Art Dudley Listening

Both cables, but especially SuperFlatline, sounded clarion-clear and pleasingly upfront in my system of the day, which included Spendor SP-100 loudspeakers and a variety of amplifiers of low to moderate power. I praised both Flatlines for their ability to conduct music with superior flow, dynamic ease, and "vibrant" tonal colors, and confessed that I preferred these entry-level Nordost speaker cables to a more expensive Nordost model that had also been submitted for review. In the years since, other models of Nordost speaker cables and interconnects, including some far more expensive ones, have impressed me, but to my mind, the Flatlines endured as their highest-value products. So imagine my surprise when, in 2009, Nordost discontinued both Flatline models.

But last summer, Nordost's founder, Joe Reynolds, visited me and brought along a surprise: a pair of new SuperFlatline speaker cables, fresh off the assembly line. Although Nordost has no plans to revive the basic Flatline, they've reintroduced the SuperFlatline at $299/2m pair, terminated with banana plugs or spade connectors—just slightly more than its 2009 price of $289/2m pair. (In 1996, the same cable sold for about $200/2m pair.)

Superficially, the new SuperFlatline looks identical to the original, with 16 flat conductors per channel. (According to Nordost's website, each conductor is equivalent in mass to a 23AWG wire.) But the original's Teflon dielectric has been replaced with a chemically similar fluoropolymer, fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP). My review pair were 4m long, terminated at both ends with gold-plated, low-mass banana plugs.

Before trying them with my Shindo electronics and DeVore Fidelity Orangutan O/93 speakers, I decided to give the new SuperFlatlines a whirl with some humbler gear: my Croft Acoustics Phono Integrated integrated amp, which I bought not long after reviewing it for the October 2013 Stereophile, and our lingering review pair of Wharfedale Diamond 225 stand-mounted speakers, used on open-frame metal speaker stands I've had so long that I've moved house with them at least four or five times and have zero recollection who made them. (But I know who repainted them: My daughter and her boyfriend, art minor and art major, respectively, recently gave them a psychedelic finish that would not have looked out of place on the set of The Monkees.)

Compared to the 8' pair of Kimber Kable 8TC speaker cables I'd been using with this gear (can't remember where they came from, either—sorry!), the SuperFlatlines did not, at first, distinguish themselves: With the Nordosts in place, the system sounded a hair duller, not more vibrant, and there wasn't as much bass as before. On the plus side, the soundstage was somewhat wider, which I enjoyed. Still, with the Borodin Quartet's 1961 recording of Borodin's String Quartet 2 (LP, Decca/Speakers Corner SXL 6036), there was less bounce from the bowed strings, less pluck from the pizzicato notes, and the cello, in particular, lost its rich, dark colors.

Disappointed, I nevertheless set about trying the Nordosts in my main system—but not before going back to read the whole of my Listener review from 1996. I was brought up short: In it, I noted that the Flatlines sounded dull at first, and needed just a little bit of running in.

It was as if 42-year-old me had reached across the years to poke 64-year-old me in the eye: In the intervening 22 years, while growing more open-minded about some things—heavy turntable plinths, shawl collars, broccoli on pizza, and Jethro Tull—I admit having become increasingly skeptical that audio-frequency cables require run-in. Mechanical devices such as loudspeakers and phono pickups? Sure. Capacitors? Absolutely. Of the technical explanations I've heard as to why cables should be run in, none have convinced—yet I now renewed my efforts to remain open to the possibility.

When I first tried the new SuperFlatlines between my Shindo Haut-Brion amp and DeVore O/93 speakers, my reaction was much the same as the one described above: With the inexpensive Nordosts in place of the much more expensive Luna Red speaker cables ($3300/2m pair) I'd been using in recent months, my system sounded a little less loud, a little less interesting and compelling—but, again, a little wider. After just one cut—"Don't be Denied," which begins side 2 of Neil Young's 1973 live album, Time Fades Away (LP, Reprise MS 2151)—I was anxious to switch back to the Lunas.

