We Make Special Audio Cables.

LessLoss initially sought to seek the highest performance audio DAC possible. Developing the DAC 2004 led at the same time to the development of the highest performance audio cables possible. Both the DAC 2004 and the LessLoss cables represent the best possible performance in their fields.

Knowing that the almost perfect audio conversion carried out by the DAC 2004 can not be further enhanced, but only depleted and distorted in various ways, we developed cables which will not distort this audio signal. These cables are the perfect match for the top-of-the-line DAC we offer.


LessLoss Audio Cables :: Features Overview

  • No plastics used.
  • Silver plated copper conductors for both positive and negative poles.
  • Best possible broadband signal transfer topology. Patent Pending.
  • Many positive and many negative conductors.
  • Extremely effective silver plated copper shielding (~29 mm^2 cross section).
  • Almost no self-inductance.
  • Almost no parasitic eddy currents.
  • Extremely porous nonelectrostatic, nonconductive dielectric.
  • Neutrik/LessLoss XLR connectors with shielding to the very end.
  • Silver or gold plated electrical contacts.
  • Special soldering method -- cables sold only with prepared ends.
  • Price for balanced cable: 275 EUR / mono meter (includes worldwide shipping).


A list of bad cable design features, and how LessLoss cables differ.

  • PVC, polyethylene, polypropylene, or Teflon shroud (or any plastic).
    --> LessLoss uses nonelectrostatic special cotton fibres.
  • Gas injection.
    --> LessLoss uses proprietary porous braiding technique.
  • Plastics enshrouding metal avoiding oxidation.
    --> LessLoss uses silver and an inert filter of cotton.
  • Twisted pair, quad star, various braids.
    --> LessLoss uses proprietary topology.
  • Multi-strand (for flexibility).
    --> LessLoss uses mono-strand metal for signal wires.
  • Inter-braiding the polarities.
    --> LessLoss uses two tight, dense shields.
  • "Charging" the dielectric.
    --> LessLoss dielectric cannot carry or hold charge.


Fiction and fact about audio cables

  • The metal must be silver.
    --> Fiction.
  • The metal must be frozen and thawed.
    --> Fiction.
  • Foamed Teflon is the best dielectric.
    --> Fiction.
  • The only things that matter ar R,C and L.
    --> Fiction.
  • Different sized conductors are best.
    --> Fiction.
  • Shields harm more than they do good.
    --> Fiction.
  • The #1 source of distortion is faulty geometry.
    --> Fact.
  • The #2 source of distortion is the dielectric material.
    --> Fact.
  • Oxidized copper can sound better than the same amount of clean, polished silver.
    --> Fact.
  • Good cables can actually improve a sound signal.
    --> Fiction.
  • The amount and type of distortion is only a matter of taste, as we must live with it anyway.
    --> Fiction.
  • Cable technology is a black art.
    --> Fiction.
  • Multistrand cable sounds the same as monofilament cable.
    --> Fiction.


Background to the LessLoss cable development

The LessLoss audio cables were developed from ground up within the course of two years. The methods for experimentation with cables began without the use of any digital signal conversion. As we progressed, our experimentation became ever more sophisticated. We eventually settled for direct microphone signals in a rural setting in a private recording studio. This formed the basis of our experimentation as we developed live sounds which were difficult to discern from one another, such as leaving the microphone(s) in the center of the room and turning away from it (them), speaking towards each wall separately. It was found that various echos are often more difficult to convey via a cable, or more easily discerned by the ear as correct or incorrect, than direct signals. Other tests included making kissing sounds close to the microphone membrane. Very often this sounds like letting a little air out of a balloon, and the worse the cable, the more it would sound like plastic rather than human lips. Discerning the differences between the crackling sounds of several different types of plastic bags was also a very revealing test.

Yet another test which gave much insight into these cable differences was wearing quality headphones and listening to one's own voice. Generally, the better the phase characteristics of the cable, the easier it was for the speaker to coordinate his lip movements and to feel direct control of the sound coming to his ears through the cables. This was even more apparant by making random sounds rather than speaking. The soft rustling of differnt plastic bags is also a sound almost impossible to convey accurately through electromagnetic means. To sum up a long two years of experimentation into a few sentences is difficult. In general it can be said that sounds which do not provoke musical emotion were more advantageous than sounds which are easily interpreted by the mind, such as plain speech or standard musical informaiton. We were also aided by advanced electromagnetic field simulation software while calculating the different aspects of signal propogation through different cable geometries. During this testing, we learned a very great deal and were constantly determined to keep an open mind about all the unexpected twists and turns of our various discoveries.

