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Random
Noise 5
Nordost’s remarkable Tyr cables
 Tyr
is pronounced tear as in teardrops,
the stuff we sound-geeks shed when it’s time
to pay for the wherewithal. I look at it this
way: in a world where a big-name artist’s
scribbles command bucks by the bucket, it
would be boorish to snipe at the MSLPs of
meticulously designed, painstakingly
manufactured audio yummies. They do what they
do and cost what they cost. With respect to
price tags, look for no snide asides here or
in subsequent columns. We’re all grownups. I
tell you how I hear the review items
performing, you take it from there. Or not.
With three exceptions –– the Shiva, Vishnu and
Brahma power cords –– Nordost has been naming
its top cables after figures and a place in
Norse mythology. The company’s summit line,
Valhalla, celebrates the home of the gods, for
the downfall of which check out Richard
Wagner’s Götterdämmerung with the
understanding that reports of erasure may be
premature. Tyr, one price level down from
Valhalla, takes its name from the war god who
gave rise to Tuesday. (Etymology quiz:
identify the gods for whom Wednesday, Thursday
and Friday are named. Odin, Thor and Frigg,
you say? Excellent! Top marks!)
 Till
the Tyr speaker cable and balanced
interconnect pairs arrived, I’d been using
Nordost’s Valkyrja speaker cables and Valhalla
interconnects. (The Valkyrja line has been
discontinued.) I liked the Valkyrja speaker
cable a whole lot but, when I compared them, I
much preferred the Valhalla interconnect to
its Valkyrja equivalent. I mention this only
as an approach to my Tyr impressions, which I
can characterize as “Wow!” One declines to
engage in saltier expletives out of deference
to readers’ sensitivities.
So I’m saying in language the vicar would
approve that Tyr is top-drawer. In order to
achieve a semblance of familiarity, I began my
sessions with the balanced Valhalla
interconnects I’d been using as my reference
for a few years. As mentioned briefly at the
end of my NuForce comments in Random Noise 4,
the Tyr speaker cable struck me instantly as
an ideal match to the remarkably fine NuForce
Reference SE amp’s Version 2 iteration:
four-square neutrality, superb resolution,
transparency and speed, a remarkably smooth,
coherent midrange and treble, and a stable,
handsomely detailed soundstage. Not that the
Valkyrja speaker cable was markedly inferior
in any of these respects: with goods at these
heights, it’s a question of degree,
particularly if the manufacturer’s design
philosophy holds coloration in contempt. (Not
every designer-manufacturer does, but you knew
that.) The Tyr simply made an impression I
anticipate having difficulty parsing.
But they pay me to try. To remain with
coloration and “character,” if it’s
forgiveness you’re after –– call it sonic
excelsior –– seek elsewhere. The Integris CDP,
Nuforce Ref 9 SE V2 amp, Valhalla interconnect
and Tyr speaker cable share a disdain for
euphemized sound. What you hear is what’s on
the disc. Recorded by David Hancock in 1967, a
two-CD reissue of music by Aaron Copland,
Charles Ives and Sergei Rachmaninoff, with
Donald Johanos conducting the Dallas Symphony,
didn’t live up to my memory of a gifted
recording engineer’s work (VoxBox2 CDX 5035).
A meticulously honest, ultra-high-rez system
tells all. While Hancock’s capture of
orchestral immediacy was all the more
apparent, I was likewise aware of a shortfall
in “air” and transparency. An otherwise
lifelike recording imparted a somewhat dull,
enclosed character. (The tubbiness one hears
in older stereo recordings, usually as
reissues, has more to do with curtailed
resolution than overemphasis elsewhere.)
A cable design that faithfully conveys a
disc’s contents close to the molecular level
will reveal substellar resolution. It will
also reveal good resolution. A sound system
that tells you exactly what’s on the recording
is a thing of joy and beauty –– period. I
haven’t had the Valhalla speaker cable in this
system for a long time and, curious to say,
I’m not pining for a comparison. Tyr is
that good. With “modern” understood as a
span of twenty-five to thirty years, most
modern recordings of the kind of music I
listen to contain abundant upper midrange and
treble detail. If I’m addressing the kind of
listener who enjoys detecting subtle
differences among production teams and venues,
Tyr’s the ticket.
In our circle, “analytical” is a cuss word.
While not quite as serious as a charge of
infidelity, it’s not what a manufacturer wants
to hear. As exquisitely detailed as it is, I’d
never dream of describing the Tyr speaker
cable as analytical. Of the wires I’ve had in
this and other systems, Valhalla excepted, Tyr
takes the prize for invisibility. I’ve played
discs where the bass seems to originate in the
cellar, where decays trail off to barely
perceptible wisps, where huge fortes, however
they rattle the bric-a-brac, retain their
constituent parts, where a recording’s honeyed
warmth or edge shines through like a light. In
short, fabulous. No, make that flawless.
