Black Cat Cable

[Audiohub Mod Team]

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Official Black Cat Cable site

Black Cat Cable is, in some ways, the story of my emancipation from the industrial approach and
my exploration of the artisanal approach to designing and building audiophile cables.
Because of some very unique capabilities, I’ve been able to do things that others, who are locked
into the industrial model, aren’t able to do.

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More importantly, staying artisanal means that I can do something that the big brands cannot do
– I can personally build every cable that leaves my workshop.
You just can’t get that kind of personal involvement from the creators and founders of the big brands.


Chris Sommovigo
Designer / Craftsman: Black Cat Cable

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Digital Cables

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Analog Cables

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[sommovigo]

Hello! I'll soon be sharing information on our Ultra-Reference series, INDIGO!

Best regards,

Chris

[Dr Pan K]

Hey Chris, welcome aboard. Do keep us updated!

[Στέλιος Π.]

The most interesting part in the data cables, IMHO, is the use of a BNC--> RCA adapter, I couldn't agree more with the concept.

[Audiohub Mod Team]

Production of the all new Indigo USB cable, designed by Chris Sommovigo and hand made in Japan

[Audiohub Mod Team]

Stereo Pravda to use Black Cat cables for In Ear Monitors

http://www.stereopravda.com/blog/107/

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[Audiohub Mod Team]

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The smoothness of sound, the detail that is pulled from my compact discs, the depth and width of the soundstage, and all around musicality is new to me since I connected the Digit 75.

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2016/10/ ... -75-spdif/

[Audiohub Mod Team]

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Yugawara, Kanagawa, JAPAN - November 23, 2016 - It seems that there is much more to hear, according to Black Cat Cable’s resident artisan, Chris Sommovigo. After nearly a decade of experimenting with a concept that he had codenamed “Superleggera” - due to it’s extraordinary lightness - it seems he’s ready to release the first fruits of his unreasonably long development cycle: INDIGO “Silverwave” .

“This project runs counter to just about everything folks seem to think when it comes to what makes audiophile cable better, given that they are accustomed to big and heavy cables - as if sheer quantity or heft or girth somehow equates to increases in performance,” shared Chris. “That way is - and always has been - a recipe for madness.”

"With Indigo the development cycle was very long, labor of love, and it always seemed that I was near breaking through - but never quite there. With the recent development of the Silverwave conductor, and the last iteration of it - all the veils just dropped, and there was everything just hanging right there in the space between and around my speakers. Pure, effortless coherence."

At ¥800,000 per 1.0m pair (+ ¥250,000 per 1/2mpr) (δλδ $7500/1M), Mr. Sommovigo knows that these won’t be flying off the shelves - and that’s just as well, as far as he’s concerned.

“The final version of the Silverwave conductor is very difficult to make, as I’ve got to process it in-house using strange tools that I’ve adapted for the purpose. Making pair of these interconnects takes a tremendous amount of time, skill, and patience. But once you hear the result … you can’t un-hear it.”

The INDIGO Silverwave interconnect uses RCA connectors that were designed by Mr. Sommovigo especially for the INDIGO project, developed under his sub-brand, XOX, and not available on any other cable that he makes.

Mr. Sommovigo has created a web-site just for Indigo, which can be found at http://www.Indigo.audio, where he suggests that interested individuals reserve their Indigo cables in advance.

As with his Black Cat Cable products, Mr. Sommovigo personally builds these cables - starting only with raw-materials - in his seaside workshop in Yugawara, Kanagawa, Japan.

[sommovigo]

Hello Audiohubbers!

I wanted to share some ideas with you about my signature designs for audio cable: INDIGO

I am starting this series with an RCA style interconnect because the single-ended approach is dear to me, as a very simple and pure way of transferring signal.

As you probably already know, in a single-ended line-level cable all of the signal travels on the center or signal conductor, and the ground plane (whether expressed in a single wire or as a "shield") should not have any signal on it unless, of course, something is wrong (or if you have it hooked up to your phono cartridge, and this is a completely different situation for another conversation).

