Kubala-Sosna Elation! Ethernet 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 Ethernet cable is one of the configurations that earned the Elation! line its run of Brutus Awards — the press treated Ethernet, alongside power and S/PDIF, as a category where the OptimiZ3 architecture redefined what a cable in this format could do for a serious networked playback chain. This is the Ethernet cable for the listener whose streaming front end (an Innuos PhoenixNET, an XACT N1, an HzProject LAN Isolator, a reference streamer) is the entry point to a digital chain at reference level. The configuration where it pays the most is the cable into the streamer or DAC — the final Ethernet link before the audio chain begins.

Series: OptimiZ3™

Architecture: RevolutionZ™

Configuration options: Ethernet (LAN), CAT-spec engineered for audio use

Termination options: RJ45 (both ends)

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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