Harmonic Technology LP-10 Phono Cable
From the appearance, The LP-10 might appear to be no different from ordinary interconnects. Once revealed the internal construction, you will know they are far from similar. It is very tricky to deal with low level electrical signal produced from the minute mechanical movement of the cartridges. The signal could be as low as 0.1 mV for some very sensitive cartridges.
The Balancing Act of Phono Cable Design
It is not uncommon to see many unsuspecting vinyl lovers use ordinary interconnects to connect their turntables to the phono stages. While this may work, the signal loss is far too great to be acceptable by any serious vinyl lovers.
When designing the LP-10, our team of engineers set out to establish the best technical design by balancing conductor size, conductor material, insulation material and insulation wall thickness. These allowed our engineers to produce cables that are tailor made to transmit low level signal over a maximum distance.
To best preserve the low level signal, we use our proprietary 26 AWG 7N high purity OCC single crystal copper cable to start off with the design. We then use Teflon as cable insulation, Teflon is known to have the lowest dielectric constant after air. This combination has allowed us to achieve the best balance between resistance and capacitance correlation. The signal output from our raw LP-10 cables maintain the required wave form definition and minimize possible detail losses.
Once the raw cables achieved our stringent requirements in measurements, our engineers started to look into external interference that could pollute the low level signal. Here, we employed three separate techniques to achieve 99.9% of shielding effectiveness.
Firstly, we developed our Opti-Twist method to achieve a consistent 45 degree twisted-pair for our raw cables. The torque force used is unique to us after numerous trial and error. This torque force was found to give the lower-mids its textural tangibility. (You won’t miss this when listening to the LP-10)
Secondly, we covered the twisted pair with a layer of copper foil and thirdly, we used our OFC braided Matrix Weaving Shielding on top of the copper foil. To our engineers, there is never too much of shielding for low level signal.
The Final Touch
We thought we have a winning product and started making them for final listening test. To our surprise, though the cables measured almost perfectly, there is a certain “hardness” to the sound. Our engineers started scratching their head and one actually started relooking into the whole design. We forgot about mechanical insulation for our cables!
We added a thin layer of paper-based insulation and hoped that it would not over-dampen the sound. We got our fingers crossed. The final LP-10 sounded neutral, open, refined and capable of bringing out the best from the different tonearms and cartridges we tested with. This could be the reason you rediscover all your records.
LP-10_Phono Cable
Harmonic Technology LP-10 -26A Phono Cable