LessLoss cable development

The first priority was to determine all of the mistakes which could be made and then simply to avoid them in the design of our cable.

What follows is a detailed explanation of the faulty aspects of traditional cable design. Please conisder that LessLoss is first and foremost commited to sonic excellence. All other aspects of design, such as practicality and style, are subordinate issues in our design. This is not to say that we make ugly gear, but that all choices and placement of all elements involved must first adhere to the most important issue: the sonic result. Only then can the design issues be contemplated, as far as the sonic prerogatives allow.

The result is that the cables that LessLoss creates are not standard. They are not completely waterproof, and they are not designed to withstand continuous abrasion or aggressive commercial stage handling. They are strictly for use in a controlled setting such as in a stationary installation where the least amount of signal distortion is desired. Such settings would be in a high-class audiophile system or in a radio or sound recording studio stationary installation setup. At no point does LessLoss recommend using these cables outdoors or on open stages. The reason is that the solution which LessLoss provides is so much more advanced to traditional cable design that, in our opinion, it fully justifies the lack of industrial protection regarding fluids.

Bad audio cable design

Starting from the outside and working our way inwards, let's take a look at what can be avoided to achieve near-distortionless audio signal transfer.

1. Outer Jacket.

Many audiophiles know of two tweaks that improve the sound of audio cables: one is to raise the cables off of the floor and the other is to physically peel off the outer plastic protective jacket (if present) from the cable. One speaks of a "lighter" type sound, perhaps more "clarity" in the signal, less "mud", a more "relaxed" sound.

We at LessLoss have extensively experimented with this phenomenon, and have come to the quite obvious conclusion that indeed, any material immediately surrounding an audio cable has a perceivable influence on the signal. What's more, the higher the dielectric constant of that material, the greater this effect will be. Not only does the dielectric constant have influence on the sound, but the thickness of the material as well. Finally, it was made evident through further experimentation that even the electrostatic qualities of the material have influence on the sound.

So, for example, an audio cable lying in a thick synthetic or wool rug will benefit greatly by being lifted some centimeters away from the rug. The same cable lying on a rug of the same material, but with very short hairs, will also benefit, but to a lesser extent, due to the greater mean distance of this flat material's surface to the electromagnetic field carrying the audio signal.

In the same way, a varnished wood floor will influence the sound yet less, due to the fact that the varnish may have a lower dielectric constant than the synthetic rug, but also because the varnish layer is very thin indeed. A cable lying on a natural wood floor would be influenced yet less, and a cable in mid-air would be the ideal case, for the signal's electromagnetic field would then be least distorted axially.

The peeling off of a plastic PVC, polyethylene, polypropylene, or other external protective jacket also has the effect of "opening up" the signal, of "cleaning" it or "clarifying" it. It is interesting to note how deceptive experimentation with this can be: when working in a room with a synthetic rug, a six meter length of microphone cable can easily be "misinterpreted" because of interaction of the signal with the rug, as well as with the PVC outer covering. Upon removing the plastic outer jacket, the magnetic field around the cable now lies even closer to the synthetic rug, whose dielectric constant and electrostatic properties may be even worse than than those of the plastic used in the outer jacket. To complicate matters more, the electromagnetic field is propagating through this synthetic material only on one side of the cable. Hence much of the confusion with regards to cables, outer shields, and the lifting of cables from the floor.

Knowing these audible interactions, it is quite simple to formulate the ideal outer jacket of an audio cable: for all practical electromagnetic purposes, it should not exist. With this as the precondition for any subsequent jacket design issues, we choose the solution of not including it. A jacket which fulfills this electromagnetic prerequisite could not be found. This translates, in physical terms, to the visible electrical outer silver shield of metal. This shield is surrounded only by air.

