A Plunkett Award Nomination

I don’t know if you were aware of this, but many years ago, XLO™, my former cable company, was nominated for Dupont’s® prestigious “Plunkett Award for the Innovative Use of Teflon”. As a result of this, Dupont® developed an interest in what my, barely-even-tiny-by-comparison, company was doing,  and allowed us the very special privilege of being able to access “test batches” of their full range of “under-development” (Not yet commercially available) fluoropolymers (“Teflon®-variant)  materials or our use.

Just for clarification, “test batches”, for a company of the size of DuPont®, aren’t just a test-tube full, but usually are at least a ton or two of the material under test. For some of the companies who were potential users of those materials, a ton of plastic resin might just be enough for a day or two of evaluation, but for us to make cables out of, one test batch might very well be sufficient for many years of full production, and that’s exactly what we used them for.

Faster Dump Rate

Although those days are long gone, some connections still do remain, and we have been able, once again, to access non-standard fluoropolymer dielectrics for all of our new RSX™ cables. These “Teflon-variant” materials offer a number of important characteristics for the cable-builder: low “dielectric constant” being one obvious one, but the most important may be a faster “dump rate” – the ability to discharge “dielectric-stored signal energy” faster than any more conventional material. One thing that this means for RSX cables is better sound through reduction of the negative effects of “capacitive discharge effects”.

Longer Burn-In Time

Another thing using standard fluoropolymer dielectrics means is that all RSX cables require more (longer) “burn-in time” than cables made of lesser materials – with RSX AC Power Cords taking as much as several days of ordinary use (200 to 400 hours depending on the model) before they achieve full performance. For phono cables – particularly if run with a low-output cartridge – full burn-in may seem to take inordinately long, so the use of a “cable-cooker” is recommended.

An Interesting Use For Our Phono Cables

One person, though, using one model of our new phono cables tried simply using them as interrconnects between a ”line-level” Source and Load, and reports that, even though his phono cable was obviously designed for an entirely different purpose, it still makes a spectacularly good interconnect.

When you get your RSX phono cable, you might, if you don’t have a cable-cooker, want to try this trick for faster, more complete burn-in that might just be possible by playing LPs. And, apparently, you shouldn’t be surprised if your phono cable sounds good, even as a line-level interconnect! Check it out!