QED's Golden Anniversary XT promises to deliver the sonic benefits of a high-end speaker cable at a relatively competitive price thanks to X-Tube Plus technology, said to provide a more even, consistent performance across frequencies.

Quality Electronic Design (QED) was formed in 1973 by hi-fi enthusiasts Bob Abraham and Ian Vine. The culmination of engineering “class-leading and award-winning” analogue and digital cables for five decades leads us to the Golden Anniversary XT to demonstrate the company's expertise.

X-Tube Plus places a cable's conductive material around a central hollow insulating rod, eliminating the 'skin effect' that pulls high-frequency analogue music signals to the conductor's exterior. Furthermore, QED also reduces the 'proximity effect' with additional Aircore tech. This results in the X-Tube Plus “ground-breaking cable geometry”.

The Golden Anniversary XT also utilises a 14AWG hybrid comprising 9 x 19/0.13 mm 99.99% oxygen-free copper and 9 x 19/0.13 mm Ultra-Pure Ohno Continuous Cast Copper blend for an improved signal path to give “outstanding signal retention” at “a fraction of the price”. QED boats that this makes the Golden Anniversary XT “the most affordable and attainable speaker cable to exploit the advantages of the continuous-casting process” and improves the path for transients and high-frequency detail.

For the dielectric, Golden Anniversary XT uses a specially developed and formulated low-density polyethylene ('LDPE'), which QED says, works in unison with the cable's X-Tube Plus configuration to deliver a speaker cable that has high efficiency and a barely measurable dissipation factor (0.009 @ 10 kHz).

Finally, the cables are terminated with QED Forté banana plugs attached using a specially developed cold-weld system dubbed Airloc. This cold weld crimp-type termination promises maximum resistance to oxidation - for the lifetime of the cable - by effectively turning the cable and the plug into a single, unified object.

Visitors to the High End Munich Show can check out QED's Golden Anniversary XT speaker cable in room A (Atrium) 4.1, F110. It will be available from June priced at £27/ €35 per metre.

Visit QED for more information