About The AudioQuest Irish Red Subwoofer Cable
AudioQuest is a favourite brand of AV customers world-wide. They specialise in high-end cables, but also have a very extensive range of reasonably-priced cables like the Irish Red Subwoofer Cable featured here.
First we need to discuss the name which is derived from yet another one of man's best friends - the Irish Setter! This dog is a distant ancestor of the Spanish Pointer and is actually a mix of the English Setter, the Gordon Setter and the Irish Water Spaniel. Irish Setters are known for their friendly, fun-loving and outgoing temperament. These dogs have a natural love of exploring and enjoy a good game of fetch above all. This trait undoubtedly traces back to the Irish Setter's breeding to be useful to hunters on foot. Irish Setters' intelligence and naturally calm and friendly demeanour make them superbly suitable as therapy or support dogs. So, what about this cable?
Solid 0.5% Silver Conductors: Solid conductors eliminate strand-interaction distortion and reduce jitter. Solid silver-plated conductors are excellent for very high-frequency applications. These signals, being such a high frequency, travel almost exclusively on the surface of the conductor. As the surface is made of high-purity silver, the performance is very close to that of a solid silver cable, but priced much closer to solid copper cable. This is an incredibly cost effective way of manufacturing very high-quality subwoofer cables. This is the main difference between the lower priced Black Lab range and the Irish Red.
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. Black Lab 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.
Symmetrical Coax Geometry: Identical + and – conductors prevent the shield being used as an inferior audio conductor.
Cold-Weld Gold-Plated 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.
Grounding: Sometimes there is a hum problem unless the subwoofer and AV receiver (or surround-sound processor) are attached to each other using a separate wire. If you hear noticeable hum in your system after connecting your subwoofer, please attach the subwoofer cable's ground lead to your audio gear. Some audio equipment has a ground (GND) connection on the back-panel, if not, attach the ground spade lugs to any screw on the equipment chassis of both the source and the subwoofer. Usually, this extra wire will not be needed.
Our Take
Irish Red is a very good and smart looking cable and keeps the AudioQuest tradition for making quality products. It is not a radical change to what you hear from Black Lab, but with the extra silver content the sound will be slightly smoother and significantly better than what gets from the "freebie" cables that come with most subwoofers. Some may think Irish Red is a little on the high side for pricing, but this has as much to do with the rest of your system as much as it has to do with the cable itself.
Main Features & Specifications
- AudioQuest Irish Red, 1 RCA to 1 RCA Subwoofer Cable
- Geometry: Symmetrical Coax Geometry
- Metal: Solid Silver-Plated Long-Grain Copper (LGC) Conductors
- Dielectric: Foamed-Polyethylene (FPE) Insulation
- Noise-Dissipation System (NDS): Metal-Layer Noise-Dissipation System
- RCA Plugs: Cold-Welded, Gold-Plated
- Jacket Colour: Black/Red nylon braid
- Available Lengths: 2 metre; 3 metre; 5 metre; 8 metre and 12 metre
- Warranty: 5 Years
Note: Features & Specifications Subject To Change Without Notice. E&OE