But I didn't. I set about listening to the rest of the side, and in another 10 minutes or so, the sound began to open up—just as I'd experienced in 1996 with the original Flatline speaker cables in place.

I did what anyone would do: I put on side 1 of a three-LP set—in this case, Cavalli's L'Ormindo, with Raymond Leppard conducting the London Philharmonia (3 LPs, Argo ZNF 8-10)—and played all six sides, without paying a great deal of attention to what I heard.

After L'Ormindo, I went back to Time Fades Away and again listened closely. Previously with the Nordost cables, the sound of Young's electric guitar in the opening measures of "Don't Be Denied" was constrained—"it sounds like he's holding back," as I put it in my notes. Now I heard more of a loose-armed swing behind his right hand, the chords seeming to have more force behind them. Similarly, the kick drum, though obviously compressed in the recording, itself sounded more forceful, with less of that dully unreal, thumb-on-open-mike sound I heard from it the first time around.

For the rest of that day and a few more days to come, I left the SuperFlatlines in my system and repeated the pattern of listening to a short piece of music on my warmed-up system, letting the cables cook with a few sides of background music, then replaying my earlier selection. The Nordost cables continued to sound clearer, more open, and, especially, more colorful—up to a point. If they exhibited additional performance gains beyond their second day in my system, those distinctions were too subtle for me to report, hand on heart, as real. I dare say they did most of their running-in within the first few hours of near-steady use—and the degree of that change was laugh-out-loud surprising.

In that system, the new SuperFlatlines never performed as well as the Luna Reds—the latter endure in their ability to let my system sound even more forceful, more nuanced, and just plain louder and more attention-grabbing—but the Nordosts got the essentials right without leaving the sound dull or the music lifeless. And when I brought the SuperFlatlines back to my Croft-Wharfedale combo, music through that system was once again compelling: Borodin's String Quartet 2 sounded present and lively, and "A Song for Europe," from Roxy Music's Stranded (LP, Atco SD 7045), which had sounded murky and flat the very first time I tried the SuperFlatlines, was now more intelligible and altogether easier to enjoy.

I can offer only the same conclusion I wrote in Listener 23 years ago: "If you ask me, the Nordost Flatline is great stuff, and you should investigate it without delay."

Malcolm Steward
The UK-based hi-fi critic Malcolm Steward has been a hero of mine since the late 1980s, when he first broke ranks with his perennially pro-Linn colleagues at Hi-Fi Review and declared that the Roksan Xerxes turntable was competitive with Linn's LP12: a gutsy move, and one that people were still talking about in 1990, when I first visited London and its more savvy hi-fi shops. Steward's subsequent recommendations of Naim's Aro tonearm and various Mana Acoustics accessory platforms cemented him in my mind as perhaps the most courageous audio critic in England, and over the years his pieces for Hi-Fi Choice, Audiophile, HiFiCritic, and other publications always showed the reviewer's craft as its best.

These days, Steward and his wife, graphics designer Philippa Steward, are drawing from deeper reserves of courage: following a horrific automobile accident in July 2015, Malcolm remains confined to a medical facility, dependent on around-the-clock care.

I wasn't until 2014 that I finally got to meet Malcolm Steward—we were both in Munich to cover the High End show and staying at the same hotel. I found him to be every bit as warm and sharp-minded as his prose suggests. I also learned that he's a fellow guitarist, and a fellow former hi-fi salesman—although his alma mater, London's legendary The Sound Organisation, far outshines the miniature shop where I worked, which was long ago torn down to make room for a Rite-Aid.

Malcolm Steward's work has had an impact on me, as both a writer and a hobbyist, and surely many of you feel the same. I can think of no better time of year than now to fire off a card to him at: Mountbatten Nursing Home, 82 Trull Road, Taunton, Somerset TA1 4QW, England, UK. If you chat electric guitars, bear in mind that, like all sane men of good intent, he favors Fender Telecasters.