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Offers Cardas Musicality with a Neutral Tonal Balance
Cardas Clear Cygnus interconnect benefits greatly from developments in the Clear product line, including a more economical version of Clear Beyond interconnect's air-tube suspension.
This cable replaces Clear Light and brings added performance to the table without adding much to the price. Clear Cygnus is more detailed, but also slightly richer with better low frequency performance. Clear Cygnus performs well in any system at any length, in both singled ended and balanced configurations. If you want Cardas musicality but with a neutral tonal balance, look no further.
Advanced Conductors and Geometry
The Clear Cygnus conductors are Matched Propagation Kevlar core, Cardas Grade One 99.9999% pure OFHC copper with SPN clear coat (Litz), gauge sizes scaled to Golden Ratio proportions. The conductors use cross-field layer geometry, insulated in double-layered PTFE tape-wrapped jacket.
The Star-Quad four conductor geometry has anti-static LDPE air-tubes bound with carbon-impregnated PTFE tape wrap. The outer layer uses PTFE air tubes scaled to 1.618 larger than the core tubes to suspend the composite shield of tinned copper and magnet wire away from the signal conductors.
"More Precise Detail and Open Air"
"If you want a sense of more precise detail and open air, the 4-wire Cygnus fits the bill. Definitely more neutral in my systems," reports ecooney, forum.audiogon.com, February 20, 2024. "This cable comes from the newer generation of the Clear line, down in the line…. A nice cable if you have subwoofers, for example, and need to open up the sound a bit more and want more of the upper register detail to come through."
"The Best Copper on the Planet"
Clear Cygnus features conductors made with Cardas Grade One copper, which George Cardas calls "the best copper on the planet." This copper is mined in Arizona, then shipped to a New England factory where it is very S-L-O-W-L-Y drawn into conductors in a process that includes reduction annealing between steps to further purify and meld the copper into what George calls "the most amazing audio conductor I have ever experienced."
Termination and Jacket
Clear Cygnus is available as an unbalanced cable terminated with Cardas GRMO RCA plugs or as a balanced cable terminated with Neutrik XLRs. It is finished in an ultra soft extruded TPR jacket.
"Organic, Rich, and Spacious"
"I just borrowed the Cardas Clear Cygnus, DH Labs Revelation, and Synergistic Research Foundation interconnects to compare," notes rrrumblenh, whatsbestforum.com, December 1, 2021. "The Cardas was the most organic, rich, and spacious sounding of the three. Instrument and voice were vivid and realistic."
"Love what this cable does in my system. I've used Cardas cables for over twenty years. I'm a big fan," observes Clear Cygnus user Darrell, audioshark.org, August 14, 2020.
Cardas Clear Technology
Cardas Clear cables use newly applied technology that is George Cardas' breakthrough solution to the smeared, unfocused sound that's inherent in standard cable designs. Cardas Clear uses Matched Propagation Conductors to deliver what George calls "an unprecedented window of clarity."
Clear technology is scientifically demonstrable. It presents a 'clear' technical solution to a core problem that is intrinsic to signal-carrying cables (speaker cables, interconnects, etc.) and will quite 'clearly' improve the sound of connected hi-fi and home theater components.
The Trouble is Dielectrics
One problem with standard audio cable designs is that the cable dielectric (also known as cable insulation) produces an electrical effect that interferes with the audio signal. While there is no current flow in dielectric materials, the dielectric accumulates and releases an electrical charge in response to the current flow in the conductor, much like the charging and discharging of a capacitor. But the electrical discharge from the dielectric is out of sync with the electrical signal in the conductor.
While the electrical signal in the conductor moves at the speed of light, the charge propagation in dielectric material is limited to approximately 78 percent of the speed of light. The discharge of the dielectric lags behind the charge in the conductor, causing a smearing of low-level information in the cable.
The Lagging Charge Problem
At very high frequencies, cables can appear to propagate faster because the slower dielectric materials don't have the time to charge at very high frequencies, and the lag is diminished.
At audio frequencies, however, this lag creates a noticeable problem. That's why dielectric manufacturers may brag about what their dielectrics will do at a million cycles per second, but don't talk about what they do at a thousand cycles per second, where the negative effects are audible. Jitter is one directly observable artifact of this conductor/dielectric relationship.
Some cable manufacturers try to compensate for this differential lagging in a cable by adding an electrical network (for example, by using a load coil), but the damage has already been done. Once the low level information in the signal has been smeared, it is lost and cannot be recovered.
The Matched Propagation Solution
Since the so-called 'charge propagation velocity' of the dielectric can never equal the speed of electrical changes in the conductors, George Cardas' ingenious solution with Cardas Clear cables is to slow the conductor to match the rate of the dielectric.
In a concentrically stranded conductor with individually coated strands (such as the constant "Q" conductor used in Cardas cables) the vector velocity and decay time of the conductor can be matched to that of the dielectric by controlling the lay length progression (twists per inch or TPI) of successive strand layers.
A matched propagation velocity conductor of this type, as used in Cardas Clear cables, mitigates the effects of capacitance much as a load coils do, but it does this continuously in the cable rather than at intervals. Eliminating the time delay between storage elements in the cable itself eliminates the bandwidth and dynamic range limitation seen in periodically loaded cables.
“A Short History of Audio Cable” by George Cardas (4mb PDF) 
“Dielectric Propagation Velocity” by George Cardas (120k PDF)
