Chord Sarum T Super Aray USB 1m

USB was never meant for this. It was designed so that a printer, a mouse and a scanner could share one socket on the back of a beige computer, and part of the design brief was that the cable would carry a five-volt power rail alongside the data pair, in the same jacket, so that peripherals need not have their own supply. Thirty years later it is the most common way a serious digital source talks to a serious DAC. The audio industry has been quietly working around the consequences ever since.

The Chord Company's answer in the Sarum T USB is to shield the four conductors separately. That is the specification worth reading twice: four separately shielded silver-plated conductors, each protected by Taylon® insulation, with ChorAlloy® plated connectors at either end. Hand-made in Amesbury. Within Chord's own range it is placed below only the flagship ChordMusic USB.

Why separate shielding is the interesting part

In a standard USB cable the power and data conductors share a common shield, which means the noise on the power rail — and a computer or a network player generates a great deal of it — has a straightforward path to keep company with the signal all the way to the DAC's input receiver. Separating the shields addresses that directly rather than approaching it sideways. It is the kind of design decision you can explain in a sentence, which in cable engineering is rarer than it should be.

The conductors themselves are silver-plated. Taylon® is the insulation that defines the Sarum T generation, replacing the PTFE dielectric of the earlier Sarum Super ARAY cables, and Chord's argument for it is phase stability.

Ordering: check your termination

Chord do not publish which USB connector types this cable is supplied with as standard, and USB audio has quietly accumulated a zoo of them — Type A to Type B for most desktop DACs, Type C at both ends for newer equipment, and a handful of oddities on portable devices. Custom terminations are made to order. Tell us what is on the back of both boxes before you buy and we will get it right first time rather than after a return.

Technical Specifications

Who Is It For?

Anyone whose main source is a music server, a dedicated streamer with a USB output or a computer, feeding an outboard DAC. Those systems tend to be the noisiest electrical environments in domestic audio, which is precisely why the shielding arrangement here has something to do.

It is not the answer if your streamer and DAC are joined by coax — in that case the Sarum T Digital Super Aray 1RCA to 1RCA or the Sarum T Digital BNC is the relevant cable. And if you are attacking noise at source, the network feed into the streamer is arguably the earlier problem: see the Sarum T Super Aray Digital Streaming 1m. The full range is on our Chord Company collection page.

Buying from Martins Hi-Fi

How much this cable does depends on how well your particular DAC input rejects what arrives on it, which varies more between converters than most people expect — so it is a cable better heard on your own equipment than on ours. Our home evaluation service covers that. Tell us what is on the back of both boxes before you buy and the terminations can be confirmed rather than returned.

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.