Inakustik LS-204 XL Micro AIR

Electrostatics and capacitance

It’s something we’re all familiar with: when you take off a sweater with a high synthetic content you hear a crackling sound. The reason for this is that the integrated plastic material stores electrical energy, and then discharges it again. The same thing happens in the dielectric material of a cable. It “absorbs” electrical energy like a sponge and then releases it again. In the case of an audio cable, however, this electrical energy is part of the audio signal.

This problematic storage capacity of a cable is referred to as its “capacitance”. While capacitors intended to store energy should have a correspondingly high capacitance, the capacitance of a cable should be as low as possible. If this is not the case, it can have a serious detrimental effect on the transmission characteristics and also lead to interactions with connected electronic devices. The ideal solution is therefore air insulation such as that implemented with the Micro AIR (and previous AIR technology), reducing the capacitance to an absolute minimum.

Cables should not make any sound

The Referenz AIR series cables have already caused something of a sensation in the world of high-end connections. And we have used the very same principles of physics to develop our Referenz Micro AIR series. As the name suggests, air as insulation also plays a key role with these high end connections due to the excellent dielectric properties.

Cables in general don’t make any sound; they have a filtering effect and interact with the devices. We believe audio connections should be as unobtrusive as possible and cause no sound coloration. These would perhaps be astonishing to hear the first time, but they actually distort the original, and eventually are annoying. The trick is to adapt the physical filter effect through the architecture and choice of materials so that losses and interactions are reduced to a minimum. This was our goal when developing the Referenz Micro Air series – and we believe we have achieved our goal once again.