Kubala-Sosna Elation! Digital AES/EBU Cables

A digital cable is a transmission line. Done poorly, it forces the DAC to spend its energy correcting for jitter and timing errors that should never have arrived. Done well, it lets the DAC do what it was designed to do — recover the music. Kubala-Sosna offers digital cables in five formats across the line: AES/EBU (DAE) for studio-style balanced digital, S/PDIF coaxial (DCX) for the most common single-ended digital link, USB for direct computer-to-DAC and streamer-to-DAC connections, Ethernet (LAN) for networked playback chains, and a dedicated 50Ω coaxial cable available only at the Realization tier for the most demanding clock and digital links. Each is offered at the tiers where K-S has engineered the cable to a level the digital chain at that price point can actually use.

Elation! is the line's most awarded cable. It has won Positive Feedback Brutus Awards in 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015, and 2016 across power, S/PDIF digital, Ethernet, and the full series, plus The Absolute Sound 2015 Super AV Award for the power cable. Alma's own product page calls it “our best — and quite probably — the best.” The full complement is in this tier: analog interconnects, AES/EBU, S/PDIF, DIN-RCA, DIN-XLR, USB on request, Ethernet, speaker, power. The right customer is the listener at reference-component level who wants the K-S architecture at full expression. The step-up to Realization is the OptimiZ4 generation.

Elation! as the AES/EBU cable is the OptimiZ3 statement architecture in the balanced digital link — the cable for the listener whose DAC is engineered to take a real AES/EBU feed and whose transport or streamer is built to deliver one. A serious reference DAC (an MSB Discrete or Reference, a Bricasti M21 Platinum, a Nagra HD DAC X) responds audibly to a properly engineered AES/EBU cable in exactly the same way it responds to a properly engineered analog interconnect — the noise floor drops and the timing settles. This is the cable for that system. The complete Elation! digital complement — AES/EBU, S/PDIF, USB on request, Ethernet — is in this tier; the listener who chooses Elation! AES/EBU often runs the rest of the digital chain in the same architecture.

Series: OptimiZ3™

Architecture: RevolutionZ™

Configuration options: AES/EBU (DAE) — balanced digital, 110 ohm

Termination options: XLR (male to female)

Length range: 1.0m to 3.0m in 0.5m increments

Pricing formula: First-meter price plus per-additional-meter rate

Made in USA — Kubala-Sosna Research, East Hanover, NJ

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