Nordost
Optix
Review Audio Video Magazine August 2000
NORDOST
OPTIX
The
future looks bright
I
always thought that Nordost was a Scandinavian company, best known for its
excellent Flatline speaker cable product, which I tried some years back, and
found at the upper end of the sonic class. It turns out that Nordost is actually
situated in Massachusetts, and that the company does a lot more than just
Flatline – its array of cables and interlinks is quite dazzling, and is aimed
not only at the audio fraternity, but also at video and AV buffs. The Nordost
Optix S-Video cable isn’t much to look at, thanks to a generic grey jacket,
and yellow protective sleeves for the admittedly nicely finished, gold-plated
S-Video connectors at either end. But then, cables aren’t really meant to be
things of beauty, since they generally live out of sight, behind components. It
employs Nordost’s monofilament technology, which apparently reduces dielectric
contact by 80 percent. The twin conductors consist of 24-gauge oxygen-free
copper cores, plated with silver, and coiled symmetrically beneath a shielding
layer of Teflon.
As
expected, the rated impedance is the industry-standard 75 ohms, but capacitance
is low at 15,0 pF/ft, indicating that the Optix should have no problems with
longer cable runs. That in itself is a benefit in many home theatre systems,
where components are not always located for proximity’s sake. DC resistance is
a quoted 16,2 ohms/304 m, while Nordost claims signal transfer speeds of more
than 90 percent of the speed of light. So much for the technicalities. Linked to
a Sony DV-S525 DVD player feeding into a Harman Kardon AVR85 AV receiver, the
result was impressive to say the least. Picture quality was markedly brighter
and better defined than before, with crisper edges and finer resolution allowing
better rendition of detail. Edge-to-edge resolution appeared to benefit too. At
the same time, the colours appeared brighter and clearer, with improved contrast
and a more vivid disposition. In fact, the colour settings on my Panasonic The
One reference TV set had to be adjusted to more neutral setting. An excellent
S-Video cable thus, that warrants its asking price by significantly upping the
picture quality, and is therefore well worth considering for purchase.
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