Nordost Purple Flare Cable

The Absolute Sound

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Apr 19, 2013
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<p>
The original Nordost Blue Heaven cable was, for many years, one of my budget reference wires. It debuted in 1994 and featured Nordost’s now iconic Flatline cable design. I knew this cable backwards and forwards—its many strengths (excellent transparency and detail) and its modest weaknesses (a slightly upward frequency tilt and a hint of opacity and edge in the top octaves). Blue Heaven has been improved at least a couple of times since I reviewed it. However, Nordost’s Purple Flare, considered a rung below the current incarnation of Blue Heaven, doesn’t just conjure up fond memories. It’s a little trip to heaven of its own.</p>
<p>
The visual look of Purple Flare speaker wire is unadorned classic Flatline. It comprises fourteen 15-gauge silver-plated 99.9999%-purity OFC solid-core conductors in FEP (Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene) insulation. The interconnect is fully-shielded with six 26-gauge, silver-plated 99.9999% OFC solid-core conductors wound in a minimum cross-section configuration—a design Nordost uses to eliminate unnecessary fillers or padding elements. Insulation is also a high-grade FEP. There are two termination options: balanced or single-ended. Like all Nordost cables, Purple Flare is manufactured and hand-terminated in the U.S.A.</p>
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When a new wire enters my system for an initial round of listening, my habit is to glean an overall impression of the cable’s signature. It’s a casual, even subliminal process that helps me get a handle on tonal accuracy, dimensionality, dynamic anomalies, general transparency, transient attack, and so on. The more time I spend with the wire, the more specific and critical these impressions become. Straight out of the blocks the Purple Flare evinced sprinter’s speed and did not suggest any serious tonal- balance discontinuities. Its treble range was wonderfully free from constriction. Not overly brilliant, it was, on balance, as open and transparent as I’ve heard from a cable in this class. It was highly revealing of the finer dynamic gradations and low-level details of well-recorded orchestral works. (The huge orchestra required for Ashkenazy and the Berlin Philharmonic’s performance of Stravinsky’s <em>Rite of Spring </em>[Decca] is a superior test for this purpose—particularly the quieter moments featuring the delicate and colorful interplay between clarinet, bassoon, and oboe.)</p>
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<img alt="" class="caption" src="http://media.tas.zeitpress.com/articles/images/nordost%20purple%20flare%202.jpg" title="Nordost Purple Flare"/></p>
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During Norah Jones’ “My Dear Country” from <em>Not Too Late </em>[Blue Note], there was a natural amount of vocal air riding along with her voice, which imparted a relaxed warmth that settled the track into a smooth groove. This trait was also on display during James Taylor’s “Only One” from <em>That’s Why I’m Here </em>[Columbia/Legacy], a track that catches the clarity of Joni Mitchell’s high harmony during the chorus. Like tapping a fine crystal goblet with a fingernail, the “ring” of Mitchell’s soprano was pristine and impeccably defined. I can’t say that the Purple Flare fully explored the dimensional component that exists on this pop track, but more on that later. Still, Purple Flare really shines in the midband with a slightly forward, driving energy that imparts a dynamic liveliness to all genres of music.</p>
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Tracks that I’m especially attuned to, like Rosanne Cash’s “If I Were a Man” from <em>10 Song Demo </em>[Capitol Records], were as familiar as an old friend. This is a cut where you can select the right volume and almost forget it is a recording as Cash eerily begins to materialize in the room. And it’s not just the vocal or the reassuring, almost metronomic strumming of the acoustic guitar that springs to life; it’s the sound of the strings radiating off the soundboard, amplifying the note and projecting its energy in your direction.</p>
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One of the reasons I continue to listen to familiar tracks like Holly Cole’s “Take Me Home” on <em>Temptation </em>[Capitol Records] is because the spareness of the arrangement rewards the ear with a lot of reverberant information, low-level detail, soundstage layering, and the dimensionality of Cole’s voice. The Purple Flare left the familiar cues in place and lined up remarkably close to my current reference cables, the Wireworld Platinum and Synergistic Research Element Tungsten.</p>



[Source: http://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/nordost-purple-flare-cable/]
 
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