Meaningful Progress on the C-MARC™ RCA Interconnect Cable Design

Dear esteemed Customers,

As many things in life, the onset of an unexpected affliction can sometimes lead to even better things as a result.

Always look on the bright side of life

Such is the case here recently. Out of the blue (this will become an unintended pun later in this announcement), we received notice from our supplier of RCA connectors and spades that they are closing down shop completely and will no longer supply any parts.

We've found a new supplier in the form of ViaBlue™ from Germany. These are very high quality parts, precision manufactured to tight tolerances. They use high performance copper and are true gold plated.

The change affects the following LessLoss products:

C-MARC™ RCA Interconnect
C-MARC™ RCA Digital Cable
C-MARC™ Loudspeaker Cable (Spades)
C-MARC™ Entropic Process Loudspeaker Cable (Spades)

Now for the good news!

Who says change can't result in an improvement? The Xhadow Large RCA boasted extremely thick copper wall thickness throughout which was good for conductivity, but it did have one design issue which was less than optimal. There was a contact spring within the ground connection which was made of a magnetic metal. See workbench video below which shows this effect clearly:

Having a sensitive signal flow through such a thing cannot be abundantly excellent for sonics.

By contrast, the ViaBlue™ RCA connector boasts a more elegant design, forfeiting the need for a separately inserted contact spring altogether. Here, the housing metal itself is provided with slits to allow the needed micro-expansion as you make contact upon insertion.

In this way, the ground signal travels directly from ground contact ring to the RCA inlet's ground contact without ever crossing an additional magnetic metal element.

What's more, because there is no separate ground contact spring within, there is less microvibration within the connector as the signal needs not jump those two additional contacts from housing to spring and from spring to RCA inlet.

The result is an audibly improved sound quality. It is more immediately flowing and smooth, and the fine intricacies of musicality thus reveal themselves even better. This is great news, as it represents true progress.

What's more, the Viablue™ RCA has a substantially larger contact provision for the positive center core soldering connection. We can now insert all tinned strands of the C-MARC™ Coaxial cable's center core directly into the positive center pin before soldering together.

This is a smaller improvement than that gained by the absence of the magnetic material contact spring for the ground, but it is an improvement nonetheless, and that's great news, too!

A final improvement as a result of using these RCA connectors is that in our design, we'll be using one less plastic element on the very end of the cable to reach the necessary diameter for pressure release of the cable's electrical contacts. Less plastic = better sound!

We look forward to updating our product photography to address this new change. From now on, all LessLoss Plug-and-Play products will feature gold plated contacts.

What this means for future product

With a view towards the further and final development of our pending C-MARC™ Entropic Process RCA interconnect cables, we will use these RCA contacts as well, but will exchange their present metallic outer housing, which is black anodized aluminum fixed by set screws, with our own beautifully polished turned hardwood housing which will eliminate ringing altogether and result in a serious contender for the best available interconnect on the market. We look forward to the day these will be on offer! They will probably even smell nice, too!