said:
I would not have thought you need to spend more than £1K to acheive this for stereo speakers.

Should also add the pro-audio guy I was communicating with sent me a pic of his system, he had some amazing 10k speakers but he was powering them with two 1000w mono Peavey PA amps that cost a lot less than his speakers. He said the Peavey amps are the best you can get spec wise. a lot better than Krells yet only 10% of the price.

magick · 15 Dec 2008 at 12:55

interesting, thanks oli.

magick · 15 Dec 2008 at 12:57

timbob said:
How can a CD player possibly affect the quality of the sound? They just read digital 0s and 1s off the disc. The CD player will either do this perfectly, or it will not, and is broken.

It's the same with £100 HDMI cables supposedly giving you deeper blacks and better colour definition on your telly - of course they don't, it's digital!

By cd player I didn't mean the cd transport itself but both the transport and dac combination.

magick · 15 Dec 2008 at 13:02

superplay said:
I have purchased on of these kettle leads. The kettle boils much quicker and the hot water that is produced is much cleaner. Well worth the money

LOL