Our first venture into USB cables was a consequence of having musicians working at the Chord Company. After copying a CD master recording to a laptop, we were shocked at the poor performance of the burned copies when compared to the original master CD.
At the time we were using one of the first DACs with a USB input, so we played the master from the laptop. Still not good but better than the burned CD version. After using better spec ripping programs and playback management, we thankfully got big improvements to the burned CD.
Whilst we were happy that we could produce a pretty decent CD copy from the original master, the laptop copy of the master (sent to the DAC via its USB input) sounded clearly worse than the CD copy being fed to the same DAC – so we investigated the construction of the USB cable between laptop and DAC.
The original Signature USB featured four separately shielded conductors. We have now refined the effective gauge of the silver-plated copper conductors and uprated the insulation to a high-speed PE/LDPE/PE composite dielectric. The earth shielding connection is further protected with its own foil tape layer. The ARAY technology has been uprated from Tuned ARAY to Super ARAY using a Signature USB specific ARAY design. We have incorporated refinements with both USB A and B plugs. All connections are soldered and the USB plugs are ChorAlloy® plated to our specification in the UK.
Technical Specification:
Precision silver-plated oxygen free copper twisted Bi-data conductors,
Separately shielded data and power conductors.
Composite PE/LDPE/PE Tri layer insulation.
Super ARAY conductor configuration.
Dual layer precision applied high coverage foil shielding
Chord Company custom ChorAlloy® plated USB plugs.
