NORDOST SORT SYSTEMS SORT KONE

Description

The Nordost Sort Kone is an innovative resonance control system designed to enhance the performance of high-end audio components by minimizing vibrations and noise. Part of Nordost’s renowned Sort Systems range, the Sort Kone offers a practical yet highly effective solution for audiophiles and professionals who want to elevate their listening experience by improving the sound clarity, detail, and overall musicality of their audio equipment.

Key Features and Benefits

1. Resonance Control Technology: The Sort Kone is engineered to reduce unwanted mechanical vibrations that can interfere with the performance of audio components. By isolating these vibrations, the Sort Kone ensures that your audio system operates in a more stable environment, leading to improved sound quality and a more refined listening experience.
2. Mechanical Grounding: Unlike conventional isolation devices, the Sort Kone doesn’t just dampen vibrations—it actively directs them away from your equipment. This process, known as mechanical grounding, channels vibrations away from your audio component and into the support structure, minimizing their impact on the delicate electronic signals and circuitry within your equipment.
3. Material Options for Customization: Nordost offers the Sort Kone in four different models, each made with distinct materials to suit various preferences and budgets. These models are:
   • AC (Aluminum/Ceramic): Offers an entry-level solution with effective vibration control. It provides noticeable improvements in detail and clarity.
   • BC (Bronze/Ceramic): Delivers enhanced performance over the AC model, offering greater resolution and improved dynamics.
   • TC (Titanium/Ceramic): An advanced option that provides superior vibration control, resulting in a significant increase in transparency, dynamics, and overall soundstage.
   • AS (Alloy/Steel): Offers excellent grounding and is suited for heavier audio components, providing stability and enhanced sonic benefits.
4. Easy Integration: The Sort Kone system is designed to be placed under audio components such as CD players, amplifiers, preamplifiers, DACs, turntables, or any other hi-fi equipment. It is a straightforward yet effective upgrade that doesn’t require any permanent modification to your system, making it easy to experiment with different configurations and placements.
5. Versatility and Scalability: The Sort Kone system can be used individually or in sets, allowing you to tailor the level of vibration control to your specific audio setup. Whether you have a compact audio system or a full-scale high-end setup, the Sort Kone can be adapted to suit your needs.

Who Is This Product For?

• Audiophiles: Ideal for enthusiasts who want to achieve the highest level of sound clarity and detail in their high-fidelity audio systems.
• Hi-Fi Enthusiasts: Suitable for those looking to optimize the performance of their audio components by reducing unwanted vibrations and interference.
• Audio Professionals: Perfect for studio technicians, sound engineers, and professionals who require precise and accurate sound reproduction in their equipment.

Typical Applications

The Nordost Sort Kone system can be used with:

• CD Players, DACs, and Digital Sources: Improves the accuracy and detail of digital playback by reducing vibrational interference.
• Turntables and Phono Stages: Enhances the analog signal quality by minimizing vibrations that can affect needle tracking and playback.
• Amplifiers and Preamplifiers: Improves the overall soundstage, dynamics, and clarity by reducing the impact of mechanical vibrations.
• Streaming Devices and Network Players: Ensures cleaner signal transmission by eliminating vibrations that can interfere with digital circuitry.

Why Choose the Nordost Sort Kone?

• Improved Sound Quality: Experience enhanced clarity, resolution, and dynamic range as unwanted vibrations are eliminated, allowing your audio equipment to perform at its best.
• Increased Musicality: The Sort Kone system brings out the natural warmth and detail of your music, resulting in a more engaging and lifelike listening experience.
• Versatile and Adaptable: Available in different models to suit various budgets and requirements, the Sort Kone system can be customized to match your audio setup.

How to Use the Sort Kone

1. Placement: Place three or four Sort Kones under your audio component, positioned strategically to support its weight and maximize vibration control. Three Kones are typically sufficient for smaller components, while four may be necessary for larger, heavier equipment.
2. Experimentation: You can experiment with different placements to find the optimal configuration that provides the best sonic improvement for your setup.
3. Upgrade Path: You can start with one model and upgrade to a higher-performing model later, allowing you to progressively improve your system’s performance.

The Nordost Sort Kone is an exceptional accessory for anyone looking to extract the maximum performance from their high-end audio components. By effectively eliminating unwanted vibrations and providing superior mechanical grounding, the Sort Kone enhances every aspect of your system’s sound quality, from clarity and detail to dynamic range and soundstage. Whether you’re an audiophile, hi-fi enthusiast, or professional, the Nordost Sort Kone is a valuable investment that will take your audio experience to a new level of excellence.

