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Recommended by The Absolute Sound's 2016 Buyers Guide to Cables, Power Products, Accessories, & Music
Bringing Flagship Level Performance to Real World Systems
Designed to bring flagship level performance to real world systems, Cardas Clear Reflection Interconnect has excellent high frequency extension and speed but is still slightly forgiving. It is very neutral and dynamic with a pitch black background.
Clear Reflection pays homage to the classic Golden Reference cable, blending the very best of the old with the very best of the new. Clear Reflection also introduces a new copper colored SRCA connector, which matches the black and copper cosmetics from Cardas Clear Reflection Speaker cable.
Matched Propagation Conductors
Clear Reflection Interconnect boasts a Matched Propagation Kevlar core and Grade 1, 99.9999% pure oxygen free copper conductors with SPN clear coat (Litz), gauge sizes scaled to Golden Ratio proportions.
Clear Reflection uses cross-field layer geometry, insulated in an extruded PFA jacket, in a suspended air core twisted pair design with anti-static LDPE air-tubes bound with carbon impregnated PTFE tape wrap. The outer layer has PTFE air-tubes scaled 1.618 times larger than the core tubes to suspend the double composite shields of tinned copper and magnet wire away from the signal conductors.
"Envelops You in This Expansive, Expressive Field"
"Reflection is an excellent cable (both as interconnect and loudspeaker cable), in a way providing a synthesis of the warmth and luxuriousness of Golden Reference with the detail and transparency of Clear," reports Alan Sircom, hi-fi+ magazine, July 27, 2015.
"This is a cable that abides by the old Hippocratic Oath; first, do no harm. It’s a benign sounding cable in all the right ways. Music doesn’t push itself at you, it envelops you in this expansive, expressive field that has perfect balance and poise. This helps to draw you into the music…"
"The Best Copper on the Planet"
Clear Reflection 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."
"You Can't Go Wrong"
"I was charmed by Clear Reflection’s fluid, organized, detailed, and generally musically satisfying qualities. I would not hesitate to recommend it to others and would consider it myself for a second system. Mr. Cardas, take a bow," observes Kirk Midtskog in The Absolute Sound magazine, August 18, 2015 and The Absolute Sound's 2016 Buyers Guide to Cables, Power Products, Accessories & Music.
"They produce very rich, deep sound with large images of instruments," notes Woiciech Pacuta, highfidelity.pl, December 3, 2013. "You can't go wrong buying Clear Reflection no matter what kind of system you have – it's a beautiful cable from beautiful people."
Jacket and Termination
Finished in black ultra soft extruded TPR jacket, Cardas Clear Reflection Interconnect is terminated with Cardas SRCA-CU or CG XLR-CU. The gauge is 2x25.5 AWG with an outside diameter of 0.420”/10.66mm.
"The Clear Reflection is extremely well made, extremely well balanced and most of all extremely musical," notes Clear Reflection owner mercredi, hifible.blogspot.com, February 24, 2021. "Another thing is that it is a cable that most people will like. I have listened to it with a friend that has a taste for music reproduction that is opposite to mine and he likes it, too!"
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)
