AudioQuest - Brave Heart - ZERO-Tech Speaker Cable

Featuring tried-and-true AudioQuest design elements along with ZERO-Tech for no characteristic impedance, Brave Heart has significantly more conductor metal than its predecessors while being more physically manageable thanks to its positive and negative sides being housed in separate round constructions. The result is a quieter cable that delivers the torque and bottom-end grip of a larger model.

Simply put, Brave Heart is bigger, quieter, and better than any speaker cable AudioQuest has previously offered at or near its price.

There are a number of technical details, both external and internal, that contribute to Brave Heart's outstanding combination of performance and value:

Physically, Brave Heart is nearly the size of AudioQuest's Mythical speaker cables, just 0.6mm smaller OD. Internally, it has almost a third more of the same superb Perfect-Surface Copper+ conductor metal as used in previous models, making it a slightly junior Mythical Creature. Yet, Brave Heart is more physically manageable because it houses positive and negative sides in separate round constructions.

Brave Heart's larger overall size results in more “torque”—a sure and muscular grip on the music, especially the bottom end. Damping-factor is better preserved over length, especially benefitting speakers with very low impedance at some (often bass) frequencies and speakers with ported (4th-order) enclosures that rely on strong amplifier control to perform their best.

Brave Heart also uses upgraded polypropylene insulation, which linearizes and expands the bandwidth of its noise-dissipation. With conductors that are farther apart thanks to optimized insulation, the out-of-focus, harsh-sounding effect of distributed capacitance distortions are meaningfully reduced. Finally, thicker layers of Carbon-Loaded PVC, newly added Graphene, and 4% silver shield drain wires further improves RF-Noise Dissipation.

All this, plus a wealth of proven AudioQuest design elements: Solid conductors prevent strand interaction, and, because the conductors are direction-controlled, RF noise is efficiently drained away from the vulnerable amplifier circuitry—toward where it will do the least or no harm. To further minimize the negative effects of induced RF-noise and timing errors due to dielectric noise, Brave Heart includes AudioQuest's 72v Dielectric-Bias System. There is no RF-relaying metal in the cable dressing, breakouts, or plug barrels, and the cold-welded gas-tight connections are made to Red Copper spades or bananas.

While a grossly overused and misused term, there is real synergy when all the above materials, values, and techniques employed in Brave Heart work in concert.

Brave Heart is bigger, badder, better than AudioQuest has ever offered at this price.

• ZERO-Tech (No Characteristic Impedance): The only way to prevent characteristic-impedance mismatch-effects between a cable and its attached source and load circuits is for the cable not to have a characteristic-impedance. ZERO-Tech accomplishes this by eliminating any electrostatic field between the cable’s high and low signal conductors — enabling uncompressed current transfer. All-important transient current is unrestricted, and RF-Noise Dissipation is linearized (consistent octave to octave).
• Solid Perfect-Surface Copper+ Conductors (PSC+): High-purity PSC+ conductors prevent strand interaction, a major source of ear-fatiguing transient intermodulation distortion. The astonishingly smooth and pure PSC+ further eliminates harshness and greatly increases clarity compared to OFHC, OCC, 8N and other premium coppers.
• Level 7 Linear Noise-Dissipation: The Earth is permeated with RF-Noise from satellites, cellular, WiFi, etc. Brave Heart’s Graphene+Carbon Mesh-Network, ZERO-Tech, direction-controlled metal, 72v DBS, and silver-plated shield drains effectively minimize damaging RF-Noise.
• 72v Dielectric-Bias System (DBS) with RF Noise-Trap: Insulation is also a dielectric that acts like a shunt-filter. Biasing the dielectric both minimizes dielectric-noise and linearizes the filter, significantly improving wide-bandwidth dissipation of induced noise.
• 4% Silver Shield Drains: Significantly aid in the efficient dissipation of RF-Noise.
• Cold-Welded Red-Copper Spades or Bananas: Cold-Welding avoids the introduction of heat and distortion-causing materials like solder. The bare parts are submerged (hung) in silver instead of tumbled in a lower-grade solution. Speaker breakouts and plug casings are synthetic, not metal, to avoid inducing RF Noise into the conductors.
• Directionality: All drawn metal strands or conductors have a non-symmetrical, and therefore directional, grain structure. AudioQuest controls the resulting RF impedance variation so that noise is drained away from where it will cause distortion. A fundamental aspect of AudioQuest’s multifaceted Noise-Dissipation technology, Direction-Controlled Conductors ensure induced noise is dissipated and drained properly.