CES 2011

XLO’s designer, Jay Victor (right), explained that he wanted to design a power cable that he could use on high-current power amps in his own system. “I started dabbling in cable design when I was in charge of product development at Monster Cable with Demian Martin,” he said. “We were marveling at how much of a difference different power cables made to a system’s sound. I kept refining my ideas of power cable design, until I came up with idea of mixing different conductor shapes to best convey the whole range of bass sound.”

Victor believes that a large solid conductor is great for low bass, a flat conductor is best for mid bass, and a polymer coated Litz works best for highs and transients. He has combined all three in the Purple Rush power cord. The cord also employs an exotic field-balanced winding technique to lower the noise floor and cancel magnetic effects. All in all, five patents are associated with the Purple Rush power cord, which took eight years to develop and refine.

Also on hand was the Clear Light Rev 1 interconnect ($856/1.5m pair). Now with a larger diameter, improved shield, and nicer RCA connector, it is still substantially lower in price that the Clear interconnect ($2360/1.5m pair). Next on the horizon is a Clear power cable.

Under the HD2 is the $1,200 HD10 which offers USB, coax and optical digital inputs as well as both balanced and unbalanced outputs. To the left of the HD10 is the newest DAC from Hegel, the HD20, which in addition to the inputs and 24/192 conversion found on the HD10, offers remote control and display for $2,000.

What we do know, however, is that it will have 6 zone outputs each with S/PDIF, SpeakerLink, and fixed and variable analog outputs. Each zone also has an independent clock which means different sample rates are possible at the various outputs. The multiple zone clocks are also slaved to a central clock, keeping the multiple zones in synch in case sound bleeds from one to another.