INTERCONNECT
DIGITAL
SPEAKER
POWER
More about’Black Star’
Black Star is the new range of digital, signal, speaker and power cables from Studio Connections. It is unique as a cable system because it combines these two quite different but complementary functions:
First, like all good cable, it provides extremely fast, transparent power and audio connections.
Second, and crucially, it forms a coherent cable structure in which audio components have a super-clean, resonant free and stable platform to link with and cohesively work together at their best.
How it works:
The resolution of a device is limited by the quality of its reference voltage or ground. However, in a system a component ground is linked to, and so combined with, all the other grounds.Without management then, resonances, earth loops, reflections and impedance mis-matches superimposes disturbances into the system common ground, and this fogs the individual component resolution.
Black Star is designed so that each cable type contributes its part, according to its function, towards a resonance and low-noise ‘whole system’ grounding scheme. So when Black Star is used throughout, all the individual components have a super-stable platform to be able to ‘sing as one’ with peak resolution.
What it achieves:
Uniquely, Black Star stops both cable and system infrastructure ‘getting in the way’, and so is the closest you can get to enabling equipment to reproduce audio as a true representation of the original signal. And the effect on the sound is profound, making recordings sound more real and present than ever.
“when we had the entire system running on the Black Star power cables the effect on the sound stage was breathtaking” Matt Colton, ALCHEMY MASTERING, Music Producers Guide prestigious ‘mastering engineer of the year’ :Coldplay, Muse, James Blake, George Michael, Peter Gabriel, Manic Street Preachers, Leftfield.
INTERCONNECT
DIGITAL
SPEAKER
POWER
How ‘Black Star’ was been developed
The Black Star cable range has been developed to work an audio system at its best. And a recording and replay system is not perfect until the sound replayed sounds like it may be present and real, so the standard is set high.
To start we had to understand fully what wasn’t working, not just in home audio, but in all types of audio systems. Subtle imperfections in home systems are are also present in large, complex live systems, but are very exposed there as they are on a much bigger scale. By building and rebuilding systems until we finally managed to have large theatre systems working with hi-fi realism gave real insights into the issues and led to performance breakthroughs.
Our investigations have been deep, thorough and exhaustive, covering all aspects of system cable structures, and all our work has been done with top professionals, musicians and enthusiasts on world class systems; home set-ups, west end musical theatre and major recording studios. We learnt a lot about how and why power and signal cables interact with equipment and how cable set ups dramatically alter how realistically a system reproduces sound.
This has been the most recent part of the quest I set out about forty years ago to try and understand what makes real sound ‘real’ and what make reproduced audio sound ‘not real’. Try yourself- clink to glasses together and ask yourself ‘what is it that makes that presence so hard to reproduce? And what is the detail which, if missing, my brain knows that its not real?’.
Starting in May we are publishing a monthly feature bulletin. It features tests and discoveries we made during the research. It also has articles and interviews with recording professionals, and I will be answering questions from readers.
If you would like to be part of this then email me at connect@studiconnections.co.uk
BLACK STAR really does encapsulate all the gems of knowledge and science we have gleaned over 35 years working with professionals and brings it to you home.
And if one word summarise what Black Star brings to great music, that word would be ‘atmosphere’.
Hoping this is of interest, and look forward to hearing from you
Michael Whiteside
Designer, Studio Connections and Abbey Road Cable