The Monocrystal™ Process:
When copper slugs are forced through a small die hole to "draw" wire, known as copper extrusion, the copper undergoes a molecular change due to the stress and rapid cool down of the metal. Crystals are inadvertently formed in the copper, which act as an impediment to the natural flow of electrons in the wire. To counteract this obvious barrier to the delicate signal, Monocrystal™ Copper (and silver) is 'cast' as ONE unique crystal eliminating the crystal barriers.
At Ecosse we raised the bar when we introduced Monocrystal™ Silver as a primary conductor material. Silver speaker and interconnect cables are obviously much more expensive to manufacture than copper ones, but silver has some advantages. Although silver's conductivity is only slightly higher than that of copper, silver oxides are less of a problem for audio signals than are copper oxides. Silver conductors are made using the same drawing techniques used in making copper conductors and our Monocrystal™ Ag conductors exhibit the same superior sonic qualities over all-comers.
Since the stress of forcing the copper slug through the cold die creates the crystal barriers during the cool-down phase, the unique patented Monocrystal™ process involves slow casting the molten, purified copper through a special machine, which is preheated. The cool down of the single crystal filament is done in an environment of inert gas at a very slow rate, thus eliminating oxidization and the unwanted stress crystallization. This extrusion/annealing process produces 'Mono-crystal' wire.
SUPERMONOCRYSTAL™
We began 2004 with the first real advance in copper wire casting and processing since the advent of single-crystal conductor material, two decades ago, and introduce the world's ONLY Super-Monocrystal™ Cables - you might say we have taken the single-crystal process to the Nth (sic) degree!
Here, the multistrand cable on offer is SMS2.4-of rope-lay construction where each conductor has 2 bundles of differing cross-sectional area - to further improve linearity and phase coherence. The dielectric we use is high-grade polypropylene and the conductors are wound together in a precise helix.
The Super-Monocrystal™ Process (SMS):With continuous cast mono-crystal there are an absolute minimum of impurities in the grain boundary. Now, by heating and re-crystallising the metal, while absolutely maintaining its structure, and due to the physical stabilization of this ultra- pure material under stress-free conditions, we achieve an unsurpassed conductor of the delicate audio signal with quite exceptional linearity through the audio frequency band.
N.B. Audiophiles please note that it is the purity of 'grain structure' (not to be confused with purity of copper or silver employed - often expressed as 99.99% or better - and merely signifying the purity of the copper ingot before smelting), which defines the major characteristics in the conductor's ability to transmit audiophile quality sound and video. For the record, Monocrystal™ is a minimum 5N's pure; SuperMonocrystal™ 7N!
ESOTERIC is using 8N copper in the new PO1VU CD transport.
SQ is something we can't measure.
