[Ghoostknight]

https://de.aliexpress.com/item/4000412716175.html
i saw on a few products that they get explicitly advertised as "genuine made in japan furutech" with OVP/packaging and everything as it seems, i know its naive to think that this is a 100% true claim but this made me kinda curious, do fakers actually go to this length?

i just bought them in the end because they have way better construction than the local ones, even if it just would be messing instead of copper and no NCF etc..

 

[Paulc52]

So in the past I've ordered some knockoff aliexpress cables. Surprisingly, these cables sound quite good, I mean well above their price point. They outperform some cables I have tried that are 10-15x more expensive.

It looks like this.




Recently I asked a seller to make me a sata cable with this wire.

I received it and unfortunately it didn't work, it seems they didn't wire it properly or theres a short somewhere. I took it apart to see what it looks like. Really hate that glue insulator they use.



So it looks like the wire is actually silver or at the very least sterling silver. Its not plated and looks to be 28 awg conductors with a teflon or pet sleeve then spiraled aluminum shield then pet or teflon sleeve on top of that. No wonder it sounds so good. I tried to light it on fire and it wont burn or melt. PVC should melt or burn if I tried that.

It is quite surprising the quality of these things. Most likely the conductors are sterling silver because the pricing doesnt make sense for such a thing.

I have purchased quite a few of these knockoffs and they perform unbelievably well, I'm sure they're not as good as the real thing but for the price they are quite good. Quite a pleasant surprise.




Few notes, there are some sellers reported by members that are not pleasant do business with. Recommend not purchasing from these sellers due to shady business practices and/or problems returning. Will update as we go along.

Goltech - Sent cable with missing parts and gold odin cable with lesser valhalla conductors.
Queensway - Several members reported incorrect pinout for hdmi cable and had problems returning or getting a refund.



Other good stuff

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133425075429
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/325...o.order_list.order_list_main.5.21ef1802fTJ8Bd
Xangsane Sterling Silver USB
Recipe for making cable with mundorf solid core silver/gold wire by elan120 on audiophilestyle.

Funny thing. I watched a video by Audioquest on their cables and how they are made and that they are made in the U.S., Netherlands and China and the guy said no matter where the cable is made (he) should not be able to tell the difference. Since myself and s buddy had the K2 speaker cable, Colorado interconnects, we decided to blow the money on the same cables from Aliexpress and then we were going to examine them, removing the ends and see what we saw. On the Colorado rca interconnects we noticed that the external appearance was exact. We then removed the barrell on the RCA and could see that it had been cold welded, all wiring appeared to be exact and the color (silver) of the wire was the same. Was it perfect surface silver? Don't know, but it was solid silver core and not a silver over copper. The perform superb. My guess is that they (since the cables are made in China) are either making runs of their own and selling them, or (more likely) are duplicating them. It wouldn't be difficult for them to do. Are they using a different quality silver? Possible, maybe not. I also got a WEL digital cable (beast) didn't take it apart, but quality of build was impeccable. I have seen some where the cabling appeared exact, but had different (cheaper) connects. If you look around you can find many made with the (1000 series) silver plated bananna or spade Audioquest ends. I've seen some of these mega buck cables sell for a few hundred dollars and I've seen some Audioquest cables sell for 1k, so even though that's much cheaper than buying from a dealer, I hope they aren't using cheap crap at 1k

 

[amix]

incl a cross section of the NCF resin parts to make a best guess at its composition

I'd be surprised if they even went that far.

 

[amix]

get explicitly advertised as "genuine made in japan furutech" with OVP/packaging and everything as it seems [...] do fakers actually go to this length?

Oh yeah, that's exactly what the real fakers do! Make us believe...

 

[Jake2]

I'd be surprised if they even went that far.

Agree.. that’s best case, more likely case is they copied the NCF branding and the packaging etc, which I’m sure they’ve had a lot of practice at.

I would note my Furukawa Flux-50 AC filters definitely improve the sound of connected devices more than most power cables, and a number of buyers reviews and folk on headfi found same. So in that case it seems likely they’ve had a go at incorporating some piezo-electric and/or vibration damping materials into either end - maybe just the CF, but potentially more like a bit of crushed tourmaline or Rochelle salt. A bit easier there as a) it’s a fair more expensive so more worth their while and b) the volume of each end of the Flux-50 is much bigger than the AC sockets etc linked above so easier to incorporate materials.

 

[amix]

I would note my Furukawa Flux-50 AC filters definitely improve the sound of connected devices more than most power cables, and a number of buyers reviews and folk on headfi found same.

Add me to that list. After adding it (this version):

39,79€ | Furukawa Flux-50 NFC power filter with FI-50 NCF Rhodium plated connector plug

between the power distributor and the Allo Shanti linear PSU, that feeds my WiiM, the sound is much more dampened at certain places. Something is suppressed, not sure, what, could be transients, but pretty much also noise. Not sure whether it is for the better, though, I will give it more burn-in time, before the final judgment.

I am currently waiting for the new Fosi Audio V3 Monos to arrive, hopefully this gives me better synergy with my Dyns and better resolution, so I can judge better.

 

[amix]

Anybody who could explain how these fuses are supposed to function:

21,99€ | Xangsane 5*20mm/6*25mm HiFi pure silver fuse silver pillar replacement amplifier fuse HiFi power strip filter fuse tube

 

[amator2]

Agree.. that’s best case, more likely case is they copied the NCF branding and the packaging etc, which I’m sure they’ve had a lot of practice at.

