Audioquest Chicago RCA - RCA Audio Cable (Pair)

Strand interaction is the single greatest cause of distortion in a cable. Semi-Solid Concentric Packed Conductors avoid many strand-interaction distortion mechanisms. Solid-core conductors offer a complete and compelling solution to this problem.

Conductor metal quality is critical for the best cable performance. The conductor surface is the only area of the conductor with 100% current density at all frequencies. The smoothness of the conductor surface is imperative because the surface is a guide rail for the entire energy envelope. The best copper and silver conductor metals have fewer grain boundaries and low oxygen content for low distortion and high performance.

Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion. Chicago’s solid Long-Grain Copper allows a smoother and clearer sound than cables using regular OFHC (Oxygen-Free High-Conductivity) copper. OFHC is a general metal industry specification regarding “loss” without any concern for distortion. LGC has fewer oxides within the conducting material, fewer impurities, fewer grain boundaries, and definitively better performance.

Insulation is necessary to keep the positive and negative conductors separate and to give stability to cable geometry. Insulation is also a "dielectric" because it is inside the conductor's magnetic field. Dielectrics absorb energy, which after a delay is then released in the signal, causing smearing and distortion. Better insulation reduces distortion by absorbing less energy.

Chicago uses Nitrogen-Injected Hard-Cell Foam insulation and is used exclusively in most of AudioQuest’s video and digital audio cables. Similar to Foamed-PE, it is nitrogen-injected to create air pockets. ‘Hard’ foam is used because the stiffness of the material allows the conductors in the cable to maintain the same relationship with each other along the full length of the cable, thus ensuring that the characteristic impedance of the cable is consistent.

100% shield coverage is easy. Preventing captured RF Interference from modulating the equipment’s ground reference requires AQ’s Noise-Dissipation System. Noise-Dissipation System prevents a significant amount of RFI from reaching the equipment’s ground plane.

AudioQuest’s Noise-Dissipation System (NDS) offers a compelling solution to this challenge by using metal-only or alternating layers of metal and carbon-loaded synthetics to effectively “shield the shield,” absorbing and reflecting the Radio Frequency (RF) energy before it reaches the layer attached to the ground.

Chicago utilises the Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation System (NDS) to prevent most RFI from reaching the equipment’s ground plane.

Geometry is the physical relationship of the conductors to one another within a cable and determines a cable’s most basic electrical values (capacitance and inductance). Different cable applications have different/specialized geometry requirements, and so these applications do not merely follow a ‘one size fits all’ approach. Better geometry leads to lower levels of distortion.

Two ideal audio conductors separate from the cable’s shield. Not only does this prevent the shield from being used as an inferior audio path, but it further optimizes sound quality by only grounding the shield at one end, reducing system ground-plane modulation.

AudioQuest’s understanding of conductor directionality and its effect on audio performance has steadily evolved, growing stronger and more complete. All audio cables are directional. The correct direction is determined by the arrows on the plugs or cable parts.

AudioQuest specifies materials and designs each of its own connectors from the ground up, resulting in the long-lasting quality and exceptional performance you deserve. These components are crucial to the overall performance of a cable.

To provide the best possible performance for each application, AudioQuest designs each of its connectors from the ground up. These components are crucial to the overall performance of the cable. Painstaking care is taken to evaluate the highest quality materials and design for every application.

AudioQuest pays special attention to the plating it uses over its connectors’ carefully crafted base metals. Wherever possible, gold connectors are plated directly over the copper, with no destructive intermediate layer of nickel or alloy, while all silver-plated connectors are Direct-Silver plated.AudioQuest has incorporated Cold-Weld connection technology into most of their interconnects and all prepared speaker cables..

Joining conductors to plugs requires every bit as much care and precision as any other aspect of cable manufacture. AudioQuest's Cold-Weld System uses several tons of pressure to make a near-perfect connection that ensures that the structural integrity of the conductor and plug is kept completely intact, all without the damaging effect of heat. Cold-Welding avoids the introduction of heat and extra materials like solder, which change the character of the wire at the point of termination.

This plug design allows for a connection devoid of solder, which is a common source of distortion. Because the ground shells are stamped instead of machined, the metal can be chosen for low distortion instead of machinability.