Nordost White Lightning – Purple Flare – Blue Heaven – Red Dawn

Intro

Nordost recently introduced its new LEIF series. These are Nordost’s ‘entry-level’ cables. Now ‘entry’ is very relative, because the White Lightning simply costs 584Euro for 1.5 meters. And the Red Dawn will cost you 1279 Euros for 1.5 meters. Now it is true that for these amounts you do not get a ‘black box voodoo’ cable. Nordost has proven that before in our mass test. We are going to take a closer look at this new LEIF-3 series.

We have arrived at the third generation of LEIF. Each series has had improvements, applying techniques from the series above it. In fact, this always happens with all brands and types of products. We call that progress…

For example, Nordost uses certain elements of conductor technology from the Valhalla series, as well as FEP insulation. FEP is a type of plastic, which is similar to Teflon, but has some better properties. Think very low dielectric constant, no oxidation, mechanically strong and stable.

Isolation is important because the wrong materials – or geometries – can increase capacitance or inductance, thus increasing impedance, or mess up timing. We’ve seen that before in our big comparative test.

Nordost LEIF

The lineup of the new LEIF series has, of course, remained the same. We see the White Lightning opening the series. For a 1-meter model you will pay 479 Euros. Above that is the Purple Flare at 689 Euro for 1 meter. Above that is the Blue Heaven with 829 Euro for 1 meter. Closing out is the Red Dawn with 1069 Euro for 1 meter.

All cables use are a touch stiff, but certainly not annoyingly or unusably hard to bend. The insulation is just plain stiff. We see Neutrik’s delightful Pro plugs that clamp well and make shorting impossible. Good – and also pricey! – choice of Nordost.