INNOVATIVE DEVELOPMENTS

Our developments are based exclusively on recognized physical principles and the laws of electrical engineering.

The knowledge gained is incorporated into innovative product designs that are continuously optimized and validated through inspiration, careful development work and intensive comparative and listening tests.

The effectiveness and the astonishing sound improvement are reproducible at any time – and unmistakable hearable!

SCHNERZINGER completely dispenses with so-called information or quantum applications and works absolutely radiation-free.

The SCHNERZINGER technologies GIGA CANCELING, ATOMIC BONDING and the BIDIRECTIONAL BARRIER are the result of years of complex development cycles – and form the essence of the extraordinary performance of our products.

We ask for your understanding that SCHNERZINGER wishes to protect its technologies from imitation and therefore does not publish any detailed information on their functions.

GIGA CANCELING

The enormous proliferation of wireless transmission technologies – from cellular and Wi-Fi through Bluetooth to radar – has made radio-frequency interference (RFI) one of the decisive factors that prevent an audio system from realizing its full potential.

GIGA CANCELING sets a new benchmark in high-frequency engineering. The technology competently eliminates RF interference, entirely without energy-storing components such as capacitors or rechargeable batteries. This avoids all typical delay-, storage- and carry-over („smearing“) effects, characteristic of conventional filter solutions.

The result is exceptionally fast, clean, and wideband signal behaviour: no ringing, no overshoot, and no unnecessary insertion loss. Instead of phase-shifted energy, GIGA CANCELING delivers the highest group-delay precision, maximum bandwidth, and uncompromising signal purity.

With performance reaching into the upper gigahertz range and its consistent avoidance of energy storage, GIGA CANCELING works efficiently on the principle of antiphase cancellation directly within the device. It is the ideal solution for modern HiFi-systems where dynamics, modulation quality, and absolute signal fidelity are critical.

Three Approaches to Eliminating Radio-Frequency Interference

COMPENSATION

The most widespread, yet weakest solution.

Compensation has been the audio industry’s classic approach for decades. Here, one error is offset by another.

Example: an harsh harmonic spectrum is “calmed” by a warm-sounding, softening product. At first the result seems more pleasant but it is not correct. It is cosmetics for the symptom, not a cure for the cause.

Compensation works only up to a point and usually only with tonal weaknesses. As soon as complex radio-frequency interference comes into play, this approach inevitably reaches its limits.

MASKING

Covering up instead of clearing out.

The second strategy is Masking. Using frequency generators and quantum or “information-based” applications, the interfering signal is overlaid with artificially generated frequencies.

The problem: the interfering signals remain, they are merely masked.

Superposition is like air freshener in a musty room: the new scent covers the old odour, but it does not create fresh, clean air.

CANCELLATION

GIGA CANCELING: signal purity without filters or capacitors.

SCHNERZINGER GIGA CANCELING works with a consequent physical approach. Following the principle of antiphase cancellation known from headphone technology, but as a passive electrical interference fields are neither compensated nor superimposed, they are cancelled, without affecting any frequency component of the actual music signal.

The result is not an “improved” sound , it is a liberated one.

Acoustic spaces open up; authenticity and depth create an impressive form of realism. Previously hidden details emerge clearly, and the soundstage gains in size, depth, and structure. Notes ring out fully, the prerequisite for a natural harmonic spectrum. Music detaches from the system and unfolds naturally in the room.

A realism of sound that surprises and delights.

ATOMIC BONDING

The secret of a main SCHNERZINGER cable technology lies in ATOMIC BONDING. This time-intensive formatting process, which takes several months, achieves an outstanding and durable conductor material quality that once again clearly stands out in all sound-relevant criteria – even from