Chord’s first venture into USB cables followed a listening comparison by musicians working at the company. After copying a CD master recording to a laptop, they found that the burned copies performed poorly compared with the original master CD. The master was then played from the laptop through one of the first DACs with a USB input. Although the result was better than the burned CD, improved ripping software and playback management produced significant gains in the CD copies.
Although the CD copy from the original master was satisfactory, the laptop copy sent to the same DAC through USB sounded clearly worse. Chord therefore investigated the construction of the USB cable between the laptop and DAC. Listening to a selection of USB cables of varying quality suggested that this was an area worth developing. The result was Chord USB SilverPlus, launched in Sept 2011, with silver-plated conductors and high-frequency effective shielding. Chord Signature USB followed in April 2013 and remained virtually unchanged until now.
There are increasing numbers of high-quality DACs with exceptional USB inputs, along with high-quality music streamers and servers with USB outputs. This led Chord to revisit and improve the original Signature USB design.
The original Signature USB used 4 separately shielded conductors. The conductor gauge has been refined, using silver-plated copper, and the insulation has been upgraded to a high-speed PE/LDPE/PE composite dielectric. The earth shielding connection has additional protection from high-frequency noise through its own foil tape layer. The ARAY technology has been upgraded from Tuned ARAY to Super ARAY, using a Signature USB-specific ARAY design. Chord has also refined both the USB A and B plugs. All connections are soldered, and the USB plugs are silver-plated to Chord’s specification in the UK. These changes are intended to improve performance. The construction is more involved, so the price has increased from the original Signature USB.
The Signature Super ARAY USB is suitable for use with high-performance storage and streaming devices. It can also be used between a PC or tablet and DAC, particularly with CD rips, high-quality downloads or high-definition music streaming services such as Tidal.
Chord does not recommend using Micro USB adaptors with its USB cables where they can be avoided. Improvements can still be heard when upgrading USB cables. If a high-quality DAC uses a Micro USB input, it remains worth auditioning a good USB cable with an adaptor.
