CES 2015

Siltech has just released its Siltech Triple Crown interconnects (est. price in Europe, US prices still be determined, €20,000/1m pair) and speaker cables (est. price €35,000/2m pair). Touted as "cable royalty... sets new benchmark for interconnect and speaker cable performance," these major lookers utilize the company's newest mono-crystal technology. According to Lennart Thissen, who designed the cable's unique mechanical parts, they have "the lowest capacitance of any cable we know."

Interconnects are terminated with a unique, 24-carat gold-plated, four pin clamping mechanism to ensure all ground pins make contact. The pins themselves are mono-crystal silver on the RCA and XLR-terminated interconnects, as well as on the spade-terminated speaker cables. Take a close look at the end of the interconnect that Thissen is holding to see the four-pin clamping system. The cable's internal shield can be either floated or grounded, with experimentation determining which works best. Because the cable is quite stiff, Thissen has also designed 180° twistable terminations to ensure that two components with differently oriented terminals can connect easily, without risking that they may be pulled off their supports and shelves.

At the other end of the spectrum, as it were, Crystal Cable has designed a dedicated cable line for Astell&Kern portable players. Distributed solely by Astell&Kern, the range includes headphone cables and digital and analog interconnects. The latter are offered with either balanced or single-ended connectors that allow you to hook up an Astell&Kern portable player to your main system.