Greetings all, i'm new in my "hi-fi" audiophile journey but not to audio, wires and cabling. In a recent discussion with a dear audiophile friend of mine, and audiophile of 40 years who is mentoring me in my journey, when discussing interconnects he mentioned the best sounding interconnects he's ever heard, Discovery cables, and then mentioned they have been broken since the 90's. He tried to have them fixed years ago but the person he gave them to said they couldn't do it for whatever reason so he just put them in storage and never got around to sending them in. He has been using a pair of Audioquest and Tara labs interconnects that are somewhat close but has always wanted the Discovery cables in his system. I was intrigued and I work with many types of wires and cables in my industry so I offered to take a look at them. In my hours of research over several days, learning that Discovery has been out of business and with lots of image searching to no avail, I cant seem to find another pair of interconnects made with this cable. The cable is black, no part numbers or lettering other than "Discovery" with the seemingly requisite directional arrows. The cable is very stiff (obviously, given the braided metal shield) and is 8.25mm in diameter. This is not the exact cable in question since they are not currently in my possession but it is an exact representation;
It appears to be a twin axial with one conductor being tin coated copper. When I had the cables I took off the ends and scraped a bit of the mangled ends on the grey conductor and under the coating was indeed copper. I assume its tin, anyway. Should also mention that both conductors were twisted together in all 4 ends for center pin soldering. The connectors are another item of interest...branded Discovery and are center pin soldered with nowhere to solder a ground or shield. Obviously not made anymore by Discovery but based on my research and the date of their creation I believe the connectors were sourced from Vampire Wire...Which is now also out of business. This is not the original connector but the exact representation with Vampire branding vs Discovery in the exact same color and exact branding location. The connector is also copper based, with the Vampire part number being CX9/CB and only allows for the braided shield, folded back onto the jacket with sleeve pressed over, to be used for ground. There is no room for the second grey conductor to be folded back to pair with the shield as the opening for the connector only fits up to 9mm and they are VERY tight...and during inspection, none of the 4 ends had that conductor tied to the shield anyway. I'm new, but I haven't found another connector like this;
Which leads me to my questions; What in the world is going on here? Any thoughts as to what cable this is, and why or what benefits would come of being made with this type of connector? Twin axial cable typically carries a higher impedance over the supposed standard of 75ohms. What am I missing, and why do they supposedly sound so much better than a small box of cables dumped in front of me totaling over $10,000?
It appears to be a twin axial with one conductor being tin coated copper. When I had the cables I took off the ends and scraped a bit of the mangled ends on the grey conductor and under the coating was indeed copper. I assume its tin, anyway. Should also mention that both conductors were twisted together in all 4 ends for center pin soldering. The connectors are another item of interest...branded Discovery and are center pin soldered with nowhere to solder a ground or shield. Obviously not made anymore by Discovery but based on my research and the date of their creation I believe the connectors were sourced from Vampire Wire...Which is now also out of business. This is not the original connector but the exact representation with Vampire branding vs Discovery in the exact same color and exact branding location. The connector is also copper based, with the Vampire part number being CX9/CB and only allows for the braided shield, folded back onto the jacket with sleeve pressed over, to be used for ground. There is no room for the second grey conductor to be folded back to pair with the shield as the opening for the connector only fits up to 9mm and they are VERY tight...and during inspection, none of the 4 ends had that conductor tied to the shield anyway. I'm new, but I haven't found another connector like this;
Which leads me to my questions; What in the world is going on here? Any thoughts as to what cable this is, and why or what benefits would come of being made with this type of connector? Twin axial cable typically carries a higher impedance over the supposed standard of 75ohms. What am I missing, and why do they supposedly sound so much better than a small box of cables dumped in front of me totaling over $10,000?
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