? m e t s y s i f i h a s ’ t a h W
You’re probably reading this because you either own or are considering buying a hi-fi system. So what’s a hi-fi system for? What do you want your hi-fi system to do? It seems like a silly question. A hi-fi system is something you use to play music on, it’s something you use to play old songs that trigger memories and emotions. It’s something to discover new music on. It’s something to help you unwind and relax. It’s something to let you explore the grandeur of symphonies or the vision of jazz musicians. It’s something to move you and reduce you to tears. It’s something to make you get up and dance. It’s something to let you explore the inner landscapes of music; it’s an analytical device, it lets you inside, it lets you understand the musician’s intentions or the producer’s skill. Most of all, it’s something to make you love your favourite music even more. It’s not bass, mid-range and treble. Break music down like this and it just becomes sound or noise. The magic of music lies in the creation. It lies in the sometimes supernatural communication between musicians. Listen to Solid Air and to John Martyn playing with Danny Thompson, hear their ability to weave harmonic and rhythmic melodies around each other on a decent hi-fi system and realise that music is one of the last pieces of magic we still have left. That’s what a hi-fi system is for. This is why we make cables, they’re every bit as important as every other component in your hi-fi system. The Chord Company designs and makes cables that help us and you fully experience the magic of music.
Unashamed
Eccentric
Made inE The Chord Company has been producing cables for hi-fi and home cinema systems since 1985. We’re driven by a passion for music and also by the company founder and owner, Sally Kennedy’s insistence on quality, value for money and customer service. We deal with some of the best hi-fi retailers and best distributors in the world. Everyone at The Chord Company is either a musician, a music lover or both. We take enormous pride in producing all our analogue and digital interconnects here in the UK. We are based in the heart of Wiltshire in a purpose-built facility with a truly excellent demonstration room (everyone’s favourite place). Nigel Finn, the Technical Director and principal designer, loves the flexibility that a committed production team and an outstanding demonstration room gives him when it comes to developing, designing and producing cables. Everyone, whether they are in production, sales or administration, gets to spend time in the demonstration room. This way, everybody in the company understands what we are trying to achieve and how important it is to maintain quality.
Beautiful
Proud
England STAFF SELECTION
Everybody takes pride in their work. We’re a close family as much as we are a company. Pride in workmanship is just as important whether we’re building a Crimson VEE 3 or a Sarum Tuned ARAY. The Sarum Tuned ARAY may take a lot longer to produce: it’s entirely built by hand and has to be assembled with meticulous care. A Crimson VEE 3 may be simpler to build but the soldered connections are as perfect as they are on every other cable in our range. Whatever cable you choose to listen to (or buy) from the Chord range has been built to the best possible standard and all of our hand built cables have a ten year warranty.
Sally (Owner and Founder)
Beethoven “Pastoral Symphony” Pink Floyd “Dark Side Of The Moon” Simon and Garfunkel “Bridge Over Troubled Water” Van Morrison “Poetic Champions Compose” George Gershwin “Rhapsody In Blue” Various “Motown Chartbusters Volume 3”
Make your system sing
Regardless of the system you put together, regardless of the budget, there are some simple things you can do to make sure your system works at its very best. First of all, make sure the system is level. Anyone with a turntable is going to understand this but it’s just as relevant to CD players. If your system is on a rack, grab a spirit level, check, and if necessary, spend the time it takes to ensure the rack is both stable and level. It’s time well spent. It means that when you do start experimenting with different cables you’ll be able to hear exactly what they’re doing. The same is true of speakers. If you’re choosing new speakers, have a serious think about the size of your room and about where you can place the speakers. Don’t choose a speaker that’s too big for your room: better to choose a speaker that will work where you can position it. So, assuming you’ve found your ideal speaker, it’s time to experiment with positioning. This is how we position a speaker in our dem room. Whether it’s a standmount or floor standing loudspeaker, we start by removing the spikes, this will let you slide the speaker around easily. Depending on the speaker, too close to the wall and the bass is likely to dominate. Too much bass can so easily destroy the timing and coherence of your music. You’ve got to start somewhere, so have a look at the manufacturer’s suggestions. Too much bass means moving the speaker forward and possibly inwards as well. The worst place for a speaker is the corner of a room. Move the speaker a few inches forward and play a piece of music that you know really well. Still too much bass? Move it forward another couple of inches. Check again and then be prepared to move the speakers backwards and forwards in increasingly small movements until you achieve the most balanced sound. Now you can experiment with angling the speakers towards your favourite listening seat. Small changes to the angle can make a big difference. Once you’ve done this, it’s time to re-fit the spikes and ensure the speakers are properly stable and level. Use a spirit level to ensure the speaker is level and then adjust the front spikes so the speaker is very slightly angled upwards. You may find that level is best, but depending on the height of the speaker, angling it slightly backwards can make big improvements to the way the system images. Once you’ve done this it’s time to try speaker cables.
