Audioquest: Invest in the best
You're looking for an audio cable with superior signal transmission and a smooth, clear sound. But you want a high-quality cable — and there's a plethora to choose from — so what could possibly make Audioquest cables that much more superior? Well, let me tell you. These cables are babied. They're coddled. Each cable's hand is held from its conception in Bill Low's head until it is carefully swaddled in product packaging and shipped off to your home.
Good, clean sound
Underneath the cable shield is a bare conductor, identical to the insulated center conductor. This bare conductor does double duty as a low distortion audio connection, and as the drain wire connecting the shield to ground. Since the electrical and magnetic interaction between strands in a conventional cable is the greatest source of distortion, often causing a somewhat dirty harsh sound, both of the Mini-1's conductors are solid construction.
Get your recommended daily intake
Audioquest recommends six to eleven servings of wholesome sound per day. And that shouldn't be hard considering Audioquest's Long-Grain Copper (LGC) allows a smoother and clearer sound than cables using regular Oxygen-Free High-Conductivity (OFHC) copper. OFHC is a general metal industry specification regarding "loss," without any concern for distortion. LGC has fewer oxides within the conducting material, less impurities, less grain boundaries, and definitively better performance. To top it off, the LGC conductor is wrapped in Foam PE insulation to minimize information smearing.
The constancy of superb solder
Just as cable technology relies on minimizing distortion, so does solder. Using the most appropriate flux and precise metallurgy, Audioquest solder has been optimized to make a low-distortion connection. All solder, including silver, is a poor conductor. The difference you hear between solders is a result of connection quality. Audioquest Solder does not have a high silver content because the more silver there is in solder, the more difficult it is to make a good connection. (Though quite the opposite is true when it comes to using silver conductors.)
Get a grip
If you're investing in Audioquest cables, you expect even the little things to rock your world — like the cylinder tips on the Mini-1. Audioquest isn't going to put all that R&D into their cable technology and then drop the ball with a bad connection. So these babies are gold plated, just like the connector, for exceptional performance as well as for gold's noble, anti-corrosive properties. And each cylinder sleeve has perpendicular cuts that allow for a tight, solid connection — which makes for a tight, solid signal between your components.
Damage control — Let's compare apples. . .
It's important to know that an audio or video signal cannot be improved upon — it's as good as it's going to get once it leaves your amp, DVD player, whatever component you're running. So why bother with a high-end cable? Simple: the signal can't be improved, but it can be damaged. Significantly. A lesser-quality cable leaves your signal wide-open to instabilities. A lesser-quality cable is constructed of bundled, twisted strands of conductive material — up to 200 to 2000 strands per bundle. And as the signal wants to travel the path of least resistance (down the outside of the bundle), all those twisted strands inhibit the signal. They draw the signal from the outside of the bundle to the inside, where it fights to get back to the outside again. What's the result? Distortion. Lost data. Poor sound quality.
. . .to oranges
Audioquest, on the other hand, engineers their cables with the highest quality, perfectly gauged solid-core, copper and silver conductors. And each conductor strand is slowly and precisely loomed, not twisted, into the final cable bundle — and it's important to note that the maximum amount of strands Audioquest has used in their longest cable, for flexibility requirements, is 32 (that's a few less than 200, and a lot less than 2000). Once they have constructed the conductor, Audioquest wraps it in the dielectric (a fancy word for the insulating material) to keep the cable at peak performance levels at all times by absorbing as little energy as possible in order to avoid the reintroduction of energy (distortion) back into the conductor.
Audioquest makes sure you're headed in the right direction
Did you know, all cables are directional? Yes, all cables, from hardware store electrical cable to the finest pure silver cables have a direction — much like wood has a grain. It has to do with molecular structure, which we won't get into. What you should know though is that a cable sounds much better when the signal is traveling in the proper direction. And all Audioquest cables are marked for direction, so you don't have to figure it out.
The bottom line
What Audioquest is doing is engineering cables with conductors that have all the proper attributes, for decreased distortion. They've arranged the conductors so the signal travels down a straight path, for decreased distortion. They've wrapped the conductor metal in a non-conductive material, to decrease distortion. The result is an astonishingly pure, very stable signal. Starting to make sense? Audioquest loathes distortion. You'll love Audioquest.
