AudioQuest Dragon XLR Double 72v DBS 1,5m Interconnect Cable

AudioQuest Dragon 2 XLR to 2 XLR Audio Cable Pair

The Dragon is AudioQuest's crowning achievement in their 42-year history. It features Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS) conductors, PSS drains to take the NDS to Level 7 and silver-plated barrels, resulting in the highest performance ever offered by any AudioQuest cable. This cable will be hard to unhear and difficult to go back from.

What AudioQuest say

Mythical Creature Analog Interconnects

ThunderBird, FireBird, and Dragon are AudioQuest’s best-sounding, most sonically invisible interconnects yet — category-defining products that establish new benchmarks of transparency and musical pleasure, bringing us significantly closer than ever to our sonic ideal of completely invisible cable.

The Never-Ending Quest

AudioQuest’s 42-year history of designing and refining analog interconnects has been a long, steady climb up a mountain, the summit of which can never be reached…

But with each step, they have arrived at cleaner, clearer, more naturally detailed and beautiful sound. For the most part, improvements in performance have been incremental — small steps, always in the right direction — but, just a few times along our 42-year path, new materials and/or technologies have brought so much improvement that it’s as though we took a chairlift to at least the next base station.

The Mythical Creature interconnects are that important.

ZERO-Tech: Unprecedented RF Noise-Dissipation

Most of the credit for passing so much more information than AudioQuest’s previous generation of state-of-the-art cables — and even more importantly, so much less misinformation (energy in the wrong place and time) — goes to ZERO-Tech (No Characteristic-Impedance) dramatically improving RF Noise-Dissipation and significantly further reducing dielectric-involvement (electrical interaction with insulation).

This enables more of the nuance that makes music so engaging, moving, and human: more fully realized tonal expression with more newly un-masked low-level detail revealed than ever before, more relaxing and stimulating at the same time, more palpable and engaging than previously possible.

Optimized Performance and Flexibility

For over 40 years, AudioQuest’s interconnects have been Double-Balanced (RCA) or Triple-Balanced (XLR) to prevent the shield from being used as an inferior ground-reference conductor.

The Mythical Creature Interconnects make the multiple discrete signal and ground-reference paths externally visible for the first time — but that is not new technology. It is because the more complicated and optimized implementation of ZERO-Tech would have made the cables stiff and unfriendly if all hidden in a single round jacket.

The extra effort of creating multiple constructions results in some of the most flexible interconnects AudioQuest has ever made.

Carbon/Graphene/Carbon Mesh-Network

Performance-damaging Radio-Frequency (RF) Noise is more pervasive today than ever before. Therefore, the Mythical Creature Interconnects apply more sophisticated Noise-Dissipation technologies than ever before.

In addition to AQ’s universally applied fundamental of controlling conductor direction to direct induced RF to where it will do the least harm, and ZERO-Tech, Mythical Creature Interconnects also employ a carbon & graphene resistive mesh-network, 72v DBS, and thickly Silver-Plated shield-drains (Dragon’s drains are 100% PSS-Silver), greatly minimizing RF Noise getting into active circuits and causing masking effects.

Beautiful Form and Function

The sheer beauty of Mythicals’ bespoke RCA plugs is the happy result of a technical performance imperative. In order to maximize the plug barrel’s ability to drain RF Noise, minimizing any possible coupling of RF Noise into the cable, the barrels are plated for maximum RF conductivity.

For ThunderBird, this entails optimized copper plating underneath an automotive-type clear coat. For FireBird and Dragon, silver does an even better job thanks to silver’s significantly lower impedance at RF frequencies (as compared to at audio frequencies where the impedance difference is trivial).

All Mythical plug contacts use superior Hanging-Silver (not tumbled) directly over extreme-purity Red Copper. Cold-welded connections prevent distortion that would be introduced by solder or even resistance-welding.

Most Important: The Existing Foundation

AudioQuest are justifiably very proud of all the new and very significant ingredients applied in the Mythical Creature Interconnects. However, as with an amazing new skyscraper, the building is only as strong and effective as its foundation.

By 1981, AudioQuest was already making Double-Balanced cables using Teflon+Air dielectrics — even employing ZERO-Tech, though they didn’t understand at the time how to maximize the technology. Way back in the last century, direction-controlled conductors using then state-of-the-art metals, patented Air-HyperLitz conductors, and other materials and technologies paved the way to today’s Mythical interconnects.

In reference to the opening comment about climbing a mountain: they might never reach the mountain’s summit — perfect cable might never be possible — but are still very proud to be significantly closer than ever before.

As always, they invite you to listen for yourself, and thank you for joining them on the journey.

Dragon

Not only is Dragon the best interconnect AudioQuest has ever made, it’s quite possibly the best the world has ever seen or heard.

