TORFORB Interconnects
"Too Rich For my Blood"

TORFORB interconnects have been replaced by the HAC-Plus interconnect - they are cheaper and sound better.

TORFORBs in Blue and Green

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.

Another type of conductor that has no skin effect issues is a foil. The foils that are used in TORFORB are 0.1mm thick, which is much less than the skin depth. Foils thus give low resistance across the whole audio band.

High Resistance?

The carbon fiber signal conductor has a fairly high resistance compared to regular wire. A one meter TORFORB 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.

Multiple Earth Conductors

The various earth conductors have been carefully chosen after hours of listening tests. By providing multiple conductive paths - silver foil, silver wire and copper wire, the signal can naturally find the lowest resistance path depending on the nature of the signal. For instance, omitting the copper wire leads to a loss of midrange warmth and harmonic 'rightness'.

Note that it is not possible to use carbon fiber for the earth connection. This is because the earth connection needs to be low resistance (unlike the signal path, where a small resistance makes no negative difference).

Prices and Options

TORFORB 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.

All TORFORB interconnects come with a New Zealand native Rimu "audio block" that contains two Magic Tubes which are removable.

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