Chord ChordMusic Speaker Cable Factory Terminated Set
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 speaker cable
We waited a long time for the speaker cable to arrive, the company that produce Taylon® insulation don’t usually build anything that comes close to audio cables and they took their time.
Nigel. The design we were pretty confident about, but the longer we waited for the speaker cable to arrive, the longer we listened to ChordMusic interconnects with Chord Sarum speaker cable. The better and better it sounded and it got to the point where I would lie awake at night wondering exactly how we could better the sound we already had.
When the ChordMusic speaker cable finally arrived I pulled rank and took the first set we made up into the dem room on my own. I needn’t have worried; we know that, if anything, the combination of insulation and conductor material is more influential on the sound than it is with interconnects.
For a company that had always been aware that different combinations of conductor and insulation material had predictable tonal characteristics, and had long ago settled on Silver-plated conductors and PTFE insulation as being the most neutral combination we could find, Taylon® is a revelation. As well as being completely phase stable, when it’s used as insulation in a cable it allows us to produce the most neutral and uncoloured cables we have ever heard. When you talk about timing people tend to be talking about the groove that musicians are able produce, rhythm sections, rock and roll, reggae every form of music has rhythm as a heartbeat it’s why it’s always been so important to us.
The utter lack of any colouration and the phase coherence of ChordMusic speaker cable produce a cable that is so musically transparent that we can refine timing down to individual notes. A lot of instruments produce an extremely complex timbre. Made up of the fundamental notes, the associated harmonics and the type of material the instrument is made from. The obvious place to listen for this would be acoustic instruments but they affect electric guitars and basses as well. ChordMusic doesn’t just let you hear into the complexity of timbre it puts every part that makes for the growth, the bloom and then the decay in exactly the right place. This adds so much to music and it’s something that hi fi components can do very well, it’s something that Chord’s new range of cables can do as well, if you want to listen it’s there with Shawline Analogue.
With ChordMusic though there’s no need to listen it’s just there and timbre is so much part of the magic of music.
There is another first with ChordMusic speaker cable; it’s the first speaker cable to be fitted with Tuned ARAY conductor geometry. Like the interconnects it has such a degree of clarity and transparency that it’s possible to hear the extra coherence and detail that the Tuned ARAY geometry brings.