The Chord Company has announced the launch of its new Shawline cable range, a cable we’ve been playing with here at Hifi Pig for a few months now.

The Wiltshire company commented it “can now make cables that do nothing.  That’s nothing as in no colouration: colour comes from the music not the cables; no signal loss”.

What The Chord Company’s new Shawline cables can do they say is: “carry a musical signal with an extraordinary degree of detail and accuracy; transform the performance of almost every system they are used in and let music lovers even further into their favourite music”.

The Shawline range is a hand-built-in-the-UK cable line-up that comprises digital, analogue and loudspeaker cables, and features the company’s proprietary Tuned ARAY technology at a price of £200.  The same unique conductor geometry as seen in Chord’s Sarum Tuned ARAY cables is now available with Shawline. The line-up sits neatly above the entry-level C-series and the affordable Clearway range.

The new Shawline analogue interconnect – available in DIN, RCA and XLR versions – uses the same Tuned ARAY technology as Sarum Tuned ARAY.  They are fitted with silver-plated Chord VEE 3 RCA plugs with PTFE insulation. Shawline’s conductors are built from silver-plated multi-strand oxygen-free copper, insulated with PTFE.  The conductors are contained within a specifically chosen outer jacket for flexibility and reduce mechanical noise.
Shawline Digital

The all-new Shawline Digital uses proprietary ARAY conductor geometry developed for digital cables. Also fitted with silver-plated Chord VEE 3 RCA plugs with PTFE insulation (or high-performance silver-plated BNC connectors), the new design features a tri-conductor configuration, optimised for digital signal transmission.

Further features include silver-plated, PTFE-insulated conductors with an internal PVC jacket that reduces mechanical noise and correctly spaces the high-frequency-effective high- density braid and foil combination shield.

Shawline loudspeaker cable

Completing the range is a shielded loudspeaker cable — Chord’s most discreet and flexible shielded speaker cable to date. The Shawline loudspeaker cable is a new design featuring silver-plated conductors and high-frequency-effective shielding. 16 AWG multi-strand silver-plated conductors with PTFE insulation are employed in a twisted-pair configuration, with a PVC internal jacket to minimise mechanical noise.
Shawline loudspeaker cable is available off-the-reel and in factory-terminated lengths, the latter fitted with Chord Company gold-plated banana plugs.

Hand-building is crucial to the complexity of the design of Tuned ARAY cables say the company.

Pricing and availability

Shawline is available now

Analogue RCA 1m: £200; additional metres £80

Digital: RCA 1m: £200; additional metres £80

Speaker: £30p/m unterminated; factory Banana/Spade terminations 8 plugs one pair £100