ATOH Interconnects
"A Taste
Of Honey"
ATOH interconnects have been replaced by the HAC-Plus interconnect - they are cheaper and sound better.
ATOH is built using a single teflon-insulated copper OCC earth wire, along with our carbon signal conductor. To save money, it does not come with a Rimu "audio block" and Magic Tubes, but this can be added as an option. ATOH is covered with natural cotton.
The result is an intesely musical cable with the magic of our carbon conductor shining through.
ATOH in Slate Gray
Skin Effect
This is the well-known tendency
for higher frequency signals to travel preferentially
along the surface of a conductor. Some claim that this
is inaudible at audio frequencies, but in my view it's
clear that using large conductors for signals results in
rolling off the top end. It's clearly audible in tests.
The skin effect is mathematically and physically
well understood. It's easy to calculate the "skin depth"
of various materials at various frequencies. For copper
at the top of the audio band, skin depth is about 0.6mm.
For carbon fiber it's several centimeters. This is due
to it's resistance and the fact it's not a metal and has
a very different relative permittivity. So basically
carbon fiber is immune from skin effects.
High Resistance?
The carbon fiber signal conductor has a fairly high resistance compared to regular wire. A one meter ATOH has around 40ohms resistance on the signal conductor.
You may have read interconnect adverts extolling silver signal conductors for their very low resistance. But the thing is this : it doesn't matter. A typical line level output has an output impedance somewhere between a few tens of ohms up to a few hundred ohms. And what that basically means is that there is already a similar or larger sized resistance already there. And it's typically driving a load that is tens of thousands of ohms, so the addition of 40ohms is nothing.
But there are potential advantages to having some resistance in the signal wire. One is that it gives some extra isolation between the two devices. Another is that HF noise induced is dissipated resistively instead of bouncing from one end to the other.
RCA Plugs
We tried a range of RCA plugs when developing these interconnects. We needed to use plugs that had a compression fitting, rather than a solder fitting, as you cannot solder carbon fiber. We found that we got very good results with SonarQuest Rhodium plated plugs with Carbon Fiber insert, so we use these on the whole range as the standard plug.
However we have now developed a method of connecting the carbon conductor to any solder connection without losing sound quality. That last part is the crucial one. It's fairly easy to connect, much harder to do it without destroying the sonics.
So we set about testing a bunch of RCA plugs. The results of this testing mean that we now offer KLE Innovations plugs on all interconnects. The gains are quite audible, with an apparent speeding up of the sound, that touch more resolution. Our two standard offerings are Copper Harmony, which adds $40 to the cost, or Silver Harmony, which adds $60. We can also do the high-end KLE plugs, Pure Harmony and Absolute Harmony on request.
Prices and Options
ATOH is priced in 3 lengths : 0.7meter, 1 meter and 1.5 meter. Contact us for intermediate lengths. Note that lengths over 1.5 meter are not currently available.
| ATOH 0.7 meter | us$269 |
| ATOH 1.0 meter | us$299 |
| ATOH 1.5 meter | us$399 |
| ATOH 0.7 meter with audio block and Magic Tubes | us$329 |
| ATOH 1.0 meter with audio block and Magic Tubes | us$359 |
| ATOH 1.5 meter with audio block and Magic Tubes | us$459 |
| All
prices for stereo pair. Add $40 for KLE Copper Harmony or add $60 for KLE Silver Harmony All available in Blue, Slate Gray, Green and Natural Unbleached White. |
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