Entreq Cables: The Wire That Carries No Music

Most cables are sold to you on the strength of what runs down the middle: the purity of the copper, the crystal structure, the number of nines after the decimal point. Entreq will happily talk about all that — pure copper and silver in the signal paths, a wooden framework for the contacts because wood is neither magnetic nor conductive, cotton around the outside — but the genuinely interesting part of an Entreq cable is a wire that carries no music at all.

It is called EEDS, the External Earth Drain System, and it behaves unlike the screen in an ordinary cable. A conventional shield is tied to the equipment at one or both ends, which means the interference it collects is handed straight to a chassis — where it floats about, in the company of your amplifier's most sensitive circuitry. Entreq's drain wire instead starts just after the connector and travels alongside the positive conductor, in the direction of the signal. Before it reaches the far end it crosses to the negative conductor and comes back. Then, rather than terminating at either component, it leaves the cable altogether and goes to a ground box, taking what it has gathered with it.

That is the whole trick: the noise never arrives anywhere it can do harm. It is the same argument Entreq make about grounding generally, applied to the bit of the system most people treat as a length of wire.

Be aware of what it assumes

Worth saying plainly, because it affects the price of the exercise: the drain wire wants somewhere to drain to. These cables work perfectly well without a ground box — they are properly made on their own terms, the positive and negative runs kept apart to manage the magnetic field between them. But you would be buying a design whose distinguishing feature points at a box you may not own yet. If there is no Entreq grounding in your system and no intention of adding any, you are paying for an idea you are not using, and there are cables that will suit you better. We will say so in the shop.

Where you notice it first is usually the quietest music you own. Something like Spirit of Eden, which spends much of its length hovering just above silence, stops sounding like a recording with gaps in it and starts sounding like a room where nobody is playing yet.

Two ranges, and where to start

Primer Hexa is the sensible starting point and covers a whole system: analogue interconnects in RCA or XLR, speaker cables, digital cables and the Hexa AC power cable. Wiring one loom at Hexa level is usually a better use of the money than a single heroic interconnect sat among strangers.

Primer Infinity sits above it, the conductors treated under high pressure — the treatment the range takes its name from: analogue interconnects, speaker cables and digital cables. The step up is real, and it obeys the law that governs everything else Entreq make — see the brand page on that. Begin with the connection carrying the smallest signal. That is where the return is.

Try them properly

Cables are the easiest thing in hi-fi to imagine an improvement in, which is why we would sooner you heard these on your own system than on ours. Ask the team about a home evaluation, and fit them one at a time — the point is to find out which one earned its place, and whether the last one did anything at all. Talk to us about a loan.

Martins Hi-Fi 85-91 Ber Street, Norwich NR1 3EY 01603 627010 info@martinshifi.co.uk