As many forum member surely know, Ebay has regular postings for "authentic" Nordost Odin interconnect cables sourced from China, for about $300/meter. The cables are indeed made with the wooden blocks over each strand that are stamped with the "Odin" name, so fastidious and eager are the manufacturers to have you believe its the real deal. To be clear, I don't think that anyone should assume that these are nothing more than bootleg cables. However, there are some interesting observations to be made here and some follow-up questions to ask. First, it appears that the cable itself has, under high magnification, the identical braid and insulation markings as the real thing. The RCA or XLR connectors do not appear appear to be authentic Nordost but they do appear to be of reasonably high quality. The XLRs have a nice graphite cover and good metalwork. (One can only guess at the solder and construction quality). Now, here is where it gets interesting. I am told that Nordost actually has their genuine Odin cables terminated in China. I do not know the country of manufacture of the actual authentic Odin cable itself but could it too be China? If the latter is true than it doesn't take a genius to figure out that this could be a fertile combination for a bootleg Chinese Odin. This begs the question- what if the Ebay cables are in fact a black market cable, but actually use the "real" Odin cable but a substituted RCA or XLR termination of good quality? How does it sound? Has anyone actually compared the sound of one of these bootleg Odins to the real thing? Wouldn't it be something if the bootlegs used genuine Nordost cable as the ads attest, and the sound was pretty darn close to the authentic cable at a fraction of the price? Yes, I know that pigs can't fly and that suckers are born every minute. However, there's only one question I'm interested in learning the answer to which is: has anyone actually done the comparative listening experiment between a Chinese Odin and the bonifide real thing?
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