Q2

AudioQuest’s Flat Series speaker cable is built around a Semi-Solid Concentric design. While this is not as transparent as AudioQuest’s Solid-Core Conductors, Semi-Solid wire is significantly more resolved than conventional stranded bundle wire.

Long-Grain Copper: Long-Grain Copper (LGC) has fewer grain boundarieswithin the conductor than standard Oxygen-Free High-Conductivity copper. Less internal junctions enable outstanding clarity and naturalness.

Solid+ Concentric Conductors: Solid conductors prevent two very common sources of distortion: imperfect strand-to-strand contacts and magnetic interaction between strands. However, if a conductor as large as in Q2 was a single solid, not only would it be very stiff, but, due to skin effect, it would also have a very unnatural sound—like an aural roller coaster. Q2’s Solid+ Concentric Conductors comprise a perfect circle of 11 smaller strands of LGC copper spiraled around a single larger strand of LGC. The result is a flexible conductor with sound quality approaching that of an ideal solid conductor.

Low-Inductance Twisted-Pair Geometry: A normal speaker cable with parallel conductors has fairly high inductance, smearing energy across time and making the sound dull and unfocused. The two conductors in Q2 cable are spiraled around one another, providing lower inductance, greater clarity, and superior bass-to-treble frequency extension.

Cold-Welded Direct-Silver Plated BFA/Bananas: AudioQuest’s SureGrip 100 BFA/Banana plugs allow Q2 to be easily and securely attached to almost any type of amplifier or loudspeaker. We are proud of the dull but superior-sounding finish on these plugs. Most plugs get their shiny look from a barrier layer of nickel over the underlying material (usually brass). SG100 plugs have highpurity silver plated directly over the superior beryllium-copper plug. While gold adds a slight softening to the sound, thick silver plating actually provides superior clarity versus an unplated part: The copper is protected and the sound is improved! Over time, it is possible you will see some dark silver tarnish. These oxides are as conductive as untarnished silver, but the tarnish is also easily removed with standard silver cleaner.