"...nothing gets you closer to the music."
Omega Mikro
The job of an analog interconnect is to transfer a musical signal from source to sink without disturbing the timing relationships between the musical instruments' rich harmonic and noise structure. To accomplish this the interconnect cannot smear the signal by absorbing some of its energy or delaying some of its components more than others. The primary culprits that nature has built into every insulator and every conductor are called dielectric absorption and skin effect, respectively. Our job as cable designers is to minimize these smearing effects.
Here is how we do it:
The thinner the conductor the less skin effect.The AX ribbon conductors are highly directionalized, ultra pure 0.999999 copper. Its thickness is 200 micro-inches - one tenth that of a human hair!
Our true transmission line T-O Series RCA plugs are connected to the pure copper ribbon using silver plated brass compression screws and washers. We don't use solder because the heat needed would compromise the crystal structure so important to the sound quality. The organic dielectric insulator we use in the T-O Series was chosen as the best sounding available for this function: better than Teflon, Polystyrene, or any plastic we tested.
All of this attention to detail results in significant reduction of smearing because there is less dilectric absorbption to interfere with the purity of signal transfer.
For the body and center conductor portions of the T-O RCA we use thin-wall high-copper brass to further minimize the time-domain smearing of skin effect.
Consistent with our minimalist philosophy, these plugs are 1/5th the weight of our old plugs. The difference in sound quality between our new organic-transmission line design and other RCA plugs is astounding. Pierre and I were both blown away when we heard the nuances and dynamics this new plug conveys. We use silver plated compression screws to make an even better sounding connection than with solder, welding or unplated hardware.
The !mpulse AX comes in lengths from 0.5 to 2 meters: 1M is standard, other lengths are custom..
Planar Analog VI (AVI) WT