"Absolutely Breathtaking" Cables
Kimber Kable's Carbon 16 speaker cable has lean, mean, explosive strength. This strength lies in its ability to handle the power needs of demanding floorstanding loudspeakers and larger stand mounted monitors.
Carbon 16 boasts sophisticated VariStrand copper conductors in a 16-wire counter opposed helix array and a low loss fluorocarbon dielectric. Kimber's patented Varistrand™ technology incorporates specifically selected strand gauges within one conductor made from hyper-pure copper with a carbon-infused conductive polymer finish. The cable also uses an electrostatically dissipative carbon polymer and is finished using nitrogen assisted hand soldered termination.
This is a premium, no-compromise cable that will pay huge sonic dividends when used with high quality audio gear. "In the right system I would expect results to be absolutely breathtaking. Keywords being dynamic, fast, detailed and able to convey real drama, wallop and kick with a splash of top-end brilliance in abundance," raves Ken Stokes, Hi-fi Pig, February 19, 2020. "I found the soundstage to match the overall dynamic grip these cables offered and was huge."
The Carbon-Series Advantage
A major feature – and a completely new direction for Kimber – is the use of carbon in these cables. The conductors are pure, VariStrand copper over which a carbon-infused conductive polymer is pressure-applied.
The polymer fills the spaces in between the strands helping to maintain the geometry and means that the stranded conductors behave more like a solid core conductor (a benefit), while retaining its flexibility. The copper conductors and carbon polymer are then insulated in the conventional way with Kimber’s Fluorocarbon (Teflon) insulation.
The Carbon polymer reduces mechanically-induced noise and improves the performance of the outer Teflon insulating material.
Attention to Detail
A feature of Kimber’s Axios headphone cables has been the development of a braiding machine which is able to maintain the famous weave at the point at which the braid splits into two, and this design has been carried over to the new Carbon cables.
Instead of simply twisting the wires together for the positive and negative halves of the speaker cables, the braid is maintained at the breakout. The interconnect consists of a single wire carrying both left and right channels which similarly branches out to both channels with no break at the junction and preservation of the braid.