STAFF SELECTION Richard Senior (Systems and Data Manager) Cinematic Orchestra “To Build a Home” Junip “In Every Direction” Dave Brubeck “Live at Carnegie Hall” Aim “Cold Water Music” Four Tet “Smile around the Face”
Speaker cables are every bit as important as any other connection or component in your system. In our experience, speaker cable is where so many systems fall down. In truth, regardless of the system, better speaker cables make it sound better. Spending about 10% of the system’s value on cables isn’t going to let you hear what your system can really do. There are many hi-fi components that offer quite remarkable performance for their cost and a good speaker cable will let you hear how good they are. Most Chord dealers have demonstration sets of speaker cable that they are happy for their customers to take home and listen to. Take advantage of this. It’s your system, it’s in your room and if you’re experimenting with speaker cable you need to do so with your system and your music. The really important thing is to take your time. It’s very easy to confuse different with better. Just because something sounds different doesn’t mean it’s better. Find a favourite piece of music, something that really affects or excites you, and have a listen. Does it sound more exciting? Does it move you? Remember, you’re listening to music. You’re not listening to bass, mid-range and treble. You’re listening to musicians performing music.
Shielded speaker cable
We started producing shielded speaker cable around 2004. By then we were already using really effective wide frequency shielding on interconnect cables. The improvements the shielding made were very easy to hear but there was still a nagging doubt. At the time, we had some very talented musician friends with some very beautiful instruments. There was a string quartet which we listened to a lot. The complexity and depth of the timbre of their instruments was breathtakingly lovely. Yet trying to reproduce this, on what would then have been regarded as a very good hi-fi system, was hugely frustrating. Our first shielded speaker cable was Chord Signature and for the first time, listening to a recording of the string quartet, we could hear some of that wonderful complexity and timbre that made their music so magical. We now produce a range of shielded speaker cables. It’s not just timbre and tone they improve, rhythm is better defined, as are dynamics. Sound staging is improved; someone once described being able to walk among the musicians with Signature speaker cable in their system. If you haven’t listened to a shielded speaker cable you should do so. They can bring so much to the enjoyment of music.
There’s one more thing to consider when you’re changing speaker cable. Part of the design of any audio cable is that it should have as little tonal effect on the signal it’s carrying as is possible. The truth, though, is that to some degree, every speaker cable will have a particular tonal characteristic and what this may mean is changing the position of your speakers again. These will only be small changes, maybe forwards or backwards a little, but it’s worth doing. It’s worth the time it takes.
STAFF SELECTION Alan Gibb (Managing Director) Mary Gauthier “Mercy Now “ John Gorka “Out Of the Valley” Natalie Merchant “Ophelia” Gustav Mahler “2nd Symphony The Resurrection” Maria Callas “Il Trovatore” (Verdi)
Single & bi-wire speaker cable Some time ago we stopped producing bi-wire cables. The reason for this was that we found, with almost every speaker we used in our demo room, that whilst bi-wire cables seemed to produce a degree of openness and a perceived increase in detail, single wiring ultimately produced the most musically coherent and involving performance. We compared single-wire speaker cables with bi-wire cables of an equivalent cost. In every test, be it “blind” or otherwise, the single-wire speaker cable was the preferred choice. There are some simple things you can do if you choose the single-wire speaker cable route that will really help. The vast majority of speakers with bi-wire inputs have gold-plated links that join the bass and treble inputs together Replace them. You could use Chord Signature Speaker Links, these will work with any of our speaker cables. Or alternatively, you could use short runs of speaker cable cut to length; the ends stripped and fitted between the two terminals on the speaker. The difference this makes is pretty surprising. It’s a worthwhile thing to do. Experiment with the connections on the speaker too. Generally, it’s accepted that connecting speaker cable to the treble inputs on the speaker produces better sound than using the bass inputs. What we often end up doing is connecting the speaker cable diagonally, so the positive speaker cable run would be connected to the positive treble connection on the speaker and the negative speaker cable run to the negative bass connection on the speaker. The reason for this? Coherence. We find that so many speakers sound at their most musically coherent like this. This is quick, easy and fun to do. Pick a track and try all three connection options. It will be easy to hear which one works best.
