[Professor Thump]

Originally we experimented with woven cloth cable on IMAGE. We wanted the quality of the cable to feel old fashion or classical. These early prototypes with cloth cables on IMAGE were very noisy and microphonic but they were also SLA's (Stereo Lythogrophy) so the tails were not soft and added to the noise. So we optimized the tail to attenuate or diffusion the transmission of energy telegraphing up the cable. To improve this further we elected to use the smooth soft cable that you see on IMAGE today. This fixed the cable noise in general. If you are moving around though you will hear some noise, especially with out any signal driving your headphones.

For Custom there is natural attenuation of mechanical vibration due to the over ear approach, but it does not totally go away so you MUST CYNCH the cable behind your head. Now you have several points of low Q placement dampening the cable system. If you don't cynch the cable it will be worse. This allowed us to use the cloth cable which is much better at flexing in cold temperatures and give you that high quality tactile feel.

Hope this clears up the noise issue.

Keep Thumpin!