Kimber Kable
Carbon Interconnect

.5m $510, 1m $620, 2m $840

Brand new, and performance breaking for me, is the Kimber Carbon Interconnect cable.

For its price point, Carbon shatters the glass ceiling of dynamic range performance most noticeably! It sounds like you added more power to your system, which you did NOT.

Along with improved dynamic range, you’ll hear deeper, tauter bass response and improved resolution throughout. All told, Carbon provides a substantive level of improvement compared to anything less than it – or close to it.

For many years our reference standard for the money has been the Kimber Hero. It runs $231 for .5m. It features Kimber’s Varistrand, 4 copper (state of the art 102% IACS purity) in 4 wire braided weave construction with a Teflon dielectric. It’s terrific and we still encourage it.

To beat the Hero all these years, you had to jump up to the Kimber Select Series. The KS-1116 is better in that it has six, solid core (as opposed to stranded) Varistrand copper cables with a Teflon dielectric along with electrostatic dissipative material braided in a constrained matrix geometry around a core.

Carbon starts life similar to the Hero, but instead of using just a Teflon dielectric, Carbon has a special “factor.” Carbon employs an electrostatically dissipative CARBON INFUSED POLYMER layer surrounding Varistrand wires. This semi conductive layer helps to improve the speed of transmission over 5%. Finally, this construction is then covered with a Teflon jacket. As I mentioned above, you’ll notice the sonic improvement most clearly in dynamic contrast, bass impact and overall transparency.

Carbon is standard with WBT-0114cu RCA’s or silver plated studio grade XLR’s. How sophisticated a system do you need to appreciate the benefits of a Carbon(s) interconnect?

Suppose you have a fine integrated amp like McIntosh, Hegel or Bryston. Congratulations! NOW we’re talking. If you have a true cut above integrated amp or separates, especially those I’ve spec’d here, that support balanced connections, YOU are a candidate for Carbons.

I’m just going to assume that if you had good enough taste to buy electronics like these, you have commensurate speakers. But maybe we need to discuss those too!

Anyone who reads our site knows I’m an avid silver disc lover. I own thousands of CDs and SACDs. It’s kinda OCD if the truth be known. I love the Marantz SA-10 disc player which doesn’t use a DAC chip- and supports XLR as well as RCA outs. When I substituted the Carbon for an array of lesser cables, it was always “sunlight” when I went back to the Carbon. Short of the Select KS-1136 Silver for over $2k, I’d rather have the Carbon than anything else on the market!