We can help! We take a great deal of pleasure in talking to our retailers and our customers. This gives us really valuable feedback about what cable works with what system and we really do experiment with a huge range of different manufacturers’ components in our demonstration room. So, talking to us or e-mailing us with the details of your system might be a very good place to start. When it comes to listening, you really need to do so in the comfort of your own home, so dealers with demonstration cables are a good place to go. They will have experimented and they’ll have a good idea about what cables you should listen to.
There’s a very important point to be made here. It’s simple; better cables will make your system and your music sound better. Good cable designs should be transparent. We mean that cables should be musically transparent and the term ‘too transparent for my system’ needs to be thought about. In our experience, better cables make systems sound better: more musical; more dynamic; more involving; more fun; more emotional. There is some stunning hi-fi equipment available today at incredibly reasonable prices which will really respond to cables whose cost seems disproportionate to the cost of the equipment itself. You really do need to experiment. You need to find out how good a high-performance cable makes your relatively inexpensive CD player or DAC sound. Find out what a cable like our Anthem Digital Tuned ARAY will do with a modestly priced DAC. Park your preconceptions and be prepared to listen. That way you can decide just how important or how right a cable is for your system. We design cables to make music sound as real as we can. Our ARAY and Tuned ARAY cable range will get you a lot closer than you can imagine.
How to choose the best connections for your system
Tuned ARAY cables are available fitted with pretty much any termination required. We make DIN, RCA, BNC and XLR cables and can produce these in any combination and configuration you require. One of our most popular Tuned ARAY cables has been the 4 pin DIN to XLR cable between Naim power supplies and power amplifiers. Think you know how good your Naim system sounds? Put a Tuned ARAY cable in and find out how brilliant it really is. This is the wonderful thing about Tuned ARAY. More than any other cable, it’s musically transparent. You’re not hearing the cable, you’re hearing how good your system is and if you haven’t tried Tuned ARAY, when you do you’re probably going to find out it’s a lot better than you thought it was.
The Tuned ARAY phenomenon ..and what it will do for your music collection
We always knew that cables had a big influence on how music sounded. We’ve been demonstrating it for thirty years! Tuned ARAY cables though, they’re something else! We think Tuned ARAY are some of the most musically transparent interconnects available. Transparent is an overused word as in ‘So transparent you’d better make sure your system is good enough’ or ‘So transparent it will ruthlessly reveal the inadequacies of any album you have that is less than perfect’. Tuned ARAY cables are musically transparent, Tuned ARAY cables let you hear the music and they will let you hear how well your chosen equipment actually does play music. In our experience, that turns out to be a lot, lot better than we thought and in some cases, transformational. Connect a Tuned ARAY cable, pick a piece of music that never quite made sense and listen. A perfect example is “Rosalita Come Out Tonight” from Bruce Springsteen’s “The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle”. It’s glorious: it’s the sound of a very good and very tight band really going for it, everyone playing and busy, there’s so much life to it, so much exuberance and vitality. The problem is that it so often overwhelms the system it’s being played on, and what should be driving and powerful sounds hard and incoherent. Play it through Tuned ARAY cables and it becomes the powerful and beautifully played song that it is. Suddenly every instrument is clear and easy to follow and every musician is working together. The song becomes a whole, and guess what - Springsteen is a much better rhythm guitar player than most people think. It’s not just rock music that Tuned ARAY cables transform: classical, jazz, reggae - anything you like. Any genre will benefit.
