AudioQuest - Robin Hood Silver Zero - Speaker Cables (Pair)

AudioQuest - Robin Hood Silver Zero - Speaker Cables (Pair)

Building on a solid base of tried and true AudioQuest technologies, the design team of Garth Powell and Bill Low specifically focused on addressing one of the most vexing issues plaguing speaker cable design: the mismatch between the amplifier’s source impedance and the speaker’s load impedance. By eliminating the speaker cable’s characteristic impedance, current compression and distortion of the signal/current transient are significantly reduced. The result is dynamic contrast, transient response, and bass slam that are rendered seemingly without effort, because the cable is not electrically impeding the music.

Robin Hood Silver can be used in one of two ways: either employing the Zero model for Full-Range, or by using the Zero model in combination with a dedicated Bass cable, as a fully optimized Bi-Wire Combination cable. Robin Hood Silver also features AudioQuest's patented common-mode noise-rejection technology. This latest AudioQuest speaker cable significantly outperforms previous technology at controlling and draining radio-frequency noise.

AudioQuest’s Robin Hood Silver cables are Cold-Welded to AudioQuest’s extremely pure Red Copper Spades or Bananas. The bare copper is submerged in a vat of pure silver instead of being tumbled in a lower-grade solution. AudioQuest speaker breakouts and plug casings are not metal in order not to induce RF Noise into the conductors.

Solid conductors prevent electrical 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 Perfect-Surface Copper+ eliminates harshness and greatly increases clarity compared to OFHC, OCC, 8N, and other premium coppers. Extremely high-purity Perfect-Surface Silver further minimizes distortion caused by grain boundaries, which exist within any metal conductor.

Though a cable’s ground leads are integral to a component’s signal transmission, they also act as an antenna. Thus, they are subject to induced Radio-Frequency (RF) noise. RF noise is a parasitic signal that is typically coupled directly into a system’s most sensitive audio/video circuits. AudioQuest’s RF-on-ground Noise-Dissipation (RF/ND-Tech) greatly reduces resulting distortion and signal masking, yielding unprecedented levels of Noise-Dissipation across the widest bandwidth of radio frequencies possible. AudioQuest's unique circuit topology uses a common-mode phase-cancelling array, providing linear noise dissipation across the entire length of the cable.

The only complete way to eliminate characteristic-impedance mismatches between a cable and the attached source and load is for the cable not to have any fixed characteristic-impedance value. Zero Tech accomplishes this by eliminating interaction between the insulation and the cable’s conductors—enabling uncompressed current transfer. All-important transient current is unrestricted, and RF Noise-Dissipation is linearized.

All drawn metal strands or conductors have a non-symmetrical, and therefore directional, grain structure. AudioQuest controls the resulting RF impedance variation so that noise is drained away from where it will cause distortion. The correct direction is determined by listening to every batch of metal conductors used in every AudioQuest audio cable. When applicable, arrows are clearly marked on the connectors to ensure superior sound quality. For most models of AudioQuest cable, the arrows not only indicate the direction that optimizes metal-directionality as part of Noise-Dissipation, but also indicates non-symmetrical attachment of shield and GND in order to optimize full-system performance.

Today’s environment is saturated with radio-frequency noise that is extremely difficult to filter or reject. The frequencies of this noise from satellites, cellular towers, and Bluetooth, etc., are so extremely narrow that a conventional shield, or a series or shunt filter, is wholly inadequate. Much of the low-level signal that carries the harmonics and spatial cues that define high-resolution audio is masked by induced radio-frequency noise. AudioQuest’s comprehensive Linearized Noise-Dissipation System combines multiple shields and a carbon-based linearized resistive network that turns most of this noise into heat.