THE CHORD COMPANY LAUNCHES CLEARWAY — THE DEFINITIVE AFFORDABLE LOUDSPEAKER CABLE
Ground-breaking new Clearway speaker cable sees advanced technology eclipse Chord’s award-winning Carnival SilverScreen The UK’s leading high-performance A/V cable manufacturer, The Chord Company, has launched Clearway — a high-performance, low-cost speaker cable that replaces the critically acclaimed Carnival SilverScreen and introduces a raft of advanced features The new Chord Clearway speaker cable borrows key ideas from recent development projects at The Chord Company’s Wiltshire headquarters. Clearway refines 30 years of Chord know-how into a ground-breaking, highly affordable new speaker cable.
During the development of Clearway, valuable research was carried out in relation to the behaviour of conductors and different dielectrics (insulation). For a long time, Chord has understood the importance of the relationship between conductor materials and insulation, and its silver-plated speaker cables make extensive use of PTFE as an insulation material. The type of insulation doesn’t just affect a cable’s ability to carry signals accurately, it also has an effect on the tonal characteristics that the cable brings to the system. This often takes the form of an unwanted increase in bass frequencies, which directly limits a system’s ability to produce music with coherence and involvement.
Clearway: clearly better
Typically, cables that use oxygen-free copper as a conductor material will use either polyethylene or PVC as an insulating material. What sets The Chord Company’s Clearway speaker cable apart is its use of FEP: a derivative of PTFE with very similar performance characteristics. Compared to polyethylene, the FEP-insulated Clearway carries both detail and dynamic information markedly more accurately. The tonal properties of the cable are also considerably more neutral.
The FEP-insulated conductors are built from multi-strand oxygen-free copper and are arranged in a twisted-pair configuration to reduce interference. The two conductors are then protected with a layer of soft PVC (which was chosen over polyethylene because of its flexibility), in order to correctly space the shielding in relation to the conductors and to minimise any mechanically induced noise.
High-frequency shielding
High-performance shielding is specified and just like the award-winning Carnival SilverScreen, Chord Clearway speaker cable features two contra-wound high-density foil shields. Like many Chord speaker cables, the twin foils, combined with the twisted-pair configuration, make for a level of shielding that is effective to high frequencies. Finally, a clear protective PVC jacket is applied, which again serves to further reduce any mechanically induced noise; the reflective foil finish also assumes the colour of the immediate décor.
Nigel Finn, Technical Director of The Chord Company on Clearway
“I am particularly pleased with the new Clearway. The cable has qualities that would normally be associated with considerably more expensive cables. The use of high-quality oxygen-free copper, FEP insulation and high-density foil shielding means that at £10, it will be pretty hard to produce a better-performing speaker cable. Chord has tested the cable in all levels of systems and in every case, whether entry-level or high-end, the levels of clarity, detail, dynamics and critically, musical coherence, are really impressive.” Pricing and availability
Clearway: £10 p/m unterminated; various factory termination options include Chord’s exclusive UK-made 24-karat gold-plated banana plugs, direct gold-plated-copper spade connections and BFA Camcon connectors. Available now.
About The Chord Company
The Chord Company is the UK’s leading high-performance A/V cable manufacturer. With an international reputation for excellence, The Chord Company has been painstakingly designing and manufacturing high-specification cables for discerning consumers in over 50 countries worldwide, for almost 30 years.
Based in Amesbury, near Stonehenge, Wiltshire, The Chord Company’s products are amongst the most accomplished high-performance cables on the market today. The company proudly handcrafts the vast majority of the range from its purpose-designed premises, which includes a high-quality, dedicated listening room.
With a passionate, music-loving workforce, the majority of who play and make their own music, the company has an unrivalled ability to produce high-quality connections that enable partnering electronics to perform without constraint. In-house design and manufacturing provides complete control of the production process for the finest possible product.
