Audioquest Gibraltar Speaker Cable with 36V DBS

This double star quad geometry “Flat Rock” cable does not look normal on the outside, and it is not at all normal on the inside. A sophisticated combination of extraordinary materials and extremely refined design lets Gibraltar… to equally honor all types of music.

CONDUCTORS:
All eight of Gibraltar’s conductors are solid. Electrical and magnetic interaction between strands in a conventional cable is the single greatest source of distortion, often causing a somewhat harsh, dirty and confused sound. Solid conductors are the most important ingredients enabling Gibraltar’s very clear sound. Whether a conductor is solid or stranded, skin-effect is a prime distortion mechanism in speaker cables.Gibraltar very simply keeps this effect out of the audio range by using conductor sizes that are below the threshold for
audible distortion.

PERFECT-SURFACE COPPER+:
Gibraltar uses extremely high purity Perfect-Surface Copper+ (PSC+) conductors. All conductors are solid, which prevents strand interaction, a major source of distortion. Surface quality is critical because a conductor can be considered as a rail-guide for both the electric fields within a conductor, and for the magnetic fields outside the conductor. The astonishingly smooth and pure Perfect-Surface eliminates harshness and greatly increases clarity compared to OFHC, OCC, 8N and other coppers. The superior purity of PSC+ further minimizes distortion caused by grain boundaries, which exist within any metal conductor.

DIELECTRIC-BIAS SYSTEM (patent pending):
Unfortunately, because insulation stores and releases energy, it is also a “dielectric.” In a cable application, all released energy is distortion. The misnomer “break-in” is often used to describe the pronounced improvement in performance as the dielectric adapts to a charged state as the cable is used. Whenever a cable does not have a charge on it, it is re-adapting to an uncharged state; it is becoming new again.

By maintaining a 36 volt dielectric-bias, far above the voltage of delicate audio signals, the DBS system provides considerably better transparency and dynamics than is possible even from a cable in continuous use. It takes a couple of weeks for the DBS system to reach maximum performance. Since DBS battery packs are attached when Gibraltar cables are first terminated, Gibraltar will be approaching or at peak performance by the time it is installed in your system. Since there is no “load” on the two standard hardware-store batteries, they will last for years. A test button and LED allow for occasional verification of battery performance.

CONDUCTIVE INSULATION:
The four negative conductors in Gibraltar are insulated with partially conductive carbon-loaded polyethylene. This remarkable material damps radio-frequency garbage from being fed back into the amplifier. The sonic benefit is exactly the same reduction in hash and better dimensionality that comes whenever RF garbage is reduced in an audio circuit.

BIWIRING:
Gibraltar is an exceptional Single-Biwire cable. When the halves are separated at the speaker end, the double quad-helix design turns Gibraltar into a true double-biwire set thanks to the magnetic autonomy of each quad-helix. On it’s own; one quad would be a little light-weight in performance as it is biased towards treble finesse. The other quad is biased toward the bass; it’s more forceful and lacking ultimate resolution. Together they form a completely optimized full range design, which was the first priority; but when separated the dual star quads let Gibraltar be a maximum performance double-biwire in a single cable.