A shield is typically braided multistrand wire. Some braids are tighter than others, resulting in better coverage of the cable. Other designs call for an additional layer of copper or aluminum or even silver foil to further increase the coverage. We have experimented extensively with a multitude of shielding solutions, and the optimum shield was found to be the most tight and most dense shield possible.

Below you see a standard shield compared 1:1 with an extremely tight shield, commercially not available because it involves tightening procedures not possible by braiding alone.

Tight shield compared to standard professional studio microphone cable.

A shielding compromise inevitably occurs when using a braided construction of even the most dense structure: the countless crossing points of the wires create not only a matrix of shielding, but a matrix of holes. These holes cannot be compltetely covered up even with the use of ten tightly braided shields. There always remains an angle between the braided wires, and this angle results in unavoidable pores in the shielding. Even thought this tight braiding technique is very effective, there is another and better way to achieve the ultimate shielding performance.

The alternative that LessLoss now employs is to tightly wind a large-diameter wire around the signal carriers to be shielded. Between the individual windings of this wire, inevitable valleys form which will have small spaces between them when the cable is flexed. To alleviate this problem, a second layer of wire is again helically wound very precisely over the first, carefully placed in the valleys formed by the first layer of winding. The result is that not only is the signal completely protected from interference, but that the protection is even bettered through the very flexing of the cable, as the friction of the two wound layers of wire causes the second layer to press tightly against the valleys of the first.

Audio cable wound shielding.

The wire used is polished silver plated copper and this results in the highest known rejection of electromagnetic interference. Almost as if the signal never left the protected casing of the equipment itself.

2. Shielding.

There are two prevailing schools of thought about screening cables: one opinion is that electromagnetic interference causes any length of cable to distort the signal it is carrying, and the other opinion is that in short lengths, such as those used in a typical hi-fi setup, screening causes more harm than it does good. This "harm" is typically described as a resulting high capacitance in the cable, and the undesirable sonic effects that this capacitance has on the signal.

You may ask: "Why is a shield necessary in the first place?" In audio signal transfer of any sort, we want the least amount of distortion at the receiving end. When the signal leaves a device via a cable, it leaves the device's shroud of metal (the casing) which is a protective screen to the outer forces of electromagnetic interference, of which the aether of this world is full. Never mind that the prevailing frequencies in this aether are radio waves, much higher than the relatively low-frequency sound waves we want to propogate along the cable.

The fact is that, through intermodulation, the signal is indeed distorted and cannot be restored to its original state in the next piece of equipment, as this distortion, because it is impossible to predict what radio wave will hit the cable at which frequency and at which angle(!), is completely random. To avoid going through the "dangerous" aether, a shield is used.

The lower the signal level in the cable, the more influence the unpredictable ambient radio waves will have on it. For example, in microphone cables, the quality of the shielding is considered the #1 most important feature because the small microphonic signal will be amplified several thousand times before it is recorded, revealing any foreign element that has been added to the signal along its way to the amplifier.

The opponents of shielding have only one argument available to them: that the capacitance of the cable is greatly increased due to the use of shielding. What is rather humorous is that this statement is often attached to the argument that the signal path in question is very short anyway, yielding by very virtue of that statement any increase of capacitance insignificantly small in the first place!

What is not common knowledge about the use of shielding is that, in the production of cable, the shield is the single most expensive part, and that it is also the slowest to be produced. Also, what commonly remains unspoken in typical cable advertisement is the simple fact that capacitance is an inverse function of distance between conductors and a direct function of the dielectric constant of the material used between them. So if one enshrouds two metal conductors with PVC, the worst of the common dielectrics due to its high dielectric constant, then enshrouds these by a shield placed immediately over them, of course one would then create a rather long "capacitor" of sorts. This is the standard "audio cable" and it is the worst of the lot.

It is evident that the best shield would have a spacer used between the conductors carrying the signal and the shield, and this spacer must have a dielectric constant similar to that of air, and should have no electrostatic traits.

The LessLoss solution is exactly that: an extremely effective shield kept continuously from the conductors carrying the signal via extremely porous nonelectrostatic cotton fibres. This guarantees that the protection provided by the shield outweighs to an extremely large degree any minute capacitive increase of the cable because of its implementation.

