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Recommended Component 2024 – Stereophile
A Landmark in Affordable Quality 'Mini-plug' Interconnects
Spanning a creek and a formidable travel-impeding canyon, the Bixby Creek Bridge compliments and counterpoints the majestic beauty of California's spectacular coastline just north of Big Sur, 120 miles south of San Francisco. As an integral part of this stretch of landscape, the bridge has been featured in numerous TV shows and movies, and is seen on travel posters all over the world.
AudioQuest's Big Sur cable is destined to become a landmark in affordable analog interconnects for portable devices and other gear that use mini-plugs. It lets the natural beauty of your music and other audio entertainment flow through, thanks to superior engineering and metallurgy. It has Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ Conductors (PSC+), Foamed-Polyethylene insulation, AudioQuest's Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation System (NDS) and Double-Balanced Asymmetrical Geometry.
"Recommended Component" Honors
Stereophile honored Big Sur by awarding it the magazine's coveted Recommend Component status for 2024.
According to Stereophile, "[These cables] are insulated with foamed polyethylene, and are attractive, well made, and very flexible. Moving up the line, SM heard improvements in image focus, tone color, drama, and overall clarity and extension. 'If you're in the market for truly affordable, truly high-quality interconnects, I can think of no better place to start than AudioQuest,' he concluded. SM used it between his laptop and PSB Alpha PS1 desktop speakers. Compared with the stock PS1 cable, the AQ produced a larger, more present overall sound, with deeper silences, longer decays, cleaner highs, more realistic bass, and richer tone color. 'Suddenly, I had real high-fidelity sound coming from my laptop,' SM enthused."
Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ Conductors (PSC+)
Perfect-Surface Copper+ has an astonishingly smooth and pure surface. Proprietary metal-processing technology protects the wire's surface at every stage of drawing and fabrication. When high-purity low-oxide copper is kept as soft, pure and smooth as possible, it becomes a wonderfully low-distortion PSC+ conductor. The resulting sound quality is even more focused and simply less in the way.
PSC+ simply outperforms all previously available copper metals at any price. All of Big Sur's conductors are solid. Electrical and magnetic interaction between strands in a conventional cable is the greatest source of distortion, often causing a somewhat dirty, harsh sound. Solid conductors are fundamental toward achieving Big Sur's very clean sound.
Foamed-Polyethylene Insulation
Any solid material adjacent to a conductor is actually part of an imperfect circuit. Wire insulation and circuit board materials all absorb energy (loss). Some of this energy is stored and then released as distortion. Big Sur uses air-filled Foamed-Polyethylene Insulation on both conductors because air absorbs next to no energy and Polyethylene is low-loss and has a benign distortion profile. Thanks to all the air in Foamed-PE, it causes much less of the out-of-focus effect common to other materials.
Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation System (NDS)
100% shield coverage is easy. Preventing captured RF Interference from modulating the equipment's ground reference requires AQ's Noise-Dissipation System. Noise-Dissipation System prevents a significant amount of RFI from reaching the equipment's ground plane.
Double-Balanced Asymmetrical Geometry
Purpose designed for single-ended applications, Double-Balanced Asymmetrical Geometry offers a relatively lower impedance on the ground for a richer, and more dynamic experience. While many single-ended cable designs use a single path for both the ground and the shield, Double-Balanced designs separate the two for cleaner, quieter performance.
Cold-Welded Gold-Plated Pure "Purple-Copper" Plugs
This plug design allows for a connection devoid of solder, which is a common source of distortion. Because the ground shells are stamped instead of machined, the metal can be chosen for low distortion instead of machinability. Purple-Copper offers a cleaner, clearer sound than the nickel-plated or OFHC metals commonly found in competing manufacturers' plugs.