The Sort Kone is a directly coupled and mechanically tuned resonance control device, using a sophisticated new approach to the problem of supporting sensitive electronics.

Whereas most equipment supports are referred to as Isolation Devices, this actually completely misunderstands the nature of the problem. The most harmful mechanical energy doesn’t enter the equipment from outside; it’s generated internally by the audio circuits and their power supplies. Transformers, power supply capacitors, even the active devices themselves, all vibrate as they operate – and those vibrations occur right where the fragile signal is, creating timing errors that smear and distort the music. The Sort Kone is designed specifically to deal with this threat to audio fidelity.

Sort Kones provide a “blacker” background to your music. With it comes greater focus, instrumental color, depth, transparency and dynamic range. Your system will sound more natural and more lifelike, your music more lively and engaging, the musicians like better musicians – simply because you’ll finally be able to hear the notes they’re playing, the way they play them and precisely when. So, release the hidden performance that’s lurking in your equipment.

• Three-part construction employs superior materials in a mechanically tuned configuration.
• Bypasses soft feet fitted to equipment to provide a direct mechanical ground path for internal energy.
• Can be used in triplets, quartets or even larger numbers.
• Height: 56mm
• Three levels of price and performance, depending on materials employed:

AC – aluminum post and base in combination with an upgraded ceramic coupling ball.
BC – bronze post and base elements combined with an upgraded ceramic coupling ball.
TC – titanium post and base in combination with an upgraded ceramic coupling ball.

All units are individually packed so that you can determine the optimum number for your system’s requirements.

• Resonance control devices
• Sold in single units
AC – Aluminum construction with a ceramic ball bearing
BC – Bronze construction with a ceramic ball bearing
TC – Titanium construction with a ceramic ball bearing

MORE INFO

VIDEO: NORDOST SORT KONES – INTRODUCTION AND PLACEMENT GUIDE

Nordost Sort Kones are a vital part of your hifi audio system. This video serves as an introduction to these anti-vibration, resonance control devices, as well as a set-up guide to ensure that you get the most out of your Sort Kones and improve the performance of your sound system.

NORDOST SORT KONE – REVIEW

“The Nordost AC SORT KONES are far more than a tweak, and that to even consider them tweaks denies their stunning music-freeing abilities. We very highly recommend the Nordost SORT KONES as an amazing, stand-alone, portable rack system, that will allow one’s music to sing at a level above.”

— K. E. Heartsong, AudioKey Reviews

NORDOST SORT ISOLATION SYSTEM — A TRIO OF OPTIONS

“…greater sonic ease and less edginess, an improvement in subtle detail retrieval, and more coherent dynamics. Music just sounded more focused and less jumbled, as if small timing errors had been corrected…Sor Füt helped ratchet up my system’s performance across the board without any apparent downsides.”

— Kirk Midtskog, The Absolute Sound

NORDOST SORT KONE BC RESONANCE CONTROL SYSTEM

“Ranging from the subtle in some areas to the easily distinguishable in others, the Sort Kone BCs nevertheless made an overall undeniable improvement to my system’s levels of transparency, harmonic decay, detail retrieval and soundstage presentation.”

– Edgar Kramer, SoundStage! Australia

SORT KONES — A SCEPTICS BACKFLIP

“Track after track delivered more emotional renditions of familiar music, clearer harmonics in acoustic pieces, and an overall feeling of a system that had just found perfect phase. The width and depth of the soundstage had increased and the ever-telling foot-tapping had started.”

– Marc Rushton, StereoNET

NORDOST SORT KONE, FÜT, AND LIFT SYSTEM COMPONENTS

“With all these Sort components in place, the system is really cookin’. So, it’s time to take them all away and see what happens. Then it’s almost immediately time to put them all back in, because taking them out was such a shock to the system: both yours and the electronics. What was cookin’ is now stale. The unSorted sound is like your system on a bad hair day. The soundstage seems to fold in on itself, the natural sense of harmonic overtones, and sense of musical structure to the sound has weakened. It’s just not all there!”

– Alan Sircom, Hi-Fi+

NORDOST SORT KONES REVIEW

“I can wholeheartedly recommend the Nordost Sort Kones as a major step forward in improving sound at a reasonable cost.”

– Fred Crowder, Dagogo

THE IMPORTANCE OF VIBRATION CONTROL

Vibration makes sound possible. However, it can also be one of the most damaging factors to a sound system. How can something so fundamental to music also have such a negative impact on performance? This guide will help you to identify different types of resonances, their sources, and how to manage those harmful vibrations, so that you can enjoy your sound system to its full potential.