Kimber's ultimate interconnects
When Ray, Nathan and the team at Kimber were asked by customers to build a cost-is-no-object interconnect they went back to the drawing board and set about addressing one of the fundamental issues with performance audio cables - how do we make a polymer dielectric (wire coating) that doesn't degrade the sound quality. The answer was to do away with traditional dielectrics completely! By doing away with polymer dielectrics, utilizing proprietary braiding techniques, Palladium & Gold coated solid-core copper conductors and cotton(!) Kimber are able to build a cable that we expect to become the industry reference.
What are NAKED conductors?
Naked conductors are uninsulated 24AWG solid core copper. These copper conductors have been plated with a thick layer of palladium followed by a thick layer of gold to protect against corrosion. The use of palladium as an inter-metallic diffusion barrier opposed to nickel prevents distortions that would be introduced via the magnetic properties of nickel.
Why not just plate gold directly over copper?
While it is possible to plate gold directly over copper, over time the two metals will diffuse into one another forming alloy components. These alloy components have very poor conductivity.
Why use NAKED conductors?
The dielectrics or insulators commonly used in interconnect design have a negative impact on the signal transmission. These polymer insulators are normally used to protect the metallic conductor from corrosion and to prevent the conductors from a short circuit condition. Polymer insulations do a remarkable job at these two things at the expense of signal transmission fidelity.
Short circuit prevention: To prevent the 6 uninsulated(per channel) "Naked" conductors from touching, causing a short circuit, the conductors have been carefully braided with cotton strands. The cotton strands both separate and secure the conductors.
Why cotton?
Cotton possesses excellent dielectric properties in respect to signal fidelity. This parameter is commonly referred to as the dielectric constant. Cotton has a value of 1.3 (1 is the ideal) 2-5 are the common values for most insulating polymers. For example Fluorocarbon has a value of 2.1 and Polyethylene a value of 2.25.
Sonic benefits
The unique design of NAKED will deliver the most liquid grain-free detailed presentation of any Kimber product to date. Talk to the Soundline team about auditioning a set of Kimber NAKED interconnects and hear the difference for yourself. Read more here.
