Cable Designs, Materials and Manufacturing Processes The high-end cable market today is surrounded by hype that may lead one to believe that products are developed using very special custom materials and secret manufacturing processes that are so esoteric, complex and proprietary that their cable is ultra expensive to produce thereby justifying the absurdly high prices. We have many years of experience in the design and manufacturing of wire and cable. After dissecting and examining many of the mega high-priced competitive cables, none revealed any materials or manufacturing processes that are not known by all wire and cable manufacturers. Described below are the facts associated with the design and manufacture of wire and cable in the industry.There is no "black magic." In fact, insulations such as Teflon, foamed Teflon, Polyethylene, and Polypropylene are not customized formulations made especially for these companies, but rather are only a few of the commonly available insulations used by all manufacturers for all types of wire and cable. The high-end audio/video cable market is far too small for chemical companies to formulate custom insulations for high fidelity. Therefore, we use the same insulation materials used by other high-end cable manufacturers.
Skin Effect, Magnetic Interaction, Effects of Capacitance and Inductance
These are terms that appear often in high-end literature written in language that is also often technically intimidating to audiophiles. Simply stated, skin effect is a phenomenon where high frequencies travel along the outside diameter of the conductor causing a timing difference (phase shift) of the travel of high notes to low notes.
Magnetic interaction is a phenomenon that produces distortions as a result of the crossing and intersecting of individual conductors in a cable. Capacitance and inductance are electrical characteristics that, if excessive, can cause filtering (reduction of volume) of high notes and low notes respectively.
All of these effects must be considered. Many high-end cable companies have expounded on their "unique" and "creative" strand/construction processes and have proclaimed that only theirs effectively cures the ills cited above. There are only five types of strand geometry constructions: bunched, concentric, unilay, braided (coaxial), and rope lay. All of the high-priced cables we examined use one of these constructions. These geometries, as well as weaving (cabling) patterns are all accomplished by standard strand and weaving machines in use today by virtually all wire and cable manufacturers.
What are our designs like?
First, the materials we use are the best available. Our connectors are machined from solid billets; not stamped out of sheet metal as some others are. Stamped sheet metal vibrates and causes resonance and distortions. The insulation in our RCA connectors is PTFE Teflon, not an inferior one like Delrin as many others use. These details may seem small and not very important; however, they do contribute significantly to quality of construction and performance. You may have noticed that many other competing companies do not describe the construction of their connectors - sheet metal and Delrin are much less expensive.
We our proprietary Silverfuse metal conductor in most of our cables (described at the pages of the individual cables). Our top of the line cables use Teflon as the insulation because it is the best insulation available. Many of our competitors use Teflon. However, we use, and state so in our product descriptions, PTFE Teflon. This is one of the two types of Teflon available. The other is FEP Teflon that is less expensive and highly inferior to PTFE. Have you ever seen other high-end cable companies state in their advertising that their Teflon is PTFE? We use multiple solid core conductors in most of our cables to control skin effect and eliminate magnetic interaction. We utilize construction and weaving geometry that control capacitance and inductance. Even though we use standard weaving (cabling) machines, our weaving patterns are unique and proprietary. We also include in our weaving constructions materials that prevent build-up of static electricity and that absorb vibrations that all cables are subject to.
