Frequently Asked Questions

In an era where new cable companies seem to appear on the scene each month, customers should know that we have been manufacturing the Silver Sonic brand of cables IN THE USA since 1992. We are an OEM supplier/designer for 12 wire and cable companies worldwide, and remain the cable of choice for many of the world’s top mastering engineers.

Cables are directional for shielding purposes only and most have arrows. Should you not see these arrows, remember that the signal flow should go in the same direction of the print on the cable jacket, reading left to right away from the source (source to destination)

Most DH Labs cables make use of our Continuous Crystal ^TM Copper, which is produced in the USA using a process called Continuous Casting. This results in extremely pure wire with an oxygen content of only 7 parts per million. Because of this ultra- high purity, the copper crystals are exceptionally long. The resulting lack of grain boundaries allows for the clearest, most natural sound.

Silver is the best conductor for electricity and coating a copper conductor with silver improves its performance. Our finely polished silver coatings yield a mirror-smooth surface, which preserves low-level musical details. DH Labs was one of the very first to do it 22 years ago, and we continue do it best. This is a specific area where MADE IN USA makes a big difference.

Digital cables operate in the RF (MegaHertz) range, which is an area of particular expertise for our chief designer/engineer Darren Hovsepian. Because cables behave as wave-guides at these frequencies, dimensional tolerances within cables (& at the cable-connector interface) are of critical importance. Our in-depth knowledge of the different extrusion techniques for insulation materials allows us to produce digital cables with the lowest amount of signal reflections (jitter) in the industry.

PTFE is an extremely stable and linear dielectric (insulation) material which possesses excellent audio properties. It costs more than 10 times as much as PVC, but we use it in many of our cables because of its outstanding sound quality.

Teflon is Dupont’s trade name for PTFE.
PTFE is also made by other companies, under various trade names:

-AGC (Asahi) Chemical’s trade name is Fluon®.
-3M’s trade name is Dyeneon®
-Daikin’s trade name is Polyflon®. (Daikin is the main supplier to the wire and cable industry).

Air Matrix™ is a DH Labs exclusive material that is a honeycomb of air and PTFE. It is approximately 60% air and 40% PTFE. When viewed under a powerful microscope, it appears as a fine matrix, hence the name Air Matrix. The introduction of air, all but removes any sonic signature, while also significantly lowering capacitance and inductance. It is also physically soft and naturally dampens vibration. These features make it especially advantageous for low-level signals. We use it (in extruded form) in our Air Matrix & Pro Studio interconnects, and the D-750 digital cable. A proprietary tape-wrapped version is also used in our Revelation Interconnect.

Generally speaking, there is a good reason that all pro-audio gear uses only XLR connections. In longer lengths, the balanced connection will deliver lower noise, resulting in more low-level resolution. This can also yield noticeable improvements in soundstage.

Generally, you cannot make RCA and XLR connectors out of pure copper because it is too soft, and difficult to machine. This is why most manufacturers use a copper brass alloy (which includes zinc, lead and sometimes tin). This alloy has very low conductivity (26%), which tends to restrict the ability of a signal to pass cleanly through the connector. We worked with metallurgists in the USA to develop a 99.5% pure copper material that yields 95% conductivity. This results in the finest performing RCA and XLR connectors available anywhere.

Absolutely. If your speakers are set up for bi-wiring, it is always better to do so. As a general rule, the lower the speaker’s impedance, and the longer the run, the more benefit bi-wiring can provide.