Iconoclast Cable RCA Cable

The Iconoclast RCA cable presents the same materials and electricals as our XLR cable -- using the same air tube design but in a coaxial rather than a star quad architecture. A bare copper conductor (or four, in the case of the Gen 2 model) is suspended in a Teflon air tube using a glass-and-Teflon spacer thread; over this are three layers: a PTFE insulating tube, a heavy double-braid TPC copper shield, and a jacket of translucent PTFE. The signal conductors are available in three copper grades: TPC, OFE or UPOCC. In Generation 1 cables, these are solid 25 AWG copper; in Generation 2, a tiny X-shaped spline separates four 30 AWG copper wires, for a significant reduction in inductance at only slight cost in capacitance. Air is the best dielectric, but a conductor left in an air tube with no spacing separator will tend to press itself against the solid dielectric. To avoid this we use a unique round separator thread. If this were made purely in soft dielectric material, it would not be able to retain a rounded profile -- and hence minimal contact with the wire -- well through the cable; we have solved this problem by using a glass thread as the separator core, with PTFE extruded over it: a perfect combination of strength and dielectric quality. Over the air tube containing the center conductor, we add two high-coverage bare TPC copper braids, one right over the other. Shielding in an RCA interconnect can be critically important: unlike a balanced circuit, an unbalanced circuit provides no common-mode noise rejection, and so the shield is the one and only defense against EMI and RFI using the cable as an entry point. Additionally, the heavy shielding provides a low-resistance ground contact between devices to help keep them at the same ground potential, to avoid ground loop problems. Atop the shield is a translucent PTFE jacket, color-coded by copper type: Red for TPC, Blue for OFE, and Green for UPOCC. We use the Cardas SRCA connector on all Iconoclast RCA products. The Cardas is a dense brass-bodied connector with a large ground contact area, providing for tight, low-resistance solder joints. All of the engineering work in support of these designs is laid out in a series of papers by Galen Gareis, available in our technical library: In particular, for these XLR designs, see the papers titled Time, RCA/XLR Design Brief, and 1x4 and 4x4 Design.