Chord ChordMusic Digital Streaming Audio Cable

ChordMusic is a revelatory product, developed using an exciting and entirely new insulation material which has never been used with audio cables before: Taylon®.

Taylon®

The relationship between conductor material and insulation material is critical to the performance of any cable, particularly if the aim is to design cables that are tonally neutral – music is full of colour, cables shouldn’t be. For a long time we have used a combination of PTFE – in various forms – and silver-plated conductors; this combination is not uncommon and once burnt in, it is pretty neutral and has less tonal influence on the signal it carries than other types of insulation. Chord Sarum Tuned ARAY and Super ARAY cables take this combination to its ultimate end point. The conductors are micro-polished prior to silver-plating and gas-foamed PTFE is employed as a dielectric. We have also fitted a PTFE RCA plug surround which improves upon the acrylic version previously used. ChordMusic benefits from all of these advances; it uses the same Super ARAY technology and the same PTFE plugs. What sets it apart is Taylon® - a unique insulation material that has never been used to produce audio cables before. Taylon® is exclusive to The Chord Company and is the best-performing dielectric we have ever used. Although its dielectric constant is very slightly lower than PTFE, crucially, Taylon® is phase-stable at typical room temperatures. Dielectric choice plays a critical part in the performance of any audio cable and Taylon® insulated conductors, combined with the Super ARAY conductor configuration, produce the most natural, musically coherent cables.

Super ARAY conductor technology

All ChordMusic cables use the new Super ARAY conductor configuration. Super ARAY technology is a development of our original Tuned ARAY design. The Super ARAY conductor technology keeps all the musical coherence of the Tuned ARAY design and brings big increases in the levels of musical detail the cable is able to carry. The Super ARAY tuning process is very different for each cable type; the end result though is consistent. Super ARAY technology produces analogue and digital cables that can carry breathtaking levels of detail in an extremely coherent and musical way. The new Super ARAY configuration used in ChordMusic requires the same exacting build as previous Tuned ARAY cables and again, a combination of precision machinery and meticulous hand assembly is used.

Noise reduction

During the development of ChordMusic it became very obvious that we were dealing with a level of musical transparency we had not encountered before. This led to further experimentation. Seemingly insignificant changes in construction brought surprising improvements. Because of this, the ChordMusic cables have three external layers of noise reducing materials along their lengths. The first of these is designed to reduce levels of mechanical noise; the second was chosen to constrain the noise reducing layer in a very precise way; finally, beneath the braided finish, there is a metallic external braid. Each one of these layers contributes to the overall performance.

ChordMusic Digital

What’s at the heart of your system? Increasingly it’s a DAC, with a CD transport, streamer or dedicated Audiophile hard drive connected and maybe a USB so you can use a computer as well – You Tube is full of some amazing films of concerts and while sound quality is never going to be great it’s always going to sound better through the hi fi than the laptop.

So if that’s your system we could do this. We could take out the cable between the transport – or the streamer – and DAC and replace it with the ChordMusic Digital and we could tell you we’d put a better DAC into the system and keep quiet about the cable swap. Then you could sit down, listen to some of your favourite tracks and rave about how amazing the new DAC is , about the levels of detail it’s added, the size of the soundstage, the amazing coherence and the way that every track you played sounded so real and alive – better than you’ve ever heard them. Then we could tell you we didn’t change the DAC what we actually changed was the cable, and all that wonderful stuff you’d heard was what the ChordMusic Digital was carrying and your existing cable wasn’t.

The ChordMusic Digital, like all the ChordMusic cables uses Taylon® and the profound and ground breaking improvements it brings to analogue cables apply to digital cables of all types as well.

There are some truly stunning DACs available and some of them will cost less than the ChordMusic Digital. That isn’t a reason not to try the ChordMusic Digital. It’s a digital cable that carries a signal with a degree of accuracy that makes it’s as thrilling and profound as the analogue cables.

Anything you lose between the digital output of your source and DAC you are not getting back and listening to the ChordMusic digital will show you just how much critical information the cable between the source and the DAC should be carrying.

Borrow the ChordMusic Digital from a ChordMusic retailer and judge it on its ability and the contribution it makes to the musical performance of your system.