AudioQuest Big Sur Analogue Interconnect Cable (Factory Terminated)

Big Sur Analogue Audio Interconnect Cable, by AudioQuest. Named after the Bixby Creek Bridge and the majestic beauty of California’s spectacular coastline at Big Sur. Part of the AudioQuest Bridges & Falls Series of cables.

In all Bridges & Falls cables, you will find better metals and more sophisticated technologies including Air-Tube insulation, Dielectric-Bias System, and Noise-Dissipation System – all at lower prices than ever before.

All cables in the AudioQuest Bridges & Falls Series place their left and right channels in a single jacket, and feature our Asymmetrical Double-Balanced geometry with separate high-quality positive and negative conductors. This design allows for a thin, flexible, and uniquely versatile high-performance cable that can be terminated with a variety of today’s connections, including 3.5mm (male or female), DIN, and RCA. Do keep in mind, however, that, by necessity, the plugs on Bridges & Falls cables are fairly close together. If the L and R inputs of your components are more than 7.6 cm apart, please consider models from the AudioQuest Rivers or Elements Series instead.

Features

Solid Perfect Surface Copper Plus (PSC+) Conductors – Solid conductors prevent both electrical and magnetic interaction strand-to-strand interaction, major sources of distortion. Surface quality is critical because a conductor can be considered as a rail-guide for both the fields within a conductor, and for the magnetic fields that extend outside the conductor. The astonishingly smooth and pure surface of all AudioQuests’s Perfect-Surface metals nearly eliminates harshness and greatly increases clarity compared to lesser materials. Extremely high-purity Perfect-Surface Copper+ further minimizes distortion caused by grain boundaries, which exist within any metal conductor, nearly eliminating harshness and greatly increasing clarity compared to OFHC, OCC, 8N and other coppers.

Asymmetrical Double-Balanced Geometry – Purpose designed for single-ended applications, Asymmetrical Double-Balanced Geometry offers a relatively lower impedance on the ground for a richer, and more dynamic experience. While many single-ended cable designs use a single path for both the ground and the shield, Double-Balanced designs separate the two for cleaner, quieter performance.

Metal-Layer Noise Dissipation – It’s easy to accomplish 100% shield coverage. Preventing captured radio-frequency interference (RFI) from modulating the equipment’s ground reference requires AQ’s Noise-Dissipation. Traditional shield systems typically absorb and then drain noise/RF energy to component ground, modulating and distorting the critical reference ground plane, which in turn causes a distortion of the signal. Noise-Dissipation shields the shield, absorbing and reflecting most of this noise/RF energy before it reaches the layer attached to ground.

Cold-Welded Gold-Plated Pure Purple Copper Terminations – This plug design allows for a connection devoid of solder, which is a common source of distortion. Instead of solder, the process employs a high-pressure technique. Because the ground shells are stamped instead of machined, the metal used can be chosen for low distortion instead of machinability.

Foamed Polyethelene Insulation – Any solid material adjacent to a conductor is actually part of an imperfect circuit. Wire insulation and circuit board materials all absorb energy. Some of this energy is stored and then released as distortion. Because air absorbs next to no energy and Polyethylene is low-loss and has a benign distortion profile, Foamed-PE, with its high air content, causes much less of the out-of-focus effect common to other materials.

More Information

• Big Sur Interconnect Cables, by AudioQuest