With its ultimate combination of world-class materials and cutting-edge Noise-Dissipation technologies, Dragon comes as close as presently possible to AudioQuest’s sonic ideal — completely invisible cable. It features Solid Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS) conductors, ZERO-Tech, FEP Air-Tube insulation, Silver-Plated RF-Draining Barrels, and Level-7 Noise-Dissipation in which even the shield-drains are 100% PSS.

No expense has been spared, no detail neglected.

At once a direct descendent of critically acclaimed designs from our storied past and something completely and undeniably new, Dragon sets its predecessors on fire and blows away their ashes.

All Mythical Creature interconnects are available with custom-made RCA and XLR terminations.

Features

ZERO-Tech (No Characteristic Impedance) for Linear, Wide-Bandwidth Noise-Dissipation

The only way to avoid characteristic-impedance mismatch-effects between a cable and its attached source and load circuits is to prevent the cable from having a characteristic-impedance. ZERO-Tech succeeds by eliminating the electrostatic field between the cable’s high and low signal conductors, enabling linear (consistent octave to octave) Radio-Frequency (RF) Noise-Dissipation, and uncompressed transients. In order to preserve ZERO-Tech’s complete isolation between signal conductors, a Dual-72v DBS pack is included for XLR cables.

Solid Perfect-Surface Silver (PSS) Conductors

Solid conductors prevent electrical and magnetic strand-interaction. PSS Solid-Silver minimizes distortion caused by grain boundaries and maximizes linear RF Noise-Dissipation.

FEP Air-Tube Dielectric

Positive conductors benefit from almost no contact between metal and its FEP insulation, which is notable for its superior dielectric constant and minimal signal interference. Negative conductors benefit from intentionally “lossy insulation” — no air and no FEP helps maximize the negative connection’s different job.

72v Dielectric-Bias System (DBS)

Insulation is also a dielectric that can act like a shunt-filter. Biasing minimizes dielectric-noise and linearizes the filter, significantly improving wide-bandwidth dissipation of induced RF noise.

Level 7 Noise-Dissipation: PSS Drain + ZERO-Tech + 72v DBS + Carbon/Graphene Mesh-Network + Direction-Controlled

Radio-Frequency Noise from cellular, WiFi, and satellites is everywhere. AQ’s Level 7 Linear Noise-Dissipation includes a carbon & graphene resistive mesh-network, direction-controlled conductors, 72v DBS, and Solid Perfect-Surface (PSS) drain wires, significantly minimizing RF Noise masking effects.

Hanging-Silver over Red-Copper Plugs

AudioQuest’s finest plugs feature superior Hanging-Silver (not tumbled) directly over extreme-purity Red Copper.

Silver-Plated RF-Draining Barrels

Grounded Silver-Plated Barrels maximize Noise-Dissipation by preventing a metal barrel from capacitively coupling RF to the conductors.

Contact Enhancer Option

To ensure the best possible connection between your system, Future Shop recommends the DeoxIT Gold G-Series contact enhancer.

DeoxIT Gold is carefully applied to the plug contacts of your cable and is a unique conditioning solution designed to improve conductivity and provide long-lasting protection on gold, base metals and other precious metal contacts and connections. DeoxIT Gold penetrates plated surfaces, molecularly bonding to the base metals to seal and protect both surfaces.

The benefits of applying DeoxIT gold are:

• Improved Conductivity
• Maintained optimum signal quality
• Reduced wear & abrasion
• Prevents fretting/dendrite corrosion
• Forms a protective anti-tarnishing coating
• Stabilises connections between similar and dissimilar metals
• Reduces arcing, RFI and intermittent connections

Please select this option from the above ‘Contact Enhancer’ drop-down menu and our engineers will apply the contact solution to your cable connectors prior to shipping.

Specification

• Signal-Conducting Metal: Solid Perfect-Surface Silver
• RF-Draining Metal: Solid Silver-Plated Copper
• Geometry: ZERO-Tech (No Characteristic Impedance)
• Dielectric: FEP Air-Tubes for minimal signal interference
• Dielectric-Bias System: ◉◉ 72v DBS (XLR)
• Level 7 Noise-Dissipation: PSS Drains + ZERO-Tech + 72v DBS + Carbon/Graphene Mesh-Network + Direction-Controlled
• Plug Barrels: Silver-Plated RF-Draining
• Plug Contacts: Hanging-Silver over Red-Copper

About AudioQuest

AudioQuest aims to deliver the most beautiful, durable, and reliable audio/video cables and accessories on the planet, products that don’t only represent the absolute highest value but also exceed any expectations regarding performance. AudioQuest is a premier provider of high-performance audio video cables and accessories sold in hundreds of outlets in the USA, Europe and in over sixty countries. AudioQuest’s products represent both extraordinary value and exceptional performance.