Chord Epic Digital RCA / BNC

The slash in the name is doing real work. The Chord Company build this cable both ways — as a phono-to-phono S/PDIF lead, and as an RCA-to-BNC lead — and rather than declaring a winner, their advice is to compare the two, because cables in this area can be system-dependent. That is a more useful thing to be told than a paragraph about which connector is theoretically superior, and it points at something true about digital interfaces: the socket a manufacturer fitted tells you something about how much thought went into that input, and no amount of cable quality overrides it.

Chord's full name for it is the Epic Digital Tuned ARAY RCA & RCA / BNC audio interconnect, and they position it for any mid-range DAC, CD transport or streamer.

Solid core, and why that is the interesting choice

Two 75-ohm silver-plated, solid-core OFC conductors with PTFE insulation, under a high-density woven braid shield. Solid core is the specification worth pausing on. Most cable at this price uses stranded conductors because stranded cable is easier to make, easier to terminate and much easier to bend, and the trade is that a strand bundle is a set of parallel paths in imperfect contact with each other. A solid conductor has no strands to argue with. It is stiffer, it does not enjoy being coiled tightly and repeatedly, and it wants to be run in a gentle curve behind the rack rather than folded — but for a fixed installation between two boxes that will not move for years, that is not much of a limitation.

The conductor arrangement is Tuned ARAY, The Chord Company's geometry for this tier. Further up the range, Signature and Sarum T digital cables use Super ARAY, and ChordMusic adds Taylon® insulation on top of it; Epic is where ARAY thinking arrives at a price a mid-priced DAC can justify.

Connectors

Chord Company VEE3 connectors and pins, ChorAlloy® plated. Hand built in the UK, with a 1m standard length and custom lengths to order.

Technical Specifications

Who Is It For?

Anyone with a separate transport, CD player or streamer feeding an outboard DAC over a coaxial connection, at the mid-price level Chord aim it at. It is also the obvious cable for a system where the streamer's own converter has been retired in favour of something better and the coaxial output is suddenly carrying all the music.

Before ordering, look at the back of both boxes and count the BNCs. A DAC with a BNC input and a transport with a phono output needs an RCA-to-BNC lead, which is exactly why this product exists in that form; what it does not need is a phono cable and a screw-on adapter, which throws away a good part of what you have paid for. If the link you are worried about is the network feed into the streamer rather than the digital output from it, look at the Chord Epic Streaming Cable instead. The rest of the range is on our Chord Company collection page.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

A digital interconnect is one of the few components that can be changed on its own, in seconds, with nothing else in the system disturbed — which makes Chord's suggestion of comparing the BNC and phono versions a practical exercise rather than a thought experiment. Our home evaluation service covers cables of this kind. Send us the make and model of the transport and the DAC and the terminations can be settled before anything is ordered.

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.