Yes, we are. Does that make us crazy, probably we are audiophiles. I’ve been designing cables for a while now and I have some designs that are stupid good for the money. We’re talking I’ve put them up against multi thousand dollar cables and they come out on top but they’re in the 3 figures price range. They are good enough that Spatial approached me wanting to do a partnership to produce them. We are going to start with the XLR and RCA interconnects cables and expand from there. We are targeting roughly $500 for a 3 foot pair and are taking preorders now, we expect to have them on the website within the next month.
But can cables really make much of a difference???
For most of us the difference in cables is subtle, maybe a tonal shift here, or slight increase in depth of sound stage. But they never amount to something on the level of a component change, do they? What if I told you they could be on the same level as a significant component upgrade. That’s crazy talk!!! that is until you’ve heard it, then you can’t deny it.
Lets rewind, it’s 2017, i’ve been an audiophile for a couple years and I was soon to meet a group of friends in Minneapolis that would change the course on how I look on hi-fi. They were musicians, some worked at hifi shops, one had his own cable company. All of them had dedicated rooms, mutithousand dollar gear, some spun records, some listened to digital. They all preached about system synergy. But one thing stood true they were passionate about music. No genre was off limits if it was good music, it was played. Little did I know I was spoiled, I learned very quick what great systems could do. Then Bam! I was back in Utah with a mediocre system. Was it fine, yes. But it didn’t have the same magic. I was hooked, I was chasing the proverbial dragon. I learned quick, I compulsively researched not just in gear, but in the science and engineering. I was on a mission. Audio nirvana! Through the years I upgraded my system, started working for Spatial. I was starting to get that sound I was after, my sound. But even after some top flight gear, a dedicated listening room, I was still missing something. When I would travel back to Minneapolis they had that magic, the soundstage was more dimensional, music just seemed to hang in the air, there was a purity to the sound, a lack of a haze if you would. “Maybe it’s the humidity” I thought to myself. And then it hit me… oh my god they’re using silver!
I’d been caught in the dogma, silver is bright, harsh, isn’t natural sounding. Like many audiophiles I had heard silver cables that were those things but the cables in Minneapolis weren’t those things, they were the opposite. They were smooth with a natural tone. Unfortunately, I couldn’t buy those cables in Minneapolis. They were just too expensive. So then I began the long journey of researching and designing, I built many cables and quickly realized I had a knack for it. I learned from friends, colleagues and other designers. Like Galen from Iconoclast or Ray from Kimber, or the one who started it all back in Minneapolis Chris Sain. I was going to design a silver interconnect that could be everything great silver could do without the negative stereotypes. And I was going to do it under $1000…
I did it, and when you hear them you can’t go back to copper. They are smooth yet have gobs of resolution that never get in your face. They unlock a completely other dimension in your sound stage. If you think tubes are holographic, just wait until you hear them on these. The bass!!! The bass!!! Ohhhh my the bass… It’s awesome. And last there’s just a purity to the sound, there is a hash with copper that you don’t notice until it’s gone. They are the magic I was looking for.
The design:(nerd talk incoming, TLDR version on the website soon)
All great products start with the design, these are no different. So what parameters matter? If we look at the typical impedances in line-level interconnects, the source impedance is usually in the range of a few ohms to a few kilo-ohms. The load impedance typically spans from around 10kOhms to 1MOhm, and the input capacitance is usually quite low (100pF or less). This gives us a sense of which electrical parameters are most significant.
As long as the cable's DC resistance remains moderate (a few ohms). It has minimal influence on the signal. For example, a 1-ohm loop resistance feeding a 10kOhm amplifier input results in an attenuation of just 0.001dB.
Cable inductance also has minimal impact, provided it is kept within reasonable limits. The higher the load impedance, the less significant the cable inductance becomes; conversely, the lower the load impedance, the more important the inductance. Typically, interconnect cables of around 3 feet in length have inductance values of less than 1μH. At 20kHz, a 1μH inductor has an impedance of about 0.13 Ohms, causing an additional attenuation of only -0.0001dB, meaning inductive attenuation is negligible.
However, cable capacitance plays a more significant role in interconnects. Capacitance can lead to a -0.1dB roll-off at 20kHz when paired with a 100 Ohm source impedance, at only around 15nF of capacitance. If the source impedance is 1kOhms, a 1.5nF capacitance will cause this roll-off! Many Hi-Fi devices feature output impedances around 1kOhm, and In longer runs of various shielded cables capacitance can accumulate easily, reaching several nF. For line-level interconnects, the cable's DC resistance and inductance are of minor importance. Cables with high resistance or inductance will likely have minimal effect on the sound passing through them. However, minimizing capacitance is crucial for optimal performance.
