AudioQuest Yukon XLR

Yukon XLR XLR

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Meaning “Big River” in Athabaskan, the Yukon River starts with the Llewellyn Glacier as its source in British Columbia, and empties into Alaska’s Bering Sea. It may have been the first immigration route for North America’s first indigenous humans, and was certainly the principle means of travel during the 1896-1903 Klondike Gold Rush. Paddle-wheel riverboats continued as the dominant form of transportation along the river until the 1950s when the Klondike Highway was completed. King Salmon from the Yukon River remain an elusive, but prized delicacy.

SOLID PERFECT-SURFACE COPPER+ (PSC+) CONDUCTORS: Perfect-Surface Copper+ has an astonishingly smooth and pure surface. Proprietary metal-processing technology protects the wire’s surface at every stage of drawing and fabrication. When high-purity low-oxide copper is kept as soft, pure and smooth as possible, it becomes a wonderfully low-distortion PSC+ conductor. PSC+ is manufactured by applying the same exceptional technology to an ultra-pure copper. The resulting sound quality is even more focused and simply less in the way. For over 30 years AudioQuest has pioneered the use of superior metals; yet even we were surprised by the huge leap in performance made possible with Perfect-Surface Technology. PSC+ simply outperforms all previously available copper metals at any price. All of Yukon’s conductors are solid. Electrical and magnetic interaction between strands in a conventional cable is the greatest source of distortion, often causing a somewhat dirty, harsh sound. Solid conductors are fundamental toward achieving Yukon’s very clean sound.

POLYETHYLENE AIR-TUBE INSULATION: Any solid material adjacent to a conductor is actually part of an imperfect circuit. Wire insulation and circuit board materials all absorb energy (loss). Some of this energy is stored and then released as distortion. All of Yukon’s conductors use PE Air-Tube Insulation because air absorbs next to no energy, and Polyethylene is low-loss and has a benign distortion profile. PE Air-Tube Insulation causes much less of the out-of-focus effect common to other materials.

CARBON-BASED 3-LAYER NOISE-DISSIPATION SYSTEM (NDS): 100% shield coverage is easy. Preventing captured RF Interference from modulating the equipment’s ground reference requires AQ’s Noise-Dissipation System. Metal and Carbon-Loaded synthetics prevent most RFI from reaching the equipment’s ground plane.

TRIPLE-BALANCED GEOMETRY: The three conductors in “Triple-Balanced” Yukon cables ensure that whether prepared with RCA or XLR plugs, the positive and negative signals have equally low-distortion conducting paths. The 100% coverage shield is never used as an inferior conductor.

COLD-WELDED HANGING-SILVER DIRECTLY OVER PURE PURPLE COPPER PLUGS: This plug design allows for a connection devoid of solder, which is a common source of distortion. Because the ground shells are stamped instead of machined, the metal can be chosen for low distortion instead of machinability. Purple Copper offers a cleaner, clearer sound than the nickel-plated or OFHC metals commonly found in competing manufacturers’ plugs.