Audio and video cables are everywhere in an audio/video system, but the performance is destined to remain locked up in your components when using poorly engineered connections. Relying on a jumble of different cables to tone-control a system is equally unsound. Cables should just...get out of the way. And there’s the rub; it’s extraordinarily difficult to make cables that sound like nothing at all.
But that doesn’t stop Ultralink/XLO. “We control the manufacturing of our own product, just as we’ve done for close to 20 years,” enthuses XLO’s president Allen Sung, “giving us 100 percent quality control backed with a lifetime warranty. We have the capacity, machining and engineering expertise to work the conductor and dielectric materials. We design and produce all our specialist connectors. The product is of such quality,” Allen smiles, “that it’s supplied OEM to a surprising number of other brands.” Ultralink/XLO brings its long-standing social responsibility to the table by using less and less plastic packaging.
Who Cares How It’s Made!
You care because you’re among the many that have experienced high resolution audio playback, and if you’re passionate about music, once the music gets inside you that special way there’s no looking back. Everyone who needs that unique and special connection to music - our definition of an audiophile – always wants to get closer to it. XLO™ cables are carefully engineered to sound like nothing at all, allowing your carefully-chosen components to reach out and touch someone!
We accomplish that by always using the best materials, dielectrics and processes available. Using updated XLO™ Reference-3™ and Signature-3™ as an example, with interconnects and speaker cables of highest quality custom-drawn 99.99998% (“Six Nines”) pure Laboratory-Grade copper. Signature-3’s higher specification calls for UP-OCC 6N copper (Ultra Pure Ohno Continuous Casting process), a material so expensive it's sold by the gram!
XLO cables feature the latest approach to minimizing capacitive discharge effects. Hold on, you just have to know a little... As current passes through insulated conductors capacitance effects store signal energy in the surrounding insulation/dielectric material that’s turned into heat or quickly released out of phase back into the signal path as soon as the polarity changes. That leads to signal cancellations, reduced low-level detail, smeared and muddy sound.
Proprietary Integrated Field™ Winding Geometry – how each signal-bearing conductor is arrayed relative to the others – is optimized for the interactive relationship between current-controlled electromagnetic fields formed around a cable's conductors, and the electrostatic fields formed around its insulation when an audio or digital/video signal passes.
For more information go to our Downloads page to view the complete technical XLO White Paper or its compact and much abridged edition. There’s a lot to cable design, wade right in!