Let’s look at some other important effects in interconnect design. In my experience, cables with stranded conductors tend to produce a harsher sound, with a bit of grain to the treble. There are several theories explaining why this happens. One of which suggests that copper oxide forms between the strands, leading to non-linear conductivity (creating a diode like effect). Like wise, low purity conductors have increased grain structure within the wire leading to greater number of oxidation points. Personally, I prefer solid core, high purity (preferably OCC) conductors over stranded ones. Reducing this effect drastically, from my tests it gives the cable a much more relaxed, smooth sound without sacrificing any detail. To further that trend if we use a pure solid silver conductor, this phenomenon is completely removed due to the oxidation of silver still being conductive. If any of you have heard silver conductors there is no question of its sound difference to copper. I am not entirely sure all of the reasons for this, but I have confirmed through blind, listening tests, the difference. Silver is significantly more transparent, holographic, and dynamic. Although it also seems to be susceptible to more parasitics within the cable design. If not treated with great care, it is easy for silver to sound bright, brash and unnatural sounding. Silver will be chosen as the conductor, but we must look at all areas of cable design to limit parasitics that could negatively impact the sound.
One of these possible parasitic points is the conductors dielectric. The preferred conductor being air followed by cotton. But why? As current flows down the conductors, a small residual charge is left over in the dielectric. This charge then distorts the following waveform. This phenomenon is known as dielectric absorption, for solid dielectric’s cotton achieves the lowest absorption coefficient, (lowest is better) at 1.3 followed by Teflon at 2.1. Although Teflon, while a good insulator, is also known for its high triboelectric potential. Meaning it can generate static electricity when in contact with other materials, potentially introducing noise into the signal. This makes cotton the preferred dielectric. A lower dielectric absorption also helps with a phenomenon called velocity of propagation. This phenomenon is the result of different frequencies traveling down the conductors at different rates of speed. While previously thought to be undetectable by humans, recent studies have shown that humans can exceed the limits predicted by the Fourier uncertainty principle, particularly in discriminating the time and frequency of sounds. I believe this to lend insight on why we can hear differences in dialectics. So the question is, how do we try to linearize as much as possible the velocity of propagation in the audio band? First, as previously mentioned a good dielectric, secondly small conductor sizes drastically improve linearizing VOP. This can be seen as skin effect where there is a time smearing that happens as the signal flows on the outside versus the inside at different rates. And as mentioned earlier, resistance is not a critical factor in interconnects, so a small solid core wire below the audibility range of skin affect will be preferred.
Another effect is blocking and suppressing EMI and RFI. With shielded cables, what we see is an interaction between the signal current and the shield. This can induce eddy currents within the shield, which further degrades the sound. While adding spacing can help, it also reduces the effectiveness of the shielding. To circumvent this issue, we must rely on the geometry of the cable to minimize RFI and EMI interference. This primarily applies to RFI, though lower frequency EMI can also become an issue. The best rejection of external EMI and RFI rejection seems to come from woven constructions, like those found in Kimber Kable. Closely twisted pairs are also effective at rejecting EMI (with the best achieving about -45db or so), but their RFI rejection isn't as strong, and they tend to have higher capacitance. The least effective at rejecting both EMI and RFI is the "linear pair" design, which simply uses two parallel, spaced wires. Due to the added capacitance of shielding and twisted pairs it’s clear a woven/spaced geometry is preferred.
With all this information understood what are the new interconnect cables? They feature high purity OCC silver solid core conductors with a cotton dialectic counter spiraled around a cotton rope. The design is low capacitance roughly 3-5pF per foot! It has good EMI and RFI rejection without shielding due to the counter spiral nature. The cables excel in soundstage, dynamics, bass, and detail, but do not suffer from the stereotypical negative silver traits. They are smooth not harsh, liquid not hard. Above all though these cables are transparent and will tell you what’s going on around them. I’m not interested making a tone control. These really are a cost no object design, could we charge multi thousand dollars for a pair? Yes! They’re that good. But I have no interest selling overpriced cables to the rich… enough people do that already. I want someone who’s got a great system but nothing crazy priced to be able to put these into their system and have the proverbial oh shit moment! Just like I did those many years ago.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
