The Chord Company, has launched Clearway — a high-performance, low-cost speaker cable that replaces Carnival SilverScreen and introduces a raft of advanced features.  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.  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.  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-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-pairconfiguration, 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 says: “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.