Chord C-screen X Speaker Cable Shielding a loudspeaker cable is a slightly contrary idea, and it is worth understanding why before spending anything. The signal between amplifier and loudspeaker is high-level and the source impedance is very low, so it is a hard thing to inject noise into — which is why the overwhelming majority of loudspeaker cable, at every price, is unshielded. The argument for screening it is not really about the music going down the cable. It is about the several metres of unscreened wire running along a skirting board, past a mains spur, behind a television, in a house full of switch-mode supplies and wireless transmitters, and about what a length of parallel copper does when treated as an aerial by the amplifier's feedback loop. The Chord Company have built shielded loudspeaker cable for years — the C-screen X sits at the bottom of a family that runs up through ClearwayX, ShawlineX and EpicX/XL — and the C-screen X is the version aimed at people who want the benefit without the outlay. The X in the name marks the move to improved XLPE insulation. Construction Multi-stranded oxygen-free copper conductors, insulated with XLPE and arranged as a twisted pair. Twisting is the first line of defence: a pair twisted along its length presents interference with two conductors that see very nearly the same field, so what does get in tends to cancel. Over that goes high-density foil shielding, then a PVC jacket that holds the conductors at a fixed spacing and damps the cable mechanically. Conductor gauge is 16 AWG, a cross-section of 1.31 mm², in a finished cable 9mm across. The nine millimetres matter That diameter is not a boast about slimness for its own sake. A 9mm cable turns a corner at a skirting board without a fight, goes under a door threshold, and can be routed behind furniture by one person in an afternoon. The outer jacket is white, which protects the shielding underneath and, on white skirting, more or less disappears — a domestic consideration rather than an audio one, and the reason a good many of these cables get installed at all rather than being vetoed by whoever else lives in the house. Technical Specifications Conductor High Purity OFC Insulation XLPE Configuration Twisted pair Shielding High density foil with PVC outer jacket AWG 16 Cross-section 1.31 mm² Overall diameter 9mm Who Is It For? Two situations, mainly. The first is a home cinema, where cable runs are long, they inevitably share a route with mains and network cabling, and there are five or seven of them rather than two. The second is a stereo system in a real room, where the loudspeakers are a long way from the amplifier and the tidy route is also the electrically noisy one. In both cases the shielding is doing something the money would not otherwise buy. Where it is not the answer: if your amplifier is between the loudspeakers and each run is a metre and a half in clear air, screening solves a problem you do not have, and the same money spent on a heavier unscreened cable may serve you better. And if you are driving a genuinely difficult load over a long distance, the larger conductor cross-sections further up Chord's shielded range are the more sensible destination. For the subwoofer in a cinema system, the Chord C-Sub Analogue Subwoofer Cable handles the other long run; the full range is on our Chord Company collection page. Buying from Martins Hi-Fi Loudspeaker cable is sold by the metre and regretted by the metre, so it pays to plan the route before ordering. Tell us the run each loudspeaker actually needs, the way the cable will travel, and how you want the ends finished, and we will get it right first time rather than sending you a pair of identical lengths that leaves one coiled behind a sofa. When you get in touch, you'll be speaking with Dave, Chris and Tim at [email protected], call 01603 627010, or WhatsApp on 07554 687137. You can read more about how we work on our Why Martins page. We are at 85–91 Ber Street, Norwich, NR1 3EY.
