Chord C-Sub Analogue Subwoofer Cable

The subwoofer lead is the longest interconnect in most houses and almost always the last thing anyone thinks about. It leaves the back of an AV receiver, disappears behind a rack, follows the skirting for three or four metres — usually within a few inches of a mains cable for most of that journey — and arrives at an active subwoofer with a power amplifier inside it. A low-level analogue signal, carried a long way, through the noisiest part of the room, into a box that then multiplies it. If any interconnect in a home cinema deserves shielding, it is that one.

The Chord Company make the C-Sub for exactly that run, for multi-channel and surround amplifiers feeding active subwoofers, and their own description of it is refreshingly unambitious: enhanced shielding at a very affordable level. No claims about transformation, just a better-built version of the cable the job requires.

Built for length

The signal conductor is multi-strand tinned copper, chosen by Chord for low resistance over extended cable lengths — which is not a phrase you see on a metre-long interconnect, because over a metre it hardly matters. Over ten metres it does. The shortest C-Sub is three metres and they go to ten, and every design decision in it follows from that.

The screen is a multi-strand spiral braid rather than a solid foil. A braid bends without cracking or opening a gap in the coverage, which is what you want in a cable that has to turn a corner at a skirting board and go under a carpet gripper, and it keeps the high-frequency interference that fills a modern house — routers, dimmers, chargers, the television's own power supply — out of a signal that is about to be amplified hard.

Terminations

Gold-plated RCA plugs, with over-moulded surrounds to prevent conductor compression and keep the connection reliable. On a cable that will be pulled taut behind furniture and then forgotten for a decade, the strain relief is not a detail; it is the difference between a cable that still works after the next room rearrangement and one that intermittently does not.

Technical Specifications

Who Is It For?

Anyone with an active subwoofer more than a couple of metres from the amplifier, and particularly anyone whose sub hums, buzzes faintly between films, or picks up a mobile phone. Those symptoms are usually a shielding or earthing problem, and a properly screened cable is the cheapest thing to try.

What it will not do is fix the things that actually govern how a subwoofer sounds. Position in the room, the crossover point, the phase switch and the level relative to the main loudspeakers together account for far more than any cable, and if those are not sorted out, this is the wrong purchase. Get the sub in the right place first; buy the cable second. For the loudspeaker end of the same system there is the Chord C-screen X Speaker Cable, and the rest of the range sits on our Chord Company collection page.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

We set up home cinema systems as well as two-channel ones, and integrating a subwoofer into a room is a job we are happy to talk through whether or not the cable comes from us. If you would like to hear the difference in your own room before committing, our home evaluation service covers it. Measure the route the cable will actually take, around the furniture rather than through it, and then choose the length.

When you get in touch, you'll be speaking with Dave, Chris and Tim at info@martinshifi.co.uk, call 01603 627010, or WhatsApp on 07554 687137. You can read more about how we work on our Why Martins page. We are at 85–91 Ber Street, Norwich, NR1 3EY.