Therefore, we must always make certain that the quality of the signal is preserved by the conductors we choose and then how we use them and in what 'environment' we use them. In both of these areas INDIGO departs from the standard industrial approach to cable design and manufacture to bring you something quite special.

SILVERWAVE: the Silverwave conductor is a 99.999% pure silver conductor that has been annealed "dead-soft" - which is a critical element of using silver, because silver is otherwise quite a rigid metal and this, IMHO, contributes to much of its reputation for being harsh, bright, or "spitty" in character.

Silverwave has several secrets, though. I won't reveal the particular attributes, but I will attempt to describe some aspects or advantages of the approach. This is used in connection with our insulating materials (which is a highly-porous PTFE tube that incorporates a lot of air) to ensure that the dielectric constant of the signal environment is very low - lower than can be achieved by industrial means - which lends the traveling signal a low-capacitance, high-velocity environment.

The number of Silverwave conductors inside the cable, as well as their individual gauges, as well as the process by which we shape each of these pure silver wires is a trade secret because these details work together with the signal-environment to create the kind of performance that only INDIGO can offer.

The signal environment is created via the combination of the dielectric, which we have already talked about, and the ground plane. The ground plane here is also quite critical. In shielded cables many people have noticed that there is a squeezing down of dynamic freedom - as if it is difficult for the music to breathe.

But shields are sometimes important for controlling both interference from outside and leakage from within the cable. A twisted pair is sometimes useful, but the intimate twisting of the ground plane with the signal plane is a recipe for proximity-effect, where the current of the signal can sometimes gather more densely in the area of the signal conductor that is closest to the ground plane - and this effect causes the apparent resistance to increase as frequency increases.

INDIGO expresses its ground plane and shielding with a dual-layer application of one of our most expensive and difficult-to-make conductors: Matrix

In two layers separated by a woven fabric insulator, Matrix conductors are carefully woven around the core, porous Teflon tube so that they create a modified Faraday cage-like shield with less than 1% coverage. It is not a shield, per se, but it is evenly dispersed around the core so there will be no potential suffering from proximity effect, as with the twisted pair approach.

The way in which this cable must be built in order to be expressed properly is complicated, requires a lot of time and skill, and obviously a knowledge about how - in particular - it must be terminated. Therefore each of these cables must be built by myself, personally, by hand because there is no way to build this cable industrially. The Silverwave conductors are shaped and processed by a special hand-tool which I have developed here, and can only be inserted into the cable by a careful hand process, which makes sure that the Silverwave signal wires remain in the fastest possible area of the dielectric medium.

The RCA connectors that I developed for INDIGO are quite critical, as well. They allow me to terminate the Silverwave conductors properly to the signal pin with the most intimate kind of contact possible.

The result of all of this labor, which has been in process of development for over 10 years now, is quite obvious in my personal system: I noticed the one thing that has become the single most important attribute and achievement I have been seeking: EFFORTLESSNESS

With Effortlessness comes everything else, of course, but that it is effortless means that the music finally and fully breathes with life from beyond the system. It is no longer useful to me to describe things with attributes that we are familiar with - words we use to talk about warm or cool, dynamic or soft, analytical or musical, etc. It is useful to me to say only whether the music breathes freely or is labored somehow.

If the music breathes freely, then the veils have fallen and all that transpires behind the veils becomes clear. If the music breathes with labor and resistance, then you are listening to the veils ... not to the music.

This is something I have been chasing for my whole career. With INDIGO - I have broken through an important barrier and am extraordinarily satisfied with the results. I'm sure there are more things ahead, more challenges ... but they can only become apparent by breaking through these veils as Indigo has.

This is new territory ...

[Dr Pan K]

Θέλω να το δοκιμάσω και είμαι στο ψήσιμο (αν και πολλά τα μηδενικά)...