Why our cables sound better:
Construction
The conductors in the Artisan Silver Cables "Silver Dream" interconnect cables are of high-purity slow-drawn solid silver, arranged in a double-balanced 4-way braid (or 2 x 4-way braids in the Ultimate version).
The conductors are sheathed in Teflon® insulation, which is deliberately a slightly loose-fit, thus the conductors are surrounded by a mainly air-dielectric, followed by Teflon® (air being the best performing dielectric material of all, with Teflon® the second best).
The cushioning effect of an air-gap around the conductors also increases isolation from external physical vibrations - which further benefits sound quality.
The conductors are neither too thin, nor too thick. This is important: there is an optimum thickness which gives the best sound. Too thick leads to the cable sounding unnaturally over-smooth at the top end and over-full in the bass. Conversely, having the conductors too thin increases the resistance of the whole cable too much and leads to weedy anaemic sound, with too-light bass.
The 4 (or 8 in the Ultimate versions) insulated silver conductors are then arranged in a braided configuration, very similar to the geometry used in some well respected high end cables. The Litz braid principle rejects external interference (which can cause rough, impure sounding treble).
The braiding is deliberately fairly loose: an over-tight weave does not have the same degree of noise rejection properties.
The cables are then terminated using solder with a very high silver content, with very high quality silver-plated RCA plugs (superior to gold-plating, due to the higher conductivity of silver). All conductive surfaces within the plugs are silver-plated and feature Teflon® insulation.
Overall, there is a striking similarity of construction and materials used between our cables and some others that retail at up to ten times the price!
Ultimate Silver Dream now comes with a choice of Cardas SLVR RCAs, or WBT 0102-AG (some of the finest RCA connectors available anywhere, featuring pure silver centre pin & ground tag).
At the very top of the upgrade tree stands "The Nth Degree" flagship interconnect cable, which adds very carefully designed shielding, whilst also still retaining the naturally noise-rejecting braided 8-way configuration.
Here, the shielding is wired to ground, thus allowing all 8 pure silver conductors to carry the music signal only, thus effectively halving the cable's resistance.
In addition, the cable is cryogenically treated.
Finally, it is terminated with a choice of top-of-the-range RCAs or XLRs from Furutech.