What is it? The Anthem departs from the twisted pair design found in most of our other cables and on top of that, departs from the balanced geometry that we use so much. Three runs of high performance 50-Ohm coaxial cable are sheathed with black tubing and woven together. The central conductor of one of the coaxial cables carries the signal and the remaining two central conductors carry the return. The design was arrived at after lengthy experimentation.

The shielding system is a complex combination of foil and silver plated round wound wire and is extremely effective at very high frequencies. Plugs are of course silver plated but in this case we use a very stripped down design, the shield is modified and the entire surrounding metal casing is removed. Listening tests have shown that the less metal around a plug, the better the sound. Once the cable has been soldered the joints are reinforced with a heavy-duty adhesive heat shrink. Terminations The Anthem can be fitted with silver plated RCA plugs (see above for details) or modified din plugs. The strain relief sleeve of the din plug is removed, the back of the plug is enlarged and the whole reinforced with adhesive heat shrink. The wiring configuration of Anthem also makes it ideal for XLR connectors. How does it sound? The Anthem allows you to hear more detail than any of the preceding cables in our range and this is partly due to the configuration, but more importantly the efficiency of the shielding. The shield uses a foil wrap around the conductor, which in turn is over wrapped with silver plated wire (imagine a very tight spiral). This is then dipped in a solder bath to produce a really effective shield system that is still flexible. The effectiveness of the shield means that the noise floor of the cable is lowered. This simply means that it is possible to hear more low-level information because it is not being masked by noise. Noise in this case is picked up along the length of the cable; the less noise that is picked up, the lower the noise floor. The leading and trailing edges of notes become simpler to hear, this is vital to the timing of a piece of music and music sounds far more coherent as a result. Tonal subtleties are also much easier to hear. A good example of this is the difference between various types of piano and another fine example would be the differences in tone between a Fender Precision bass and a Fender Jazz bass. These are two of the most popular basses in the world and whilst they are both basses, the Precision has a slightly percussive, wooden tone whilst the Jazz has a deep, growling tone. There have been good reviews of the Anthem in Hi-Fi World.   Not available for shipment into markets supported by an Authorized Chord Dealer.