Grounding

The parasitic electromagnetic waves are induced into the shield and flow as an electric current in the shield. This signal is parasitic and is to remain isolated from the signal. However, in balanced audio connections, the grounds of the devices being connected are also connected via this cable, usually via the shield. In the LessLoss cable, to complete the ground connection, there is a separate internal ground line which makes electrical contact at both devices, but the shield remains floating at the source device to ensure that the source ground remains uncontaminated. The shield is connected as an extension of the protective casing of the receiving device, in effect bringing the receiving device "close" to the transmitting device and at the same time not allowing the parasitic high frequency signals to contaminate the ground of the transmitting device. The source signal is to be amplified and hence even the ground is to be kept free from high frequency interference. (In the DAC 2004 this is done at the other end of the analogue ground internally by the galvanic separation of the digital and analogue grounds.)

Audio cable ground connection.

Any other connection method is obviously inferior to this and has been disqualified during testing of the LessLoss DAC and cables.

Marketing

The measure of a shield's ability to avoid electromagnetic interference is called Shielding Effectiveness, which is expressed as the ratio of field strength on the outer side of the shield to the inner side. At about 29 square millimeters cross sectional area, the shield of the LessLoss cables is extremely dense. Today, many cable manufacturers advertise their shields as having "100%" coverage. This is mere marketing and has no meaning. Indeed, we have come across many cables claiming "100%" coverage to find extremely large gaps between the shield strands. The use of wrapping foil is but a less expensive way of justifying "100%" coverage, which it is not. Even foil can be bettered by adding either a second layer of foil or more and tighter shielding.

Sometimes claims are made that symetrically braiding numerous strands of positive and negative polarities make for an adequate substitution to shielding, or even the proposterous statement that it is even better than shielding. If this were true, all microphone cables in the world (world's smallest and most sensitive audio signals) would all incorporate braided strands instead of shielding, because it is much less expensive to braid a cable in one go rather than making a separate shield with spacers, foil, and an outer jacket, and the microphone cable business is competing world-wide for the last couple of cents in their already small margins! Even if this price argument may not be the case always, what is evident is that without a shield, all cables, no matter how they are braided, are antennae and audibly pick up radio waves which interfere with sensitive audio signals.

LessLoss audiophile audio cable.

3. Metal and Topology.

In broadband audio cable signal transmission, all three factors of R (resistance), C (capacitance), and L (inductance) are at play along the entire length of cable. It is not possible to create a simple and truthful schematic to show the interplay of these influences, as they are not only present at every portion of the cable, but also dependent on the frequencies, and, very likely, even upon the simultaneousness of the given frequencies at any time. Hence what is commonly rather poetically referred to as "timing" in the perception of music may very well have significance (or even be the fundamental qualitative component) in the science of audio cable design.

After two years of experimenting with almost every possible audio cable design, LessLoss now concludes that the #1 factor which influences sound quality is definitely the geometry. In second place comes the dielectric material and, skipping over shielding theories for now, only last comes the purity and surface quality of the metal involved. It is interesting to note that almost all audiophile cable manufacturers advertise models differing only in the type of metal, wherease in reality, the metal is the least influential given the vast array of possible geometries and dielectric materials.

During the course of extensive experimentation, LessLoss even created a cable made out of solder! Solder is approximately 60 times less conductive than even the worst and most corroded copper. It has a great deal of resin imbedded into it. Due to the development of the proper topology and the wise use of dielectric materials, the resulting solder-based cable was sonically virtually indistinguishable from a standard microphone cable used in many of the world's most famous recordings!

Phase linearity is very important to audio signal transfer quality.

Man has a keen hearing of artificial phase shifts between frequencies. The better the cable, the less phase shifting and distortion there is. This is analogous to a good or poor crossover network in a loudspeaker.

When a current passes through a wire, a magnetic field is formed, not only around, but also within the wire. This magnetic field inside the wire, which is at right angles to the current direction, in turn induces an eddy current lengthwise along the wire. The longitudinal eddy currents travel against the current direction in the centre of the wire, and with the current direction along the outer edge of the wire, thereby reducing the active area of the wire. This leads at very high frequencies to the phenomenon known as the skin effect, where the signal is present mostly at the outer surface of the metal.




