Chord Sarum T Super Aray Digital Streaming 1m

No product in this shop starts more arguments than an expensive ethernet cable, and the sceptical case deserves stating properly rather than swatted away. Ethernet frames carry a checksum, and a frame that fails it is discarded rather than passed on corrupted; TCP, running above it, notices the gap and asks for the missing data again. Between the two, the bits that reach the streamer's buffer are, bit for bit, the bits that left the router. Anyone who tells you a network cable changes the data is wrong, and you should be wary of the rest of what they say.

The counter-argument is not about data. It is about everything else travelling down the same cable: the common-mode noise a switch-mode-powered router and switch dump onto the line, arriving at a sensitive streamer's ground plane a few centimetres from its clock and its DAC section. That is an analogue problem wearing a digital coat, and it is the problem The Chord Company address with the Sarum T Streaming cable.

What Chord have built

Precision-made RJ45 connectors with gold-plated soldered conductors — soldered rather than crimped, which is the unglamorous detail and the one that costs money to do. The conductor geometry is a streaming-specific version of Super ARAY, and the insulation is Taylon®, the material that defines the Sarum T generation in place of the PTFE dielectric used by the earlier Sarum Super ARAY range. Chord's stated aim for Taylon® is phase stability, and their own framing of this cable is about protecting the digital source signal rather than improving it.

That last point is Chord's own, and worth noticing. Their case for the cable opens on the importance of protecting digital source signals — a defensive claim rather than a promise of improvement, which is a more modest thing to say than most cable copy manages. What you are buying is a quieter path into the streamer. Anything audible follows from that.

Technical Specifications

Who Is It For?

Owners of a resolving streaming system who have already done the sensible things — a hard-wired connection rather than wireless, a decent switch, the streamer not sharing a mains block with a television. This is the refinement after those, not instead of them. The run that matters is the last one, from switch to streamer; there is little point fitting it between the router and a switch at the far end of the house.

If you are unconvinced, stay unconvinced until you have heard it. We would say the same about the Sarum T power cable, which addresses the same noise problem from the other direction and which streaming owners often end up buying second. The rest of the range is on our Chord Company collection page.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

A network cable is worth judging on your own network, with your own streamer, rather than on ours — the conditions are the entire question. Our home evaluation service covers a listen at home if you would like one. Use something you know intimately and something quiet: a solo piano recording or a good acoustic live album will tell you more in two minutes than a dense rock mix will in an hour.

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.