Avanti Digital Cables

[octadyndude]

Well I finally had to ship back the traveling digital cable demo . So I thought I would start a new thread. Anyhow the Avanti cable was up against the Nordost Heimdall2. Now I have an Octave V110 with black box - Naim nDac with p/s and Raidho D2 speakers. Tomorrow the Octave will be gone along with the Naim and the Aavik U300 will take its place. The Avanti cable brings more up front almost like turning up the volume a bit. For those of you who have Raidho's on carpet it's like add granite slabs under them. Bass sounded a hair deeper and tighter - mids are louder and faster and the highs sounded like there was a hair more detail. But that's also what one may expect from turning up the volume a db or 2. Since I knew the Octave was going away I brought the cable over to Nextlevel and try them on the Aavik with D3's. First thing Tyler commented on was they are louder than the Heimdall2. His D3's are on wood over concrete (which is like the granite slabs on carpet). Note when I did this neither the Aavik or D3's were broken in but I wanted to get an idea with the Aavik. The only thing Tyler pointed out was the vocals seemed to have lost some of the 'soul'. To me it sounded more like the vocals lost some speed in the sound. A couple of days later I was playing some Madonna here in my home and heard it. BTW you have to kind of squint to hear that. I found I do have a couple of recordings where I now hear that out of several hundred. I really like the Avanti cable and I bought one. I'm keeping the Heimdall2 also. If you look at a price to performance ratio the Avanti wins hands down. The Avanti retails for $160 USD for 1.5M and the Heimdall2 retails for $700 for 1M. I really like both cables but for the money the Avanti will be really hard to beat. I plan on a follow up report after I have the Aavik for a while and it's fully broken in.

Great cable Mike :congrats:

 

[MikeCh]

Hi George,

Thanks for taking the time to trial the cable. I appreciate the kind words you've written and I'm glad your enjoying the RCA > BNC SPDIF cable!

 

[octadyndude]

Ah - Turns out the Aavik has over 700hrs on it (yep it's the one used at Axpona). I also got the Ansuz Mainzd8 (power distribution) and 2 ceramic power cords. So last night I flipped between the Heimdall2 and the Avanti digital cable. I have to admit I prefer the Avanti cable. More so with the Aavik over the Octave V110 w/black box. Not sure if it's the added loudness but everything just sounds a hair 'clearer' to me. Again my Raidho D2's are on carpet with no granite slabs. I could very well have a different opinion if I had the granite slabs.