Electromagnetic field simulation

Using the Maxwell equations and advanced electromagnetic field simulation software, LessLoss calculated and made very plain the absolutely unsymmetrical current dispersion which occurs in a simple twisted pair cable design. In the above animation, you are viewing a cross-section of a twisted pair, the two circles representing the two metal wires. The blue portions of the cable are of lower current density whereas the red portions are of the highest current density.

Below, you can see an explanation for the faults involved in Litz wire. Litz wire is used to supposedly create a larger surface area for a given amount of metal, whereas each strand is isolated one from the other by means of a solderable lacquer which is nonconductive. This would make for a multi-strand cable without any of the strands touching one another. In this demonstration, due to screen resolution, the strands appear to be touching, but in fact they are not. The frequency is kept constant, at 15 kHz, while the cable is being followed down its twised multi-strand axis. In other words, with each turn of the animation, we have moved down the cable a few millimeters and have taken another snap-shot of the same 15 kHz frequency.


It is painfully evident that the Litz structure does absolutely nothing regarding the current and electromagnetic field dispersion. What's worse, the fact that the strands are twisted to allow flexibility of the cable, the "hot spots" are forced to jump continuously through the dielectric lacquer separating the Litz strands, resulting in further discontinuities in the propogation of audio signals. This is audible in audio engineering terms as "exciter", a distortion of high-frequency content to add artificial clarity or "sexiness" to a signal where non was picked up by the microphone. An anlogy of this effect is used in the computer visual arts and is known as "embossing", artificially bringing out the contours. Prolonged listening to such a signal is difficult to withstand and is not a relaxing experience.

Whether this is a true Litz cable or simply a multi-stranded one with the strands touching one another makes only as much difference as the sonic difference between the oxide layers touching or not touching. The older the cable, the more difference this will make, as the multi-stranded (touching) cable will exhibit more distortion later on due to the inevitable oxidation of the outer surface of all of the strands (there is still air in there between the strands, as they are round, and on an atomic level, it makes no difference whether there is that amount of oxygen or the amount in your living room).

Knowing all of this, it is evident that the ideal cable geometry would quite simply be the one that would (1) not be multi-stranded; (2) would exhibit the most symmetrical and even dispersion of signal at all frequencies and in a constant way down the entire length of the cable.

The inner geometry of the LessLoss cable is exactly that. Here is a simulation of the electromagnetic dispersion of a signal sweep in a twisted pair cable when compared to LessLoss. The comparison is extremely accurate in that:

  • The total cross-section of metal (= simple resistance) is exactly the same in both models.
  • The signal levels are exactly the same in both models.
  • The scale used from lowest signal density to highest signal density is set to the exact same values in both models.
  • The test signal frequencies are exactly the same in both models.
  • The dielectric (air) used is exactly the same type in both models.
  • The parameters for the type of metal used (copper) is exactly the same in both models.
  • (Also please note that these two models were later (after modelling) brought to the relative positions you see here to simplify their comparison. During modelling of course they were each in their own cable models and had no electromagnetic interaction with one another.)


What you see above is one wire of a typical cable when compared at the same frequency to one wire of the LessLoss cable.

Things to consider:

  • When the current density is uniform at all frequencies, then so is the electromagnetic field.
  • When the electromagnetic field is uniform, then so is the phase of the broadband signal at all frequencies.
  • The proper utilization of cable topology results in much more smooth phase response than the utilization of polished silver in a poor topology. This is true even when the conductors of the proper cable are completely oxidized, and made of completely untreated copper of only average quality.


Summary of LessLoss cable:

With an almost completely uniform current dispersion and electromagnetic field, with dielectric material bearing electrical properties most similar to those of air, with non-electrostatic dielectric material between conductors and shield, with a very tight, large cross scectional shield and a dedicated ground connection within this shield, the LessLoss cables are extremely well fit for propogating an audio signal adding the least possible amount of distortion.
What you should know before buying a DAC:
( PDF Version )



DAC 2004 :: List of Features



LessLoss Cables



Pictures



Reviews



LessLoss Recordings!



LessLoss Pricing + Contact Info



Can't find it? Search here.


© 2004-2007 LessLoss.com [All rights reserved]