Description

Puritan CLASSIC Mains Cables utilise a specially developed grade of silicone rubber for the conductor and sheath insulation, formulated to be extremely soft and incredibly flexible in comparison with the plastics normally used in power cords. Our formula of silicone is extremely bendy, floppy, and optimised to absorb vibration. We further employ an anti-friction compound around the conductors to further aid flexibility, floppiness.

Regarding the importance of dielectrics in mains cables: As an insulating material silicone has an extremely low dielectric, very few materials have lower. Dielectric can be viewed as the drag that the insulation places on electron flow at the surface of the conductor, this effect increases with frequency. It actually has no effect at 50 or 60Hz and so choice of dielectric does not affect current delivery but if you believe it does, silicone would be one of your No. 1 choices to avoid this. It could conversely be argued that a high dielectric value would be desirable due to its potential to “drag” unwanted high frequencies. We have experimented with exotic and very expensive ultra high dielectric compounds but found no benefit which was measurable by instruments or discernible in listening tests. We use our custom grade silicone for its softness, flexibility and vibration absorption properties all of which provide tangible, easily heard, benefits.

Conductor materials: Copper is a truly great conductor so close to silver as not to matter for power cords. Where Copper is 100% conductivity Silver is 105% Gold 70% – The conductor materials debate on mains cables is irrational. Sure, you can have pure silver conductors at a pure silver price tag but it will not benefit your sound one iota and that cash would be better employed elsewhere in your system.

Conductor Gauge: The gauge of our conductors was determined in listening tests with a very high current demand installation in order to discern at what point increasing conductor size ceased to bring a benefit. We then went way, way beyond that point in specifying the conductor gauge for our cable and worked on the stranding formula to optimize the flexibility – floppiness.

Many people believe in their minds that they need 13/14AWG to be able to convey power without loss. Our density is chosen on the combination of stranded conductors which give much more than very adequate current carrying but still having great flexibility. For the Classic cable opted for 15AWG conductors. If used for chassis wiring this cable would be rated at 28Amps, for long runs 20 Amps.

Sonically the thickness of the silicone covering the conductors and the thickness of the silicone sheath proved critical as did the degree of twist applied to the conductors over their length and these values were established over extensive listening tests.

You will note the emphasis given to the need to have a very flexible, indeed floppy cable. Vibration distortion introduced by mains connections is a massively underestimated phenomena; mains cables exist in the room that music is playing – therefore they are being rattled and shaken by the music beats. Common amongst cable builders is to use heavy gauge cable with stiff metal sheathing. The stiffer the cable the more vibration it picks up and the more efficiently it transmits, without loss, every shudder to its ends. And at each end of the cable there is a plug pin and connector clip gripping that pin to make the contact. Introduce vibration and that contact is rubbing two metal surfaces along with the music, creating micro disturbances in the connection and hence in the electron flow.

This is something that we know has to be avoided and that is exactly what we achieve with the flexible stranded formulation of our conductors, very soft insulation layers, unique proprietary highly flexible proprietary shielding and loose, soft fabric covering to provide a cable that is cushioned against picking up vibrations in the first instance and then designed to dampen and absorb those that do get through.

In contrast to the stiff metal braiding and/or metalized mylar wrappings normally used, we shield our cables with our own very unique ultra flexible carbon-polymer nanotechnology barrier which provides a resistive shield capable not only of blocking RFI but absorbing a good amount of it in resistive paths before it reaches the drain connection at ground.

Of vital importance is the quality of the pins, terminals and connector grips at each end of the cable and here we have paid every attention; in particular to the gauge, form and materials quality of the phosphor bronze grips for the contacts which is extremely paramount.

After very much evaluation we steered away from exotic platings for our plugs and connectors: Brass, Phosphor Bronze and Nickel as found on the vast majority of plug pins and contact clips are all galvanically in a very similar voltage band whereas Gold, Silver, Platinum and Rhodium occupy a band 0.35V away.

Mating galvanically dissimilar plug pins and contact clips is a recipe for degraded performance due to the introduction of galvanically induced voltages (further exacerbated by vibration). As our mains plugs are almost invariably going to be introduced to wall sockets with phosphor bronze contact grips and equipment inputs with nickel plated brass input receptacles, we utilise materials for our plugs and connectors to be galvanically neutral in actual user situations. Our extensive listening tests proved this logic to be sonically correct.

We believe, and our ears agree, that by following the real science and technical challenges for this item we have succeeded in creating a phenomenal audiophile product providing truly outstanding performance at a very realistic price.

Classic PLUS: The technologies and formulations that we use for screening are completely unique to us. Our Classic cable employs a highly flexible carbon resistive compound acting on Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) which replaces the copper or aluminium foil, or copper braid, of aluminium/mylar tape of all other cables, it is significantly superior offering both supreme flexibility and dissipative qualities.

For our Ultimate cable project we formulated a highly flexible, nanotechnology magnetic barrier, a totally unique development . No other cable looks to deals with the magnetic aspects of EMI. The clue to the importance of which is in the name “Electro Magnetic Interference”.

The complex construction of our supremely performing Ultimate cable makes them a costly but very worthwhile investment. But in order to service a wider spectrum of audiophiles we decided to make the exciting development of our Mag Shield available in a more affordably priced cable by adding a MagShield layer to the Carbon Resistive layer on the Classic cable to create the Classic Plus the Classic Plus improves on the fantastic definition and articulation provided by the Classic inching it further towards the utterly sublime performance of the Ultimate.