Updated metal plugs make this interconnect perform that bit better
Interconnect | £125/m | whf.cm/Clearway2022
There has been a trend of products not updating their name even though they have had significant revisions in the new model. The new 2022 generations of Focal Utopia and Apple AirPods Pro come to mind as the most recent examples, and Chord Company has followed suit with its new 2022 edition of the multiple award-winning Clearway Analogue RCA interconnect.
Stepping up
The Clearway’s cable design is based on the Award-winning and more budget-friendly C-Line interconnect, but it uses a heavier gauge oxygen-free copper and an improved version of Chord’s Tuned ARAY conductor geometry technology for the step up in performance.
It is by no means the biggest or flashiest update we have come across: the formerly silver-plated plugs of the interconnect have been updated to a new ChorAlloy plating for improved conductivity. Chord is fairly coy on the exact materials used here, stating only that it is a “multi-metal material” that now coats the VEE 3 RCA plugs on either end of the cable.
The rest of the audio interconnect remains exactly the same construction as before, with FEP (fluorinated ethylene propylene) insulation and a dual-layer counter-wound heavy-gauge foil design for its shielding.
Elsewhere, small visual changes include a new direction-indicator icon and the new packaging that the cable comes in. The cardboard box with sleeve is a nicer (not to mention more eco-friendly) presentation than the previous all-plastic affair too.
While cables themselves can’t actively improve your system’s sound, they can easily degrade the performance of your set-up.
We connect the Clearway RCA cable to our reference system of Naim ND555/555 PS DR music streamer, Burmester 088/911Mk3 amplifier and ATC SCM50 speakers, as well as a more relatively affordable set-up of the Cyrus CDi, Naim Supernait 3 and KEF’s LS50 Metas. We have the previous-generation Clearway Analogue RCA at hand as well, which makes it easy to make comparisons.
It’s no surprise that both cables share the same characteristics – clear, detailed, rhythmically cohesive, and dynamics that are communicated with confidence.
But it becomes clear fairly quickly that with the new 2022 Clearway RCA interconnect plugged in, both our systems sound crisper and more open. There is more nuance to voices, along with subtler dynamics and a tauter
