Design Philosophy
Overview
Audiophile Ninja cables are designed to provide a high quality and sharp aesthetic to your headphone listening experience. A product that is hand-crafted in the USA with premium materials, so you can vanish into your music.
There is no magic or cable voodoo here. Leave your snake oil, fairy-blessed wire, and diamond encrusted connectors at home. We create expertly designed cables combining high quality parts, no nonsense engineering, and an affordable price.
We leverage audio industry renown Canare 99.9% pure copper cable, Cardas silver solder, and professional grade Amphenol TRS, Neutrik XLR, and other high-quality gold-plated amp connectors in our products.
Go ahead. Get rid of your stock cable. Yeah, that one. That annoying cable that keeps getting tangled up, falling off your desk, or just simply doesn’t match your refined style.
It’s time to let your cable fade to the background, and have your music be the focus of your listening experience.
Enter Audiophile Ninja.
Quality Copper Wire. The core component.
Based on research by industry experts who have spent their lives focused on wire design, they conclude that for proper flat frequency response across the entire audible sound range, the wire must not add more than 10% of the impedance to the rest of the combined audio system (Headphone + Amp). This is what is known as Damping Factor for the system. While 10% is the minimum, conservatively most aim for 5% just for an extra measure. This is the target we aimed for in designing our Audiophile Ninja products.
Our Japanese precision crafted 99.9% pure copper cabling is 26AWG per conductor and is spec’d at 0.04 ohms/ft. So for our max length cable of 15ft, that’s 0.6 ohms of resistance, which allows for plenty of headroom on headphones 12 ohms or higher to keep within the 5% target, or down to 6 ohm headphones for the 10% target. And that is pretty much digging into speaker territory level of impedance.
And since almost all headphones are 12 ohm or more (with certain rare unicorns out there, as exceptions, of course), our cabling has a ton of headroom for pretty much anything you can throw at it.
There. Audiophile Ninja did all the wire research for you. You’re welcome.
NOTE : For additional information on this damping factor criteria and to dive deeper into the reasoning and research, I’d recommend starting with Wikipedia for a high-level overview. And if you want to go even further, check out the work of Roger Russell, who was the Director of Acoustic Research at McIntosh Laboratory. There are many other renown experts in the field, as well, who are super smart in their respective fields, and can provide more detailed perspective.
Connectors and Solder. Piecing it all together.
Rock solid connectors and the best solder money can buy. That’s how we roll.
Connectors are the endpoints to the wire, and what gets inserted into your amp and headphone. While small in terms of distance the signal must travel through compared to wire, connectors must be able to purely transmit audio, while being able to withstand the elements and day to day use. This is why all of our connectors are gold-plated. Not because of the bling, but because gold doesn’t tarnish or react to the atmosphere, like other metals do.
Chemistry sucks. When metals oxidize, they can form barriers that inhibit audio transfer. Very not cool. Nobody wants that. So therefore, the gold plating is mandatory on all of our high quality, hand-picked connectors. It shields your precious music. Now that’s cool.
We also use heavy duty, and industry treasured Amphenol and Neutrik amp connectors for our full sized 1/4″ TRS and XLR amp connectors. These products are sought after by the pickiest of professionals and are able to withstand the day-to-day plugging and unplugging of the headphone from the amplifier. And our other gold-plated connectors are hand-picked by Audiophile Ninja to beat out the cheap and flimsy components, typical of stock cables. Bam! How do you like that, cheap, stock cables?!
So now that we have our heavy-duty gold-plated connectors and our professional grade copper wire…. how do we meld it all together to make the cable transfer audio perfectly from end to end? With the highest quality Cardas silver-bearing solder, of course!
What’s the point in using high-quality wire and connectors, then ruin it by using cheap solder to piece it together? Cardas silver bearing solder is blended specifically for audio use and is the perfect complement to our cables. It’s a beautiful thing.
Clean and shiny solder joints make a happy cable. And at Audiophile Ninja, we like happy cables.
Aesthetics. Stylistic form and function.
Wire and cabling that is flexible, coils nicely, and has minimal microphonics is key for listening to sensitive headphones that are constantly on the move. This is why we chose a core cable that has been used in the professional audio industry for years. It is a proven performer electronically, acoustically, and also meets all of the requirements for cable fit and movement.
All of our cables come standard with a Mil-Spec, made-in-the-USA, nylon multi-filament sleeving, which is soft, durable, and helps reduce microphonics. Carefully chosen connectors and other components round out the special touches to our final cable designs. Audiophile Ninja put a lot of love into the design of our cables, and we hope you see and appreciate the little details.
It truly is the small things that make a big impact.