DHC Synthesis Flagship OCC silver + OCC copper Speaker Cable

Description

Synthesis Series Speaker Cable

DHC’s Chimera headphone cable is the highest performing headphone cable in the world, elevating any headphone to its unrestrained potential.  A headphone cable is a speaker cable of sorts, and the Synthesis Series excels thanks to our time-tested hybrid approach of OCC silver and OCC copper litz strands with novel damping, shielding, and insulation scheme, providing immediately audible improvements for all speakers.  Powered by Chimera constructs, its design scales to let you assemble the right speaker cable for the system.

Rise of the true hybrid.  In 2012, we invented and launched Symbiote Fusion and Molecule Elite Fusion cables with the world’s first wires containing a combination of OCC copper and OCC silver litz strands – not an alloy or a plating, but a mix of copper and silver strand bundles.  The result was the best of both worlds, making a more well-rounded, universal pairing that exceeded the sum of its parts.  This true hybrid approach became industry standard within a few years, widely accepted as de rigueur throughout personal audio.  While wires striped with silver and copper bundles took over the industry, at the time we did not know what the future held for Fusion designs, and we quickly turned to the all-silver Prion4 as our flagship.  Six years later, we still loved the extreme clarity of Prion4 while discovering that the Chimera design was a clear step forward.   A radical rethinking of how a Fusion cable could be built, Chimera proved itself when paired with the gear available in 2022 and beyond – it simply shocked unprepared listeners at audio shows while convincing long-time Prion4 users that even the best cables could be improved.  The development of the Chimera made the Synthesis speaker cable possible.

Purity of purpose. 

Chimera constructs use a 50/50 combination of pure copper and pure silver OCC litz, woven cotton direct insulation and carbon polymer shielding in a well-damped multicore litz arrangement.  We do not use electronics-grade or hobbyist-grade off the shelf wire or anything repurposed for audio – our designs are purpose-built, down to the first metallurgical steps.   The production lines that form the OCC metals, draw them into 0.05mm strands, enamel the litz strands, and continuing through cotton braiding and insulating steps are dedicated to audio cable manufacturing and are overseen by audiophiles, not industrial wire producers.  The production process to make the wire at the factory stage is designed to optimize electrical parameters for sound, rather than manufacturing industrial wires and rebranding them as audio products.  DHC Synthesis is the only ultrafine-stranded OCC silver + OCC copper speaker cable in the world.

For a limited time at no additional charge, special layout & cosmetics are possible for Monomer and Dimer layouts, using one (Monomer) or four (Dimer) Eidolic ARTISAN y-splitters to organize the wires.  As pictured above, Monomer uses one ARTISAN y-split at the amplifier end (1-2 feet before the amp spades/bananas), breaking out to two pairs going to the speakers.  Titanium DHC logo tubes are used as breakouts to (+) and (-) at each end.  Dimer doubles the configuration to two star quads with ARTISAN y-splits at each end, breaking out to two pairs of Chimera constructs, each with a spade or banana, per channel.

Listening notes.

Due to the extreme cost of making speaker cables from very large gauges of fine-stranded OCC silver litz, our first speaker cable offering was the excellent Flagella all-copper design.  Comparable in gauge to the Trimer, it was a fantastic value and we continue to use it as do our customers.  Once we found a way to build a 1-2-3-4 scaling system to match gauge to system needs, it was then possible to begin listening tests with Chimera-inspired Fusion designs.  With our comparably humble speaker setup, it was unclear to what extent the different Synthesis configurations would affect sound – was it necessary to start with Wilson towers?  We were amazed to find that the modestly sized Monomer 15awg configuration was outperforming our hefty copper Flagella in all areas – filling the air well beyond our testing room with palpable bass from medium-small speakers!  The Chimera magic focused the details and staging to a level of precision we are unaccustomed to outside of critical headphone listening.  The warm, sultry punch of copper layered with the fine, glistening details of silver led us to continue our development past the Monomer design to see where the limits were.  We were surprised to find that even small speakers would come alive with an explosive rage when connected with the monstrous Tetramer configuration, approaching their true potential — something we were completely unaware of before.  While every system and speaker combination has a sweet spot among the four configurations, there is always a benefit – increasing with more demanding loudspeakers – in using the larger variants.  With biwiring it is easy to later add a second Synthesis set – running two Dimers to the upper and lower binding posts is a great alternative to the Tetramer.

World debut…
The Synthesis speaker cable was first debuted at AXPONA 2024 with Wolf Von Langa Son speakers, Viva Solista amplifier, and EMM DV2 DAC.  This room made a big impact in part thanks to the all Chimera & Synthesis cable loom!  Using a combination of the Dimer and Tetramer cables, the biwired speaker was operating at its limits…
Thanks to Mimic-Audio, EMM, and Viva for the unique show space and clever synergy!

Synthesis speaker cables are the path to the speaker’s limit.

Bespoke sizing.  Synthesis is assembled according to system needs, in increasingly potent variants:

Monomer– featuring four 15awg Chimera constructs, one per signal.  Ideal for bookshelf to medium-small speakers.

Dimer – Built with eight Chimera constructs – a total of 12.5 awg per signal.  Perfect for medium-sized speakers but ample for all.

Trimer – An extreme Chimera made from twelve constructs totaling 11awg per signal.  Ample for large speakers, saturating the performance of all but the very biggest speakers.

Tetramer – The limits of what is buildable, with 1680 strands of OCC litz per signal (6720 per set) completely filling the largest spade connectors available.  A full 9.5awg, providing effortless signal flow to cost-no-object speakers.  Over 6500 strands per cable set.

Biwire – simply connect separate Synthesis cables to each set of binding posts on the speaker instead of using jumpers, and connect both spades to the amp’s outputs.  In this way, one can upgrade from a single Synthesis set with jumpers to a biwire configuration.

Custom style. 

Synthesis series cables employ our exclusive sleeves first seen on our flagship headphone cables – ultra-soft American-made fabric with metallic tracer threads, not generic paracord.  Styles can range from stealthy and discreet to eye-popping contrasts of copper, gold, and silver details.  Every cable purchase begins with a rundown of styling options and one-on-one advice to find the best aesthetics to match the speakers and home.  Chimera precious-metal clips are individually modeled, printed, cast  the customer’s needs to group the (+) and (-) cables for each channel – we like to use copper or rose gold for right and rhodium for left.

Terminations.

Viborg rhodium/copper spades or bananas are the most reliable choice but DHC can accommodate other connectors on a case by case basis, especially for the smaller variants.  Dimer, Trimer, and Tetramer receive a free upgrade to pure silver connectors from Viborg.