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Mapleshade Vivlink HDMI Cable |
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Without a good cable, you simply won’t see the great video image your expensive plasma or LCD/LED monitor can deliver. Conventional high-end HDMI cables have plastic insulation that’s too thick and copper wires that are too fat; this distorts video data streams, just like it distorts audio data and signals. So we decided to try making a great HDMI cable using the same design ideas that make our audio cables so astonishingly good: thinner conductors, less insulation, and better dielectric materials than any of the famous high-end video cables. Then we added in the chemical and thermal treatments that work so well on our audio wires; they took our HDMIs up another sizable notch. After hundreds of viewing tests during our R&D, we ran a final viewing panel comparison to test just how good our final design was: Mapleshade’s Vivilink versus the $1500 Audioquest Diamond HDMI (2m), a current industry reference. Unanimous result: the panel saw more brilliant colors, more shadow detail, subtler pastel shades, better edge resolution, blacker blacks and less washed-out whites with the Vivilink; none on the panel saw any downside. With these findings in hand, we confidently guarantee our Vivilink delivers similar or better results against other top of the line HDMIs such as Wireworld, Crystal, PS Audio, Kimber, Siltech, Furutech, Acoustic Zen, Synergistic, Tara Lab, and Acoustic Zen. Concept and Design Approach: The basic design concept for Vivilink is simple: we use viewing panel tests to uncover the crucial variables in designing good video cables—in exactly the same way that we use listening panel tests to design audio cables. The execution of this concept, of course, requires endlessly long hours of testing and extraordinary attention to detail. For instance, the image deficiencies of even the best existing Blu-Ray discs led us to shoot our our own high definition video footage in order to have reference viewing scenes of sufficiently high quality. But all that work and all that meticulous care led to a clear conclusion: the same minimalist principles that make audio wires sound good lead to video wires that create superb imagery. Our tests showed that the leading high-end HDMI cables use plastic insulation materials that have excessive dielectric absorption and that are much too thick. They also use conductors with too large a diameter: the most expensive ones use silver, notably inferior to copper in accurately transmitting signal waveforms. These weaknesses lead to degraded edge resolution, reduced dynamic range (less shadow detail and less brilliant highlights), and muddier colors. So instead we decided to come up with a first rate HDMI cable using the minimalist ideas that underly our audio cables: the thinnest possible conductors, the least possible insulation thickness, dielectric materials that prove best in viewing tests, and pure copper conductors. Then we added in the chemical and thermal treatments that work so well on our audio wires; they led to a further visible improvement in the HDMI performance. And, not coincidentally, the Vivilink will also yield significantly better audio quality than other HDMI cables. However, you will get even better audio performance by using our Mapleshade digital coaxial interconnects to carry the digital audio signal over a path separate from the HDMI cable, wherever possible. Audio always sounds better if it is not bundled inside an HDMI cable together with video and power wires. |