I would note my Furukawa Flux-50 AC filters definitely improve the sound of connected devices more than most power cables, and a number of buyers reviews and folk on headfi found same. So in that case it seems likely they’ve had a go at incorporating some piezo-electric and/or vibration damping materials into either end - maybe just the CF, but potentially more like a bit of crushed tourmaline or Rochelle salt. A bit easier there as a) it’s a fair more expensive so more worth their while and b) the volume of each end of the Flux-50 is much bigger than the AC sockets etc linked above so easier to incorporate materials.

I had the Flux-50 which someone asked me to evaluate over a weekend. Apparently it had been plugged in for 2 weeks before so I’m not sure whether that constitutes a full run in. A bit convoluted but I’m penning it down for context.

I plugged the Flux 50 to my FiiO LPS which powers an Ifi Neo IDSD2 DAC. Immediately, things sounded less harsh but somehow transients also seemed less explosive. Drums especially had less impact snap. But overall , Everything was calmer and was clearly more refined in the upper treble.

Volume sounded a bit softer perhaps because certain frequencies were toned down ?
My friend had the same impression when he used it with a class D SMSL amp. He said it had a quieter background but he lost PRAT overall but gained smoothness.

I must qualify all this by saying that I am running other aliexpress cables , namely Odin 2 gold XLR( run in) and also the Odin 2 gold spkr cable which had about 100 hours playtime when I tested the Flux-50.

I have a gut feeling now that maybe having two Odin golds might have also slowed things down a touch to start with. The cables they replaced were Gotham GAC 4/1 and GAC spk cables.

I might order one to do a proper evaluation soon.

 

[amator2]

Anybody who could explain how these fuses are supposed to function:

21,99€ | Xangsane 5*20mm/6*25mm HiFi pure silver fuse silver pillar replacement amplifier fuse HiFi power strip filter fuse tube

Think of it as ‘ No Fuse’
It’s like removing your fuse and adding a small piece of twisted wire.

 

[amator2]

Add me to that list. After adding it (this version):

39,79€ | Furukawa Flux-50 NFC power filter with FI-50 NCF Rhodium plated connector plug

between the power distributor and the Allo Shanti linear PSU, that feeds my WiiM, the sound is much more dampened at certain places. Something is suppressed, not sure, what, could be transients, but pretty much also noise. Not sure whether it is for the better, though, I will give it more burn-in time, before the final judgment.

I am currently waiting for the new Fosi Audio V3 Monos to arrive, hopefully this gives me better synergy with my Dyns and better resolution, so I can judge better.

Similar findings as I just posted.
If your goal is to make things less digital and more analogue n smoother , this would be worth trying. I’m not sure though if it’s removing digital hash or what I perceive as ambience and air. So called ‘energy’ and transients

 

[cdacosta]

Curious, has anyone looked inside a flux-50? I think you likely will find 1-3 AC rated filter caps in parallel to hot and neutral.

 

[BShaw]

Curious, has anyone looked inside a flux-50? I think you likely will find 1-3 AC rated filter caps in parallel to hot and neutral.

I bought two of the Ali ones and they were nothing more than a really marginal quality bit of cable with a pair of terminations. I didn’t see anything special about either termination, but they were definitely made with a thick resin of some kind, which no doubt has some damping qualities. I eventually pulled them.

 

[Jake2]

Similar findings as I just posted.
If your goal is to make things less digital and more analogue n smoother , this would be worth trying. I’m not sure though if it’s removing digital hash or what I perceive as ambience and air. So called ‘energy’ and transients

Thanks for the comments. I need to evaluate the Flux-50s’ effect again, removing and adding them back to see the delta as a lot has changed in my system since I got them, as I don’t recall any negatives. Testing my memory a bit now but IIRC a range of aspects like soundstage depth, length of acoustic decay and bass weight and texture generally improved in my system alongside the lessening of digital glare.

Maybe it’s partly a speaker / amp synergy thing that meant my system has been super sensitive to slightly etched transient edges or digital hash. I got a well regarded Sugden class A amp this week to try and it is so much warmer, richer and smoother (if a bit less resolving in some areas) than my Nilai I can see how I might have perceived certain past changes incl the Flux-50s that were net positive with the Nilai as dulling or blunting the sound. Will be interesting to experiment with this.

 

[Jake2]

I bought two of the Ali ones and they were nothing more than a really marginal quality bit of cable with a pair of terminations. I didn’t see anything special about either termination, but they were definitely made with a thick resin of some kind, which no doubt has some damping qualities. I eventually pulled them.

That might have been at my recommendation sorry!

I wonder if there is some vendor to vendor variation. Like I say I’ll have to test em again but I’d like to think the improvements in my system weren’t all in my imagination, would be concerning if so!

For what it’s worth I measured wirh and without them with my LF electric field meter and there was no reduction in field strength though to be fair it measures a wide frequency range which might mask a delta in certain HF noise spectra.

 

[BShaw]

That might have been at my recommendation sorry!

I wonder if there is some vendor to vendor variation. Like I say I’ll have to test em again but I’d like to think the improvements in my system weren’t all in my imagination, would be concerning if so!

For what it’s worth I measured wirh and without them with my LF electric field meter and there was no reduction in field strength though to be fair it measures a wide frequency range which might mask a delta in certain HF noise spectra.

No worries Jake! I still think there's something in the connectors worth exploring, since they seem so well damped and I've come to believe in how important it is to remove the finest parasitic vibrations. I've wondered if the sole reason these are causing a subjective difference is simply because the IEC female that directly plugs into the component is doing some damping at this last stage. The other possibility is the cable itself is such crap that it's filtering and this may be audible and to some peoples' liking.
Just my cheap theories, gotta do something with the grey matter besides fantasize about things I can't afford