Originally named Disappointment for dashing Alexander Mackenzie’s hope that it would lead to the Pacific rather than the Arctic Ocean, the Mackenzie River is Canada’s largest, longest river system. Traversing 2,635 miles, it flows through a vast network of lakes, boreal forests and arctic tundra. Mackenzie’s many tributaries cover portions of three provinces—British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan—and two territories, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. Known as “The Amazon of the North,” Mackenzie’s sparsely populated basin remains one of the great unspoiled natural areas in the world.
Solid perfect-surface copper+ (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.
Triple-balanced geometry (separate ground-reference conductor)
Our Triple-Balanced Geometry uses a separate ground-reference conductor, so the cable's shield is never used as an inferior conductor. Whether prepared with RCA or XLR plugs, the cable's three conductors ensure that the positive and negative signals have equally superior, low-distortion conducting paths.
Carbon-based 3-layer noise-dissipation system (NDS)
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 System (NDS). 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. NDS's alternating layers of metal and carbon-loaded synthetics "shield the shield," absorbing and reflecting most of this noise/RF energy before it reaches the layer attached to ground.
Hard-cell foam insulation
Hard-Cell Foam (HCF) Insulation ensures critical signal-pair geometry. 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. Hard-Cell Foam Insulation is similar to the Foamed-PE used in our more affordable Bridges & Falls cables, and is nitrogen-injected to create air pockets. Because nitrogen (like air) does not absorb energy and therefore does not release any energy from or into the conductor, distortion is reduced. In addition, the stiffness of the material allows the cable's conductors to maintain a stable relationship along the cable's full length, producing a stable impedance character and further minimizing distortion.
