In 1982 Sony gave us “Perfect sound forever,” along
with the attitude that, “it’s just digital, so all CD players sound
the same.” That was disproved and qualitative differences between
players became accepted truth. Next came separate transport and DAC
combos, which brought with it the attitude that “all S/PDIF digital
audio cables sound the same…” until that too became disproved. Now
the frontier has moved once again. Is digital audio really just
ones and zeros? We don’t believe so, and once you’ve had a chance
to listen to Pearl USB, you won’t think so either…
SOLID LONG-GRAIN COPPER (LGC) CONDUCTORS:
Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion. Pearl’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, less impurities, less grain boundaries, and
definitively better performance.
FOAMED-POLYETHYLENE INSULATION: Any solid
material adjacent to a conductor is actually part of an imperfect
circuit. Wire insulation and circuit board materials all absorb
energy (loss). Some of this energy is stored and then released as
distortion. Pearl USB uses air-filled Foamed-Polyethylene
Insulation because air absorbs next to no energy and Polyethylene
is low-loss and has a benign distortion profile. Thanks to all the
air in Foamed-PE, it causes much less of the out-of-focus effect
common to other materials.
TERMINATIONS: Precision gold-plated plugs
are carefully attached with the very best solder. Through choice of
flux and metallurgy, AQ solder has been optimized to make a
low-distortion connection. The difference you hear between solders
is a result of connection quality. AQ solder does not have a high
silver content because the more silver there is in solder, the more
difficult it is to make a good connection.
UNIVERSAL SERIAL BUS DEVICE CLASS DEFINITION FOR
AUDIO DEVICES: USB (Universal Serial BUS) was established by a
stalwart group of companies such as Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and
Microsoft (just to name a few) in order to give the personal
computing world a truly universal standard and means to connect
devices such as hard drives, printers, cameras, and, more
importantly to us, audio components. Included in the original
description are protocols for the pristine transfer of audio over
USB. Great care and sensitivity went into this. Consequently, a
computer connected to a USB-enabled digital-to-analog converter can
outperform the best compact disc players available today.
AudioQuest is committed to contributing products that honor USB’s
ability to deliver state-of-the-art performance on this new and
wonderful frontier.