A two-meter pair of Tyr speaker cables goes
for $5400. (for Valhalla at the same length,
it’s $7400.) The Tyr interconnect is
approximately half as expensive as the
Valhalla: for the 1.5 meter length I’m using,
$2245 / pair as compared with $4930 / pair.
Price spread notwithstanding, the Tyr offers a
convincing alternative to its big brother.
Listening to an assortment of CDs I rely on
for comparison, I was not aware of anything
approaching a significant difference. Only
when I made a direct comparison could I detect
Valhalla’s advantage in a quality I’ll call “thereness.”
Every audiophile will understand: to hear a
difference for the better introduces
dissatisfaction with anything but the very
best, and yet it bears repeating: only when
making a stop-the-music-and-swap-cables
comparison could I claim to have heard a
disparity, and it was nowhere like large. With
either pair of interconnects in place for
longer periods, I hesitated to say, yes,
that’s Tyr and that’s Valhalla. In other
words, the Tyr speaker cable and interconnect
tell you what the rest of the system’s up to,
down to the finest detail –– that and only
that.
From a Nordost paper describing the Tyr
interconnect’s innards:
 “Tyr
uses four 22 AWG conductors consisting of
extruded silver over oxygen-free copper. The
conductors are wrapped in a Dual
Mono-Filament. The filaments are first wound
around each other to decrease the profile of
the filament that makes contact with the
conductor surface. The Dual Mono-Filaments are
then wound in a helix over the conductors, in
effect providing minimal insulation contact
and more air space. An extruded FEP tube over
the conductors and their Dual Mono-Filaments
further reduces insulation contact by more
than 85% with the added benefit of extreme
mechanical stability. Owing to minimal
insulation contact, signals travel at much
higher speeds and at a tremendous bandwidth.
The four conductors are wrapped around a
central spacer with two silver-plated drain
wires. The cable is then shielded with a dual
silver braid and jacketed with a proprietary
medical-grade polymer in an attractive
smoked-black-over-silver color.”
The 1-3/4-inch-wide Tyr speaker cable’s ribbon
configuration employs similarly executed
silver-over-copper wires, twenty of them in
four groups of parallel five, each strand
under a spiral of Micro Mono-Filament. For a
more detailed idea of what this is about, go
to
www.nordost.com. From a subjectivist’s
perspective, these are terrific cables.
Recommended recordings
Chops: as a figurative expression, a
performer’s spirit, command and mastery. Were
the term applied literally, e.g., pork chops,
God only knows what Sylvie Courvoisier would
look like. The lady has chops aplenty and
huge. Her instrument is the piano. I have
three Courvoisier CDs (there are more). The
oldest, issued in 1999 on the Avant label (AVAN
065), features Courvoisier with Mark Feldman’s
violin in duos of a distinctly improvisational
character, with avant-garde jazz as a distant
relation. I won’t go into it at length since
it’s a tough disc to find domestically. For
info, try
http://avant-records.blogspot.com/
 The just-released CD that got me to write this
review, Sylvie Courvoisier / Signs and
Epigrams (Tzadik TZ 8033), consists of ten
solos that amply illustrate the pianist’s
astonishing range as composer and performer.
Another heartily recommended 2007 release,
Sylvie Courvoisier / Lonelyville (Intakt
CD 120), features the pianist with Mark
Feldman, violin; Vincent Courtois, cello; Ikue
Mori, electronics; and Gerald Cleaver, drums.
 I
just can’t get enough of Lonelyville.
In similar fashion to Signs and Epigrams,
the quartet –– the disc’s four compositions
are Courvoisier’s –– engage in mind-bending
displays of over-the-top invention and range,
from intriguing mouse-scampers to crashing
assaults. The music’s emotional aspects
likewise amaze: demurely cool through romantic
to extrovert-wild. Ikue Mori’s subtle,
real-time electronic participation contributes
significantly to the group magic. This one
joins a generous handful of favorite jazz CDs.
Walter Quintus recorded, mixed and mastered a
sonically rewarding event. The concert took
place in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2006. The
Swiss-born pianist lives with her husband Mark
Feldman in Brooklyn, New York.
The solo-piano disc’s “Des signes et des
songes” is one of the more rewarding
“extended-technique” pieces I’ve heard.
Courvoisier works inside the piano as well as
conventionally to a deliciously mysterious
effect. The antipodal, urgently emotional
“Epigram 1” puts John Cage’s prepared-piano
innovations to similarly good use, balancing
the instrument’s intentionally grungy aspect
against pure, untreated notes. The pianist’s
astonishing dexterity is obvious throughout. A
close-up, dynamic recording lightly applies
reverb assists. Good stuff.
