ChordBurndy origins

Since its creation in 1985, Chord Company has had an association with Naim Audio. Our base of operations  (near Stonehenge) is not far up the road from Naim Audio’s Salisbury HQ, so it will come as no surprise that their electronics are a near-permanent fixture in our listening room for both demonstration and cable development purposes.

For many years we have been concerned about the massive increase in high-frequency noise in our modern listening environment. Any wire in a system can act as an antenna for this noise and the longer the wire the better an antenna it becomes. This noise finds its way onto the signal grounds and with all the components connected with wires, you can end up with quite an extensive aerial system picking up a great deal of unwanted noise. While on paper this may seem a trivial worry, we have over the years found that any changes  made to reduce this HF noise produced  obvious musical improvements in that system’s performance.

Over the years Chord Company has broadened its product range with a major emphasis on keeping out this noise. With the recent introduction of Taylon® (our phase-stable insulation material) we achieved a major step-forward in system musical performance. Particularly thrilling was the effect on the Naim Audio system in our demo room. We were able to hear detail and nuance with great clarity but without losing the sense of rhythm and timing so inherent in a well set-up Naim Audio system.

While we are trying to keep out external noise, Naim Audio goes to great lengths to limit noise from within. They offer users the opportunity of building upon their initial investment by upgrading power supplies. By having an external power supply you are taking out a potentially noisy part of the electronics and giving it its own box. This makes good sense but is not a cheap solution as you need a separate enclosure for the supply and appropriate cables to carry the power.

For some time we have been producing high-performance cables suitable for carrying both power and signal, with many of them running in the biggest Naim systems.

During development of our latest products and whilst trying to further reduce the amount of HF noise on the signal ground it became apparent that the bigger Naim Audio systems –  ie. those using the Burndy cables were responding a lot less than some of the other electronics we were working with.

The Burndy connector originates from the military world and is an extremely robust coupling. However the internal cabling is unscreened and therefore has the potential to act as an antenna for HF noise. Out of curiosity we produced a simple screened version to see if this would improve our testing process. The difference was marked and like all great differences it wasn’t a change in quantities (Naim equipment is well sorted at this level !) but in the qualities of the performance.  The difference became addictive so we started uprating the cables materials and screening inside the Burndy, finally ending up using a highly screened Taylon® cable.

MD Alan Gibb made the mistake of playing this unofficial Chord Co Burndy-equipped system to an industry colleague so inevitably we then had to make a set for him…the rest is history