Nordost Corporation is an American

high-end audio High-end audio is a class of consumer home audio equipment marketed to audiophiles on the basis of high price or quality, and esoteric or novel sound reproduction technologies. The term can refer simply to the price, to the build quality of the ...

company founded in 1991 by Joe Reynolds and based in

Holliston, Massachusetts Holliston is a New England town in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States in the Greater Boston area. The population was 14,996 at the 2020 census. It is located in MetroWest, a Massachusetts region that is west of Boston. Holliston is t ...

. Nordost manufactures and sells audio and video cables, interconnects and unique accessories to the

audiophile An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction. An audiophile seeks to reproduce the sound of a piece of recorded music or a live musical performance, typically inside closed headphones, In-ear monitors, open ...

market and is distributed in 72 countries.

Overview

Nordost was founded in Massachusetts in 1991. Nordost manufactures audio cables, power distribution systems, grounding systems and resonance control devices for the high-end market. Their original Flatline cable was the first flat loudspeaker cable to use FEP (Fluorinated Ethene Propylene). All Nordost cables use a flexible FEP insulation originally developed by

DuPont DuPont de Nemours, Inc., commonly shortened to DuPont, is an American multinational chemical company first formed in 1802 by French-American chemist and industrialist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont de Nemours. The company played a major role in ...

. All Nordost products are manufactured at their facilities in the USA. Nordost produces five ranges of cable products (Lifestyle, Leif, Norse 2, Valhalla 2, Odin Supreme Reference). In addition to power cables and interconnect cable, digital cable and loudspeaker the company also manufactures the QRT line of products. power purifiers and grounding systems and a line of Sort System vibration controlling devices. In 2014, Nordost introduced the first American-made

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transmitting uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controller, ...

cable. The Blue Heaven HDMI cable uses Nordost's proprietary Micro Mono-Filament construction and is DPL certified.

Claims and criticisms

On the webpage of a Nordost USB 2.0 cable, Nordost claims that it "is guaranteed to take your computer audio system to the next level". However, in a test report of the cable, the reviewer found no measurable difference in the output signal when used as an interconnect of a USB audio DAC, in comparison to a generic USB cable. In addition, the reviewer criticized the high price of the cable.

References

{{Reflist Audio equipment manufacturers of the United States Manufacturing companies based in Massachusetts