Chord Company ClearwayX speaker cable improves upon multi-Award-winner

Chord Company ClearwayX speaker cable improves upon multi award winner
(Image credit: Chord Company)

Chord Company has upgraded its multi-Award-winning Clearway speaker cable.

The new ClearwayX is a direct replacement for the 2015, 2016 and 2017 'Best speaker cable' What Hi-Fi? Award winner, and has been predominantly advanced with the use of XLPE insulation.

XLPE technology has been rolled out to a number of Chord Company products in recent years, first to the high-end SignatureXL speaker cable and then onto the likes of its more wallet-friendly EpicX, RumourX and ShawlineX models and even its very affordable LeylineX cable. Now, with the ClearwayX, it's available at the £15-per-metre price point too (AU$36-per-metre in Australia).

The company says the XLPE dielectric brings benefits in phase stability over the previously used material – which, in its own testing, has proven to deliver "noticeable" improvements in sound quality.

The two XLPE-insulated conductors are made from multi-strand oxygen-free copper, arranged in a twisted-pair configuration to reduce interference, and protected by a layer of soft PVC to correctly spread the shielding and thus minimise mechanically induced noise. To provide a level of shielding effective to high frequencies, the cable also utilises contra-wound high-density foil shields.

Has the Clearway family spawned another Award winner, then? We hope to find out how it fares against the AudioQuest Rocket 11, our current Award-winning cable, very soon.

The ClearwayX is now available from the Chord Company website.

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Becky Roberts

Becky is the managing editor of What Hi-Fi? and, since her recent move to Melbourne, also the editor of Australian Hi-Fi magazine. During her 10 years in the hi-fi industry, she has been fortunate enough to travel the world to report on the biggest and most exciting brands in hi-fi and consumer tech (and has had the jetlag and hangovers to remember them by). In her spare time, Becky can often be found running, watching Liverpool FC and horror movies, and hunting for gluten-free cake.