There's Nothing Else Like It
Quiescent's extraordinary combination of electronic and structural design, materials, electronic noise reduction and acoustic noise reduction puts it in a league of one.
About The DATA Digital Interconnects
The range of Quiescent digital cables are, of course, following the philosophy of all the other Quiescent products. That is, preserving the signal that you need, and reducing the ones that you don't. In this case, preserving the signal means high quality conductors, low dielectric insulation, high quality connectors and the correct construction for impedance matching – which are all present and correct here. But what is it that Quiescent don't want their cables to carry? RFI and acoustic vibration is the answer of course.
First the shielding. Quiescent use what they call their proprietary EMI/RFI tubing and not a metalised plastic or braided metal screen as used in most conventional cables. Their argument is that conventional shielding does nothing to reduce internal conducted RFI but their tubing does (see more below). Then there is vibration. Connecting any two boxes together with a cable creates an acoustically conductive path. And Quiescent have found that digital systems are surprisingly sensitive to acoustic energy, and often generate and pass around a lot if it themselves too. So the Quiescent digital cables drop that acoustic energy level significantly by using an acoustically dampening braiding.
Does it all work though, you may ask. Oh yes, is our simple answer. But you should hear a demonstration yourself. We think you'll be delighted when you do.
Tech Insight
So what about that proprietary EMI/RFI tubing that Quiescent use? Their EMI/RFI tubing is not really like ordinary shielding – it isn't just a screen. Instead it attenuates high-frequency electromagnetic fields by damping them, in a similar way to how a ferrite ring works but with a much broader bandwidth and along the entire length of the cable. This prevents outside radiation getting in, but also damps RF currents within the conductor, particularly resonant standing-wave RF noise.
Specifications (summarised)
Conductors
Solid core solid oxygen-free copper.
Connectors
Clock/SPDIF – Silver plated BNC.
SPDIF – Rhodium plated RCA.
AES/EBU – ETI Kryo XLR.
LAN – straight or 90 degree zinc die-cast RJ45 Cat6A Connectors with gold plated contacts.
Features
Shielding, Quiescent proprietary EMI/RFI tubing.
Braiding, ABS acoustic absorbant braiding.
Impedances, accurately to specified standards throughout.
Matching & Setup
Setup is no different in basic terms to how you would use any other digital cables. We would however recommend to get you layout and digital cable routing to the same level as you would analogue components and interconnects. Avoid stuffing routers or hard drives into cupboards, or cramming digital cables down the back of racks or furniture, particularly LAN leads.
In terms of sound, these Quiescent digital leads are going to open up the performance considerably. Firstly the most obvious effect is the reduction of that 'digital hash' sort of sound. Treble brightness is almost totally eliminated. Next comes the increase in useable volume range and dynamics. Whearas before the system was suffering from increasing dynamic distortion by rising acoustic noise travelling around the system, that effect is now significantly reduced.
And of course, as a result of these improvements, adjustments can be made to speaker positioning to further maximise the benefits. Indeed once wired-up throughout with Quiescent digital leads, the choice for all sorts of future upgrades completely opens up. For example, greater resolution in a new amplifier no longer means just highlighting those troublesome digital problems even more.