Apogee's Wyde Eye A/D is an improved version of the acclaimed Wyde Eye Digital Audio cable. As before, the cable is available in both 110 ohm balanced and 75 ohm coaxial formats and is pre-terminated in a wide variety of lengths. In addition, each cable is packaged in a unique CablePak - a re-usable plastic pouch with innumerable uses in the studio or on the road - and includes a special Apogee reusable cable tie.

Wyde Eye A/D is designed to handle the most critical analog as well as digital audio applications. New additions to the line include a selection of cable products with high-quality 1/4in tip-ring-sleeve connectors. Wyde Eye A/D offers structural improvements in the distinctive purple jacket for more flexibility, lower noise and and longer life.

The 110 ohm cable maintains the exclusive double shield system of gold foil and braiding for improved clarity and RF rejection. Discerning high-performance audio enthusiasts can now enjoy the benefits of this ultra-low jitter and temperature controlled cable, which has become the leading choice of cable for mastering engineers and the professional audio industry in general since its introduction in 1993.

The new Wyde Eye A/D offers many additional features and benefits:

• Extremely low jitter specification improves dynamics and delivers markedly smoother mids and more natural high frequencies, excellent low frequency definition, and stunning stereo and surround imaging definition.
• The new thicker purple jacket - marked with recommended signal flow orientation - offers improved stability at all temperatures.
• Improved noise figures and RF rejection deliver overall superior analog performance.
• Improved RCA connectors offer a significantly enlarged contact area, increasing dynamic range and improving tension relief.
• Balanced cables feature precision gold-plated XLR connectors, while new 1/4in 110 ohm tip-ring-sleeve products feature connectors with diecast shells and a unique chuck style strain relief with polyurethane sleeve for optimum longevity and reliability.

The new Wyde-Eye A/D is a no-compromise interconnect of the highest integrity that comple-ments the existing line of Apogee analog to digital converters - and in the Apogee tradition, takes improvements in audio resolution to new heights.

Surely the whole point about digital audio is that once the sound is in numeric form, it stays the same wherever it goes. So how can one cable sound better than another?

The problem: Jitter. What goes in one end can be very different from what comes out the other. As your music moves digitally through an AES/EBU cable, powerful forces are at work pulling apart your hard-won, clean, accurately-spaced digital bits. Inaccurate impedance matching, cable capacitance and insufficient bandwidth can all induce timing jitter.

Most digital audio monitoring equipment is much more sensitive to this blurred timing than you realize. Jitter can compromise the stereo image and degrade tonality. The solution: Apogee Wyde Eye cable. Designed from the ground up specifically for digital audio. With tightly-controlled parameters optimized for digital -- and better analog, too. Carefully-controlled impedance. Low capacitance.

Wyde Eye cable was designed by Apogee and is produced exclusively by one of America’s foremost cable manufacturers: it’s not available elsewhere. And Wyde Eye is made from the highest quality raw materials, to the highest possible specification. There’s a special braid with unique gauge and weave, enclosing an exclusive golden shield foil. The distinctive outer insulating jacket remains supple over a wide range of temperatures. In the A-110 (AES/EBU) version, conductors are color-coded and striped to indicate pins 2 and 3, so there’s no risk of incorrect wiring.

If you were told that mic or computer cables were fine for digital audio, you were told wrong. You could be audibly degrading the quality you’re working so hard to create. Apogee Wyde Eye cable is available in a number of con-figurations and lengths, with the highest quality connectors -- or you can order in bulk. Ask your dealer for details.

Open your eyes to Wyde Eye, from Apogee. Your ears will appreciate the difference.

The AES/EBU format takes accurate digital audio timing (sync) information, combines it with the left and right audio data and sends it down a mic cable. At the other end, the equipment separates the timing and data components and performs whatever function it is designed to do. In an ideal world, the very regular sync information would exit the cable unaffected by its digital audio travelling companions. In practice, this is not the case.

Quality mic cables are excellent at handling frequencies way beyond the audible range, but they are simply not designed for the requirements of digital audio, where signals can have energy right up to 30 MHz and beyond. Just as you can get an accept-able analog signal through an audio path that is limited solely to audio frequencies, so you can get an AES/EBU signal through a cable with a bandwidth of no more than 6 MHz. However, in both cases, something is lost. In both cases, it’s the transients that suffer -- and in the digital domain this means that the timing precision of the transitions is degraded. In addition, with the loss of high frequency information, jitter is induced by the changing of data bits in the signal. The result: a nasty mess, as can be seen from the diagrams below. And many monitoring D/A converters are particularly susceptible to this kind of error.

Just as an analog signal sounds much better if it is passed through a system whose bandwidth extends well beyond the range of hearing, so Apogee Wyde Eye cable’s extended response preserves the subtleties, stereo image, tonal balance and overall character of the digital audio signal it carries. Meter after meter. In any playback system.

The enemy of AES/EBU cable is loss from input to output, especially any loss which is frequency-dependent. Most is caused by the conductors and shield, and to a lesser degree by the dielectric properties of the insulation. All of these factors have been optimized for wide band performance.

The impedance of a correctly-designed AES/EBU cable is 110. If the impedance is incorrect, reflections occur from one end of the cable to the other, distorting the pulses, even if it is correctly terminated. Even a cable with the correct nominal impedance can exhibit considerable impedance variations over a distance. Apogee Wyde Eye cable has a very accurate and carefully controlled impedance – 110±5% at 6 MHz in the case of the A110 (AES/EBU) type.

Apogee Wyde Eye A-110 110 AES/EBU cable and A-75 Wyde Eye 75 S/PDIF cable are available in bulk or as high quality assemblies in various lengths -- ready to go to work for you.

Apogee Wyde Eye Cable minimizes losses and accumulated jitter with:

• Low capacitance for minimum pulse degradation
• Carefully controlled impedance accurately matches terminations
• Low dimensional discontinuities for consistent impedance
• Optimum dielectric -- foamed high-density polyethylene
• Maintains properties over the full temperature range
• Flexible -- supple outer jacket in distinctive purple

Specification (Model A-110 – AES/EBU)
Conductors: 2 #22 (19 x #34) TC
Insulation: Foamed HD PE
Color Coding: White: 2 blk stripes, Slate Gray: 3 blk stripes
Fillers: PE Rod Fillers x 2
Foil Shield: Apogee Golden Foil
Braid Shield: #38 TC, 46º Angle
Drain Wire: #24
Jacket: Apogee Purple
Outer Diameter: 0.266in±0.010in
Impedance @ 6 MHz: 110 ±5%
Capacitance @ 100 kHz: 12 pF/ft