![\"alan-nigel-chordco-bw-001\"](\"https:\/\/chord.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/alan-nigel-chordco-bw-001-1.jpg\")
<\/a>Sounds good to me… [photo of Alan and Nigel courtesy of EAR]<\/p><\/div>It was last summer – and like a lot of ideas it came quite suddenly.\u00a0 We\u2019d been working on the new Signature ARAY power cable<\/a>. This was a brand new design and heavily influenced by the Sarum Tuned ARAY power cable.\u00a0 Part of the reason for this was that we had a very good CD player in the demo room at the time and like some other hi-fi components it had a two pin IEC connector.\u00a0 That, combined with some clear thought, made us realise that maybe we could configure the ARAY conductor to be more effective. In short, we could (and did) and subsequent listening tests showed we had a clearly better cable.<\/p>\n Signature ARAY Power Cable<\/p><\/div>\n That meant that we had to revisit the Sarum Tuned ARAY power cable, looking at exactly how we employed the Tuned ARAY conductors and a lot of experimentation, but at the end of that process, the Super ARAY was born.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t doubt that mains cables are anything other than a crucial part of any hi-fi system, but never in my many years in the industry have I heard such a profound improvement from a power cable. It has to be said that our demo room system is hardly poorly wired. At the time it was sitting with a full Sarum Tuned ARAY loom in place and frankly it was pretty fabulous.\u00a0 Good enough to make concentrating on the more mundane aspects of my job slightly difficult – the temptation being to slip off into the demo room and check a few tracks out.<\/p>\n Sarum Super ARAY power cable<\/p><\/div>\n Connecting the new version of the Sarum power cable to the source component, a layer of noise I never knew was there just disappeared.\u00a0 Quite extraordinary.\u00a0 So we put another one into the DAC and the same thing happened again. We put another one into the pre-amp and the same thing happened again. Finally, we made one for the power amp \u2013 and yes, pretty much the same effect. There\u2019s a thing with power cables – generally the first one you put in seems the most impressive. With the new Sarum (not yet named Super ARAY) power cable though, every one we used resulted in the same sort of step forward. That lack of noise really has to be experienced.<\/p>\n There\u2019s that classic musician\u2019s quote \u2013 \u201cIt\u2019s not the notes you play, it\u2019s the space you leave between them that matters\u201d. I had never heard that space so clearly, which I guess is saying I\u2019ve never heard nothing sound so much like nothing. I\u2019m trying hard to avoid the term \u201cinky blackness\u201d, but the sense of silence was quite profound. More important though, was just how much that silence added to the music we were listening to. The space between notes really is important if a piece of music is going to work as it\u2019s intended to – and it wasn\u2019t just the space, it was the way that lack of noise let you hear so much further into the way musicians were playing. There was a particular Kate Bush track from the album „Aerial” where the piano notes are allowed to die, allowed to decay completely before another note is struck. It\u2019s a sound I know. Back when I began work at The Chord Company, I visited all the musicians I knew so I could hear them play and I remember one night sitting next to a beautiful piano while its owner struck notes and let them fade into silence. There are some really beautiful timbres and harmonics as a piano note dies away completely and here they were on our demo system.<\/p>\n Just in case you are thinking 192 high resolution, that\u2019s not what we were playing – we were listening to CDs at the time. It\u2019s a strange thing. I spent years waiting for higher sample rate recordings to come along and just as they did, we discover how profoundly musical CD quality music can sound. What a revelation!<\/p>\n So the first Super ARAY cable we made was the Sarum power cable and as the cable design was finalised, our MD, Alan Gibb, started a conversation with a possible new mains plug supplier.\u00a0 We took one of their existing designs, modified various elements and ended up with the best UK mains plug we\u2019d heard.\u00a0 This, along with a modified IEC plug from the same company is what you\u2019ll find at each end of a Sarum Super ARAY power cable.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>Super ARAY \u2013 the story continues<\/h2>\n