***
 I earlier recommended Nuscope CD 1019,
Chicago Approach, with Guillermo Gregorio,
clarinet; Pandelis Karayorgis, piano; and Nate
McBride, double-bass. This time around it’s
Distich, with Mat Maneri, five-string
viola; and Denman Maroney, piano (Nuscope CD
1018). Having just finished writing about
Courvoisier and giving the matter a few
moments of thought, I shelved the three
abovementioned discs with my jazz collection.
It does occur to me that the choice of
category is very close to arbitrary.
Despite all statements pointing to composed,
Courvoisier’s music has an improvisational
feel to it. When the proceedings are truly
rather than seemingly improvisational, as is
the case with Maneri and Maroney, category
ambiguity vanishes: in fact, improvisational
music-making figures large as an alternative
medium among adventuresome instrumentalists.
However, adventure for the sake of adventure
isn’t always rewarding, at least for the
listener. Much recorded improv plays as
unfocused, self-indulgent pap. When it clicks,
as it does here, it’s a delight. Both
instrumentalists are well seasoned hands.
Distich’s interplay is largely low-key,
never less than poetic, often illuminating,
with few wasted gestures, directions or turns.
If your tastes run to mainstream jazz, you may
want to exit the room at a trot. Only for the
truly curious.
***
In my initial remarks about music I’m bound to
mention again, I wondered why
The British-based Soli Deo Gloria label was
releasing John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Cantata
Pilgrimage in other than consecutively
numbered volumes. My email apparently fell
through a crack. This time, not. The
conductor’s wife, Isabella Gardiner, explains
the curious numbering:
“We decided that the entire cycle would start
with the First Sunday after Trinity as volume
1. The numbering would proceed in sequence
from there, so that once the cycle was
complete, the volume numbers would follow the
chronological succession of the liturgical
feasts through the whole year in the order in
which Bach composed them. This was for two
reasons: one, Bach started his Leipzig cycles
on that feast; two, it was my absolutely top
favourite programme. We wanted to launch the
series with two really strong programmes.
Volume 1 was released together with another
one of my favourites, vol. 8, which contains,
in my view, some of the most sublime and less
known of his cantatas. Luckily others seemed
to agree with our choice, as vol.1 won a
Gramophone Record of the Year Award in 2005.
“The order in which release the volumes now
has no real reason other than trying to keep
as seasonal as possible. This year we released
Easter cantatas just before Easter, for
example. Last year we released cantatas for
the Feast of St. Michael in October, the month
in which the feast falls, though of course
this will not be possible through to the end
of the series as there are more feasts in the
autumn than in the first part of the calendar
year.
“The single CDs in the series –– two so far,
one coming out this autumn –– are all of
Christmas feast music. Given that the concerts
performed in 2000 added up to an odd number,
we could not have two-CD sets till the end, so
rather than leave a lone straggler, we decided
to release Christmas cantatas as ‘singles,’
which would allow buyers the opportunity of
having a less expensive CD to give to their
friends and families for the holidays.”
With regard to the series’ consistently good
sound against long odds –– the Pilgrimage’s
many and various venues –– Isabella Gardiner
explains: “We hired Polyhymnia, a fantastic
firm of recording engineers. They built a
mobile recording van which followed the tour
around Europe. It took almost five years after
that to raise funds which allowed us to begin
the series’ release, and for that we have our
project’s patron, HRH the Prince of Wales, to
thank for helping us achieve our goals.”
I also mentioned in those earlier comments
that Archiv, a Deutsche Grammophon label,
dropped the series that Soli Deo Gloria
resumed. For an exhaustive discussion of stale
news, go to
www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Gardiner-Gen5.htm.
Like Aunt Emily’s gift of a book about the
prairie dog’s diet, the link will tell you
more than you probably wanted to know.
Putting all that aside, Isabella Gardiner
mentions vol. 8 as a favorite. A suggestion:
acquire the eighth volume and play BWV 8,
“Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben?” If you
don’t agree that this cantata contains some of
the world’s loveliest music, feel free to
rebuke my misdirected enthusiasm. Sticks and
stones: I will not reimburse
dissatisfied listeners. Also, readers who
favor hip-hop, R&B, cabaret, Broadway, John
Williams’ movie scores, Paul McCartney’s
classical anything, country-&-western (with
exceptions), rock in all its pebbled forms
(likewise with exceptions), etcetery, und so
weiter, would do well to ignore this
recommendation.
See you next month. Drink responsibly. Keep
out of drafts.
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