Tuned ARAY can transform any system Cable companies, including The Chord Company, talk about complete cable looms and there is a logic to this. There’s a good chance that a company’s interconnects and speaker cables have been designed to work together. Tuned ARAY cables though, border on unique. The addition of a single Tuned ARAY interconnect between a digital source and a DAC, or between an analogue source and pre-amp, will produce profound musical improvements pretty much regardless of the other cables in the system. We’ve seen this occur many times. The sheer musical transparency of Tuned ARAY cables makes them incredibly compatible. Yes, a complete Tuned ARAY loom from mains cables through to speaker cables produces an extraordinary, near magical portrayal of music but add just one Tuned ARAY cable and you’ll hear just how profound they can be.
The development of Tuned ARAY
Tuned ARAY was originally developed for our flagship range of Sarum
cables. The aim was to experiment with digital cables. We had already developed some unusual conductor configurations which had produced dramatic improvements over more conventional coaxial cables. Tuned ARAY was an experiment to see if we could reduce reflections. We already knew that with digital cables, reflections within a cable would have an effect on sound quality. This is why we use zero-compression terminations. It is vital with a digital cable to avoid any compression of the cable. Compress the cable and you change its impedance. So a theory was turned into a painstaking but fascinating experiment. The final results were profound! A bigger improvement than we’d ever heard. A sea change. We’d never heard music sound so real before. Suddenly, we had digital music that was communicating like a good turntable-based system. Extraordinary. Because the improvements were so profound, we experimented with analogue cables as well and although the process is different, the results were remarkably similar. So at prototype stage, we had a system using digital and analogue Sarum Tuned ARAY cables and every CD we played, even those we’d been using as reference discs for many years, didn’t just sound different, they were so much more musically explicit and so much more communicative. You could wander into the demo room to check out a track from an album and if you let the CD run on to the next track, you had to stay and listen. It got to be a very busy place and if you couldn’t find someone, chances are they’d disappeared into the demo room with a CD! The wonderful thing about Tuned ARAY is that this is still happening. They really are a musical revelation and even for us, Tuned ARAY is still a voyage of musical discovery.
STAFF SELECTION David May (Technical Sales) Brian Olive “Traveling” DJ Krush “Meiso” (DJ Shadow mix) Fugazi “Guilford Fall” David Bowie “Love is Lost” (James Murphy mix) Clint Mansell “Welcome to Lunar Industries”
The Tuned ARAY cable range The original Tuned ARAY cables were all within our flagship Sarum range. We used Tuned ARAY principles to develop digital, analogue and power cables; all of them quite remarkable. There was a problem though. The Sarum Tuned ARAY cables were so much better, that we were inspired to design a complete new range of analogue and digital interconnects. Tuned ARAY cables are now available in Signature analogue and digital and Indigo analogue and digital, including an Indigo Tuned ARAY Ethernet cable. The great thing about the Signature and Indigo Tuned ARAY cables is that the Tuned ARAY design still produces the same wonderful and involving musical coherence. There’s still the same degree of compatibility and neutrality, making them easy to introduce into any system. There’s also a new Anthem Digital Tuned ARAY, our entry-level Tuned ARAY digital cable. We’re particularly proud that its performance is so similar to the more expensive digital Tuned ARAY cables. That same wonderful musical coherence is still there. That ability to turn bass lines into coherent and melodic progressions. That same separation and integration of individual instruments and that same emotional connection with your favourite music.
Streaming The Chord demonstration room is regarded as one of the best in the country and we have a huge range of equipment to experiment with and listen to. We’ve also spent a lot of time experimenting with streaming. We’ve used both USB and Ethernet-based devices and we’ve developed a range of USB and Ethernet cables which we believe can bring some profound musical improvements, particularly in terms of transparency and musical coherence. The development process begins with experimentation. When it came to Ethernet cables, we gathered a collection together and spent a lot of time listening. We are very aware of the argument that Ethernet cables will have no effect on the sound quality of the system they are used in. The problem is that when we experimented, we could hear very clear differences. The differences we heard we considered pretty important.
We’ve always been driven to try and produce cables that don’t mess up the timing and coherence of music and this was the area that Ethernet cables seemed to have an effect on. Could it be subjective? We’re not sure. We do believe that for music to work properly, it must be coherent. So what’s coherent? Well, a good example would be bass and drums. There’s a good chance by the time a track makes it on to an album, the bass player and drummer are (and there are exceptions!) playing in time with each other. Bass players have a difficult job. It involves both rhythm and melody. A bass player sits between the drummer and the guitarist. He needs to work with both of them. It sounds simple, but in practice it’s an area where so many systems and their accompanying cables really fall over. OK, it’s great to hear a distinct bass line and the attack, subtlety and dynamics from the drum kit, but better to hear them playing properly together. That sense of musicians playing together applies to every genre of music. If jazz is really to work properly it has to sound coherent, and when it does the experience is extraordinary. Listen to John Coltrane playing with bassist Jimmy Garrison, pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones, a quartet capable of producing extraordinary music. If it’s to be fully experienced, you really do need a properly set up and coherent system. So we had a problem. In repeated testing and listening, we could hear clear differences between Ethernet cables and when we ‘blind’ tested these, the people taking part showed clear preferences for particular cables. Not only that, through ‘blind’ testing we came to the conclusion that Ethernet cables exhibited the same sort of directional characteristics as both analogue and digital cables. Is this subjective? Ultimately yes, but we really did experiment a lot. As a result of this, we now produce a range of Ethernet cables. We think that the most important connection to try first (if you’re going to experiment with Ethernet cables) is the one between the streaming device and the router. In repeated tests, this was the one that made the biggest difference. Chord dealers are pretty happy to let customers try cables out at home. It’s your system and it’s your music and if you value your music, then have a listen. Another option is to stream from your computer via a USB cable and the process described above for the development of Ethernet cables applies to USB cables as well. If this is how you are going to store and play your music, borrow a good quality USB cable and have a listen. A music collection is a hugely valuable thing. You may have ripped it all to a hard disc, it may no longer have a physical presence within your house but it is still a big part of your life. It’s a store of memories and emotions. Convenience is great but do make sure you hear it the way it’s meant to be heard.
Silent Mounts ..and how to make your system an awful lot better Silent Mounts were developed in Japan. Outwardly simple and internally very complex, they are beautifully engineered and extremely effective isolation devices. They are designed to sit beneath equipment racks and speakers and we are still surprised at the improvements they can make to systems. What really delights us is that the improvements are the same as the ones we look for when we’re developing cables; they’re musical improvements. We carry two versions of the Silent Mounts, one machined from Titanium to sit beneath equipment racks and one built from Stainless Steel to use beneath speakers. What do they do? They bring clearly better definition to music, a greater coherence, a precision to the start and stop of individual notes. They work really well. Used beneath floor standing speakers, particularly big ones, they do something else really special. They make it incredibly easy to slide the speaker around the floor until you find the perfect position. A set of Silent Mounts beneath your speaker will allow you to make truly micro adjustments to perfectly position the speaker. We’ve used Titanium Silent Mounts under various racks and the results range from good to frankly extraordinary. Underneath a properly levelled rack, the extra sense of detail, dynamics and particularly definition is quite profound. Silent Mounts, both speaker and rack versions, deal remarkably well with some of the big issues with so many hi-fi systems. Bass, dynamics and definition are so often a problem for many systems. Silent Mounts really help with this but the effect is obvious right through the whole frequency range. The end result is simply a more musical, more detailed and more dynamic system. They make music sound like it should.
Power
Do we doubt that power cables can make a system sound better? No we don’t. We’ve been listening, researching and experimenting for too long. The argument against is perfectly logical. How on earth can a metre of expensive cable make a difference when the current that it carries is running through your house from the fuse box and from the fuse box back to a substation? It’s an outrageous concept until you consider what high frequency effective shielding can do with interconnects and speaker cable.
