Chord Sarum T Digital BNC

You can tell a good deal about a digital source from whether it has a BNC socket on the back. It is the connector the coaxial digital standard should always have used — a bayonet fitting that locks, and the 75-ohm BNC used for digital audio maintains its geometry through the connection rather than abandoning it at the plug. It costs more to fit than a phono socket, it takes up more panel space, and manufacturers who put one on have generally thought about the interface rather than simply providing one.

The Sarum T Digital BNC is The Chord Company's cable for that socket. It is built in Amesbury with Taylon® insulation and Super ARAY conductor geometry, tuned by Chord for the digital application rather than borrowed from their analogue interconnects.

What a coaxial digital link is actually carrying

The persistent objection is that digital is digital, and a one is a one. It is a fair thing to say and it misses the mechanism. A coaxial S/PDIF connection does not send discrete numbers with a separate clock alongside them; it sends a self-clocking waveform down a wire, and the receiving device recovers the timing by looking at the transitions in that waveform. Anything the cable and its connectors do to the shape of those transitions — reflections from an impedance mismatch, high-frequency losses, noise riding in on the shield — becomes a timing problem at the far end rather than a data error. That is why the interface between a transport and a DAC is worth engineering, and why the connector is part of the engineering rather than a detail.

Taylon and Super ARAY, applied to digital

Sarum T is the generation of Chord's Sarum range built around Taylon® insulation, replacing the PTFE dielectric of the earlier Sarum Super ARAY cables. Chord's stated case for Taylon® is phase stability. Super ARAY is the conductor geometry Chord developed on the original Sarum, and their position is that each cable's geometry is tuned to the specific application, so the digital cables are not simply analogue cables with different plugs.

Beyond that, Chord publish very little detail about the construction of this cable, and we would rather tell you that than dress the gap up with numbers we cannot stand behind. The specification below is what they confirm.

Technical Specifications

Who Is It For?

Anyone running a separate transport, CD player or streamer into an outboard DAC where both ends carry BNC sockets. Check that before ordering — it is the single most common mistake, and BNC to phono adapters undo a good part of what you are paying for. If only one end has BNC, talk to us about a custom termination; Chord make them to order.

If your DAC has phono sockets only, the Sarum T Digital Super Aray 1RCA to 1RCA is the cable to have. If the link you are worried about is the network feed into the streamer rather than the one out of it, look at the Sarum T Super Aray Digital Streaming 1m. Everything else is on our Chord Company collection page.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

A transport-to-DAC link is one of the few things in a system you can change on its own, in seconds, without disturbing anything else — which makes it straightforward to judge for yourself rather than take anyone's word for. If you would like to do that at home, our home evaluation service covers it. Bring us the make and model of both boxes first and the terminations can be confirmed before ordering.

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.