What Hifi Sound & Vision May 2009
-Dual Foil high frequency effective shielding
-Vibration damping internal and external casing
-High purity multi-strand copper conductors
-Unique internal wiring geometry
-1.5m lengths available
-Designed and built in the UK – with CE conformance
Chord released its first dedicated mains cable the Power Chord just over two years ago. The company has been fascinated by the effect that high frequency effective shielding systems were having on the performance of both its interconnects and speaker cables. Research into this had resulted in the launch of the Signature interconnect and Signature speaker cable, both products employing extremely effective shielding systems. The obvious improvements these cables bought to systems they were used in prompted the development of mains cable built along similar principles, the Power Chord.
Once the benefits of high frequency effective shields had been established the Chord Company started to investigate how the same design principles could be applied to other cables. The shields used in the Signature and Indigo cables are extremely time consuming and difficult to work with. Chord started to experiment with alternative shields and found that a dual foil shield with a counter-rotating overlap was extremely effective.
The first cable to benefit from this was the Carnival SilverScreen; a speaker cable that has gained praise from all quarters for its outstanding performance and value for money.
Hot on its heels comes the Chord SuperScreen mains cable. The SuperScreen mains cable employs the same overlapped dual foil shields used to such good effect on the Carnival SilverScreen, and borrowing heavily from the configurations used throughout Chord’s range of products the high frequency effective heavy gauge foil shields are left fully floating.
Chord have long been aware of the need to control and dampen vibration within interconnects and speaker cables. Mains cables are no exception and the high quality multi-stranded copper conductors are surrounded by a dense but flexible PVC insulation. The dual shields are surrounded by another layer of vibration damping translucent PVC insulation, as used on the company’s Epic and Carnival SilverScreen speaker cables.
During the work carried out in the development of the original Chord Power Chord, the company found that the internal wiring layout configuration was absolutely critical in order to maximize performance.
The company’s decision to fit moulded IEC and mains plugs to the SuperScreen led to fresh experimentation. The internal connector configuration of the moulded mains plug in particular differs dramatically from conventional main plugs, and this gave the company the chance to configure the wiring layout in ways that are not possible when using conventional plugs. The final wiring layout produced outstanding performance and the moulded plugs have been fitted using Chord’s layout configurations and measurements.
There is another advantage to using moulded plugs. The fact is, there is nothing to work loose so the cable will not suffer any loss of performance due to connections becoming loose over a period of time.
Mains cables are a critical part of any hi-fi or home cinema system. Chord has experimented extensively with the SuperScreen mains cable and feels that it is one of the most cost effective upgrades the company has yet offered.
Interference is dramatically reduced, resulting in improved dynamic performance, greater levels of clarity and a much improved soundstage. The SuperScreen mains cable however can also bring dramatic improvements to the contrast, clarity and detail levels of today’s high resolution, flat screen televisions and Chord recommend that anyone using a flat screen as part of a home cinema set up should try the SuperScreen mains cable.
