Cables

With its blue-tinged foil screen positively glowing through a tight, translucent PVC jacket, Supra's flagship speaker cable, priced at £1700 for a 3m terminated set (£300 per additional stereo metre), makes for a vivid statement. It's a world away from the speaker cables that helped Tommy Jenving launch his Swedish Supra brand in 1976. Its Supra Cable 4 and 2.5 used bunches of very fine copper strands in a standard figure-of-eight geometry. Its later 10mm2 Supra Cable 10, with 2562x0.07mm 4N copper strands, still has the lowest series resistance that I've measured (3.1mohm/m) when tested nearly 30 years ago [Hi-Fi Choice Aug '94].

Fast forward to today and the range-topping Excalibur version of its Sword cable now features a foil screen over its symmetrical, bifilar-wound signal and return cores. Here two sets of 12 enamel-coated 5N OF-copper strands are wound at 90° to each other over a hard PE core and separated with a layer of softer PE insulation. The coarse Litz-like geometry is intended to trade higher capacitance for lower inductance while the enamel-coating eliminates inter-strand conduction. Finally, Supra's crimped 'CombiCon' cable terminations may be fitted with rhodium-plated 4mm bananas or spades.

Now, whether you choose to ground the Excalibur's foil screen to your amp via one or more of Supra's separate XL-Annorum conductors [see pic, above] does not affect the cable's lumped parameters, including the 0.47µH/m series loop inductance. This is an 'average' rather than particularly low figure – Supra claims 0.25µH/m which is very close to the 0.23µH/m we measured for In-akustik's LS-204 XL cable [HFN Feb '21], another helically-wound derivative claiming low inductance. The specified 5.2mohm/m resistance precisely matches the AWG linear-metre standard for a solid 12-gauge (3mm2) copper conductor, but our figure for a terminated length was a higher 17.9mohm/m loop, equivalent to a 0.019dB/m power loss into an 8ohm load. Parallel capacitance is also a perfectly moderate 151pF/m.

Cutting Edge
In addition to my usual Constellation Centaur II 500 [HFN Dec '19] and B&W 801 D4s [HFN Nov '21], I was blessed with more than a few other amp/speaker combinations this month with which to sample the potentially Arthurian qualities of this particular Excalibur. With most of these systems – and especially the Western Electric 91E [HFN Feb '23] with DeVore O/93s – the Sword Excalibur encouraged what I'd best describe as an arresting, animated sound.

Bass, notably, had a richer 'colour' than I'd heard with other high-end cables, bringing extra weight, impact and sheer 'bounce' to Grischka Zepf's strumming on Chris Jones' 'No Sanctuary Here' [Roadhouses And Automobiles; SFR 357.8006.1] just as it helped lift Paul Chambers' bowed solo on 'Red Pepper Blues' [Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section; Contemporary/Original Jazz Classics S7532]. Treble, too, was sweet with just the right bite given to percussion and plucked strings, even if the extreme top-end was arguably slightly 'dark' rather than brightly lit. Many listeners will prefer it this way, of course, but that's the beauty of a cable that beguiles as it informs.

Hi-Fi News Verdict
If you can tear your eyes away from this bright blue cable and focus on the sound then you're in for a treat. Why? Because Supra's Excalibur achieves a momentum of its own as it rolls with rock as enthusiastically as it fans the thunder of an orchestral climax. Even if it's not entirely transparent-sounding, any colour it brings is both subtle and sympathetic, and delivered at a price – £1400/2m set – that's pitched well below that of audio's apex cables.

Price £1700 (3.0m terminated stereo set)