Cables

Cryogenic treatment is key to almost every Furutech cable and connector, as is the promise of exceptional build and finish quality [HFN Mar '18]. With cables, of course, the material engineering can easily be quantified, but with the Japanese brand's 'noise busting' NCF Clear Line plugs – supplied with RCA and XLR terminations for insertion into unused audio inputs – the science can easily lose some clarity. Prices are £205 for each RCA-equipped plug and £260 for the bigger male and female XLR derivatives.

With its blue-tinged foil screen positively glowing through a tight, translucent PVC jacket, Supra's flagship speaker cable, priced at £1700 for a 3m terminated set (£300 per additional stereo metre), makes for a vivid statement. It's a world away from the speaker cables that helped Tommy Jenving launch his Swedish Supra brand in 1976. Its Supra Cable 4 and 2.5 used bunches of very fine copper strands in a standard figure-of-eight geometry. Its later 10mm2 Supra Cable 10, with 2562x0.07mm 4N copper strands, still has the lowest series resistance that I've measured (3.1mohm/m) when tested nearly 30 years ago [Hi-Fi Choice Aug '94].

Kimber is a stalwart of the cable scene, emerging alongside Monster and AQ in the late '70s but with its own spin or, more accurately, twist on things. The open-weave geometry, variable-diameter copper stranding and Teflon insulation of the now-classic 4TC speaker cable defined not only its lumped parameters but also informed its 'voicing' – a warm but richly detailed sound that won the hearts of many a budding audiophile.

Only one issue ago we reviewed an interconnect cable whose core thesis focused on achieving a low capacitance and dielectric loss by utilising an 'air' insulation. That was Kimber's new flagship 'Naked' interconnect – a cool £12,700 per terminated metre [HFN Mar '22]. Somewhat more affordable, but also leveraging the 'air dielectric' theme, is the NF-204 Micro Air interconnect from Germany's most prolific cable manufacturer, In-akustik, based in Ballrechten-Dottingen.

Spin-off or temporary re-branding, CrystalConnect is part of the same Crystal Cable company, led by Gabi Rynveld, that audiophiles have been familiar with for over 17 years. Synonymous with silver conductors, the brand's latest 'Art Series' employs a development of its monocrystal (or long-crystal) conductors dubbed 'Infinite Crystal Silver' (iCS). Strands of this high conductivity metal are deployed across a range that includes analogue RCA/XLR interconnects, power and speaker cables plus USB, S/PDIF and AES digital interconnects.

Once Germany's best-kept cable secret, the In-akustik brand – part of the family-run Braun Group – is nothing if not comprehensive in its offering. Every type of power, analogue, digital and AV cable is included, across multiple ranges, alongside custom-install accessories that extend to ambient LED lighting solutions.

We last ran a comprehensive USB cable group test over six years ago [HFN Jul '13 and '14] with Chord's entry-level SilverPlus coming top-of-the-heap and remaining in residence ever since as our cable of choice. The intervening period has seen the SilverPlus morph into the current entry-level C-series while the costlier Signature 'Tuned Aray' USB cable became the template for Chord's more recent, intermediate Epic USB model. And, at £400 for a terminated 1m set (£160 per additional metre), the new Epic USB is no costlier than its Signature forefather in 2014.