In listening tests, the results were very similar to both the Signature interconnect and speaker cable. Better dynamics, better detail, better definition. Of course, with everything hi-fi, there was more to it than that and we found there were some extraordinary differences depending on how the plugs were wired internally. And yes, fuses made a difference as well! All these things were easy to hear and our first power cable, the Chord Power Chord, came into existence. It was the first power cable we’d produced where we felt the results were consistent from system to system. Now we have the Chord C-power, a very plain looking mains cable with moulded plugs (and there’s a very good argument for using moulded plugs on mains cables) but with a very effective dual layer shield. There is also the Chord Sarum Tuned ARAY power cable - an extraordinary cable, capable of transforming systems in the same way that Tuned ARAY interconnects can. If you want to experiment with power cables, the rules are the same as they are for interconnects and speaker cable. Find a dealer who will let you take one home to listen to. We think that the biggest improvement happens when the cable is connected to the source component. That said, if you’re using a transport and DAC then you may find the best result will be had by connecting the cable to the DAC. The rule is to experiment. The second rule is to make sure it’s not just different but that it’s actually better. Does your music sound better? That seems obvious but it’s so easy to mistake a difference for an improvement. So spend some time with the music you know best. Another thing. If you are going to experiment with power cables, do so one at a time. Understand what each one does before adding another. There is much discussion about what the most important cable in a system is. Right now, with the work we’ve done on our range of analogue and digital interconnects, all inspired by Tuned ARAY, we think that interconnects might just be the best place to start. But if you haven’t tried changing power cables, approach them with an open mind. It’s very easy to hear the difference. Just remember, you’re listening for better not different.
Image courtesy of The Moviestore Collection
We didn’t produce a power cable until we’d first produced the Signature interconnect and then Signature speaker cable. Up until then, we’d experimented but never managed to produce consistently good results. What worked in one system made another system worse. After discovering what high frequency effective shielding configured correctly could do to interconnects and speaker cables, the obvious thing to do was to try the same design principles with power cables.
Home cinema
If you want to get the best experience from a home cinema system then you need to think about interconnects and speaker cables in exactly the same way that you would for a hi-fi system. Sound tracks play a major role in every film and it’s not just subterranean explosions and thunder of gunshots that matter, someone went to a lot of trouble to either create or choose the right music for the film you’re watching. Like a hi-fi system, investing in good speaker cables will really improve the experience. This is particularly important for the front speakers. The chances are your home cinema processor and amplifier will be between the front left and right speakers and below the centre speaker. Using really good speaker cables for the front speakers can be transformational and whatever cables you choose for the front left and right speakers should also be used for the centre speaker. A good speaker cable on the centre speaker can really bring out the emotion and emphasis the actors put on their words. Depending on the system, you may need to think about analogue and digital interconnects too. In many systems, both picture and sound will be carried from your DVD player to the AV processor. There’s a lot of debate about whether or not HDMI cables can make a difference. In our experimentation and listening tests, using a good quality HDMI cable between the DVD player and processor can bring big improvements to sound quality and it makes sense to fit a well-made and well shielded high speed certified HDMI cable between the AV processor and screen. We produce high performance, high speed certified HDMI cables in lengths of up to 20 metres. We also produce a heavy gauge high performance HDMI cable for use between a DVD player and processor, designed with sound quality in mind.
Bi-wire or bi-amp Most modern AV amplifiers have at least seven (if not more!) channels of amplification. We know that many of our customers only use five channels of this – front left and right, centre and rear left and right. If you do have two spare channels of amplification, try using them to biamplify the front left and right speakers, particularly if you’re going to use the system for music. Bi-amping means using a separate channel of amplification for the bass and treble speakers. It means an extra pair of speaker cables but the improvements that bi-amping brings are pretty big: more detail, more control, better definition and a more involving and enjoyable sound. It will really improve the sound of films as well. We’ve talked about the front three speakers of a home cinema system but not the rear speakers. In a perfect world it would make sense to use the same speaker cable for all the speakers.
Image courtesy of The Moviestore Collection
The problem with this is cost. Typically, the runs to rear speakers are a lot longer than the cables for the front speakers, making it prohibitively expensive to use the same cable.
The dual purpose system Increasingly, people are talking to us about how best to optimise a home cinema system for playing music as well. Increasingly, DVD/ Blu-Ray players are being used for CD replay as well and there are several very good multidisc players available. You could just pass everything via the HDMI cable but many players have dedicated stereo analogue outputs and it’s worth experimenting with these. You may find that for listening to music, the best results are obtained by using a good quality pair of analogue interconnects between the player and the amplifier. Or you may find that using a good quality digital coaxial cable to take advantage of the digital to analogue converter in the processor produces the best sound. Talk to your dealer about this and again, the best thing to do is to sit down and listen for yourself. Pick a piece of music you know well and listen.
Chord Leyline speaker cable has conductors that have been specially treated to help maintain high frequency information over long lengths. It’s a perfect choice for rear speakers. It’s discreet, easy to install, very cost effective and we’ve heard it performing really well in runs of over 40 metres. The design principles of Leyline are the same as the design principles applied to all our speaker cables, so Leyline is compatible with all the other cables we produce. It’s a popular choice. Using Chord Odyssey or Epic for the front three speakers and Leyline for the rear speakers will give you a really good system for playing music and for watching films.
Subwoofers Subwoofers are a crucial part of a home cinema system. Most films rely on low bass frequencies to bring drama and tension, and if properly set up and cabled, a subwoofer can add something special to music as well. We’ve experimented with subwoofers and different cables. Any subwoofer cable should be well shielded. Subwoofer cables are often longer than the other interconnect cables in the system, so good shielding is crucial. During the development of our current range of interconnect cables we listened to Crimson VEE 3, Cobra VEE 3 and Chameleon VEE 3 using a popular subwoofer. Because of the narrow bandwidth over which a subwoofer operates, many people assume that the choice of cable is not so critical and our most popular cable for subwoofers is the Crimson VEE 3. It works well, offers excellent performance and is extremely well shielded, so long runs are not a problem. However, we did find that the Cobra VEE 3, with its silver-plated conductors and FEP insulation brought better definition and dynamics and that the Chameleon VEE 3 improved this further still. So if you’re using a system for music and film, think about the subwoofer cable. What the Cobra VEE 3 and Chameleon VEE 3 really helped with was integration between the subwoofer and the front three speakers. They make music more coherent and involving.
Making Music The Chord Company isn’t just full of music lovers; it’s full of musicians as well. We have guitarists, bass players, drummers and Sally, the owner of the company, is a Grade 7 pianist with a beautiful Blüthner grand piano. We also have friends who run recording studios - and have supplied cables for both recording and mastering studios. Check out “Standing Room Only” by Kanute. It’s a great album and was recorded in a studio that uses Chord cables throughout. We also make high performance microphone cables and of course, instrument cables. Chord Cream instrument cable is available in ¼ inch jack and XLR configurations. Cream instrument cable was designed using the same principles that we use for interconnect cables, with special attention paid to mechanical damping. An important feature for any cable that’s going to be used on stage, especially if you’re someone that likes to jump around! Reliability, with any instrument cable, is important. When we were developing Cream, it underwent extensive testing. Not just by the players at Chord, but by other musicians we knew. We road tested Cream cables for two years to be certain they would stand up to repeated live performances before putting them into production. Cream was longterm tested by double-bass players, electro-acoustic guitar players, keyboard players and used extensively in studios. Using a good instrument cable is an interesting and enlightening experience. It will let you hear more of the tone and timbre that your instrument produces. It will let you hear your playing as well, particularly in terms of touch and dynamics. It will bring clarity and definition to your playing and seriously reduce the chances of interference affecting your precious signal. Recently, we supplied Ace (guitarist with Skunk Anansie) with a complete cable loom of Cream cables to connect his seriously impressive pedal board. You can find pictures of this on the Chord Facebook page - it’s well worth a look.
Speaker cables for musicians Guitar and bass players often use separate amplifiers connected to speaker cabinets. The problem being that most of this equipment uses ¼ inch jacks, just like instrument cables, so it’s incredibly easy to completely ruin the tone of an expensive amplifier and speaker cabinet by connecting them together with a guitar cable, rather than proper speaker cable. Chord amplifier to speaker cabinet cables use the same high performance speaker cables that we produce for hi-fi systems and the results are impressive. You get to hear the true tone of your amplifier and experience real dynamics and power. It makes such a difference to your playing. It’s not just that it sounds better, you get to find out so much about your playing technique. You get to grow and improve. There’s an interesting point to this. In truth, it’s unlikely anyone other than another musician is going to start talking to you about what a great tone you get. The vast majority of the audience aren’t even going to think about it but they are going to enjoy the performance more. You are as well. Knowing that you’ve got a really good sound on stage makes the playing experience so much easier and so much more enjoyable. Check out the Cream cable links on our Facebook page to find out what musicians are saying about Cream cables.