The Clearway speaker cable is a result of 30 years of Chord know-how, redefined into a new ground-breaking, highly affordable speaker cable.  

During the development of Clearway, valuable research was carried out in relation to the behaviour of conductors and different dielectrics (insulation). For a long time, Chord has understood the importance of the relationship between conductor materials and insulation, and its silver-plated speaker cables make extensive use of PTFE as an insulation material.

The type of insulation doesn’t just affect a cable’s ability to carry signals accurately, it also has an effect on the tonal characteristics that the cable brings to the system. This often takes the form of an unwanted increase in bass frequencies, which directly limits a system’s ability to produce music with coherence and involvement.

Nigel Finn, Technical Director of The Chord Company told StereoNET:

I am particularly pleased with the new Clearway. The cable has qualities that would normally be associated with considerably more expensive cables. The use of high-quality oxygen-free copper, FEP insulation and high-density foil shielding means that at £10, it will be pretty hard to produce a better-performing speaker cable. Chord has tested the cable in all levels of systems and in every case, whether entry-level or high-end, the levels of clarity, detail, dynamics and critically, musical coherence, are really impressive.

Typically, cables that use oxygen-free copper as a conductor material will use either polyethylene or PVC as an insulating material. The difference with The Chord Company’s Clearway speaker cable is its use of FEP which is a derivative of PTFE with very similar performance characteristics. Compared to polyethylene, the FEP-insulated Clearway carries both detail and dynamic information markedly more accurately. The tonal properties of the cable are also considerably more neutral. 

The FEP-insulated conductors are built from multi-strand oxygen-free copper and are arranged in a twisted-pair configuration to reduce interference. The two conductors are then protected with a layer of soft PVC (which was chosen over polyethylene because of its flexibility), in order to correctly space the shielding in relation to the conductors and to minimise any mechanically induced noise. 

The Chord Company’s new Clearway speaker cable features two contra-wound high-density foil shields. Like many Chord speaker cables, the twin foils, combined with the twisted-pair configuration, make for a level high-performance of shielding that is effective to high frequencies and just like the award-winning Carnival SilverScreen. Then, a clear protective PVC jacket is applied, which serves to further reduce any mechanically induced noise; the reflective foil finish also assumes the colour of the immediate décor.

The Chord Company Clearway will be available in November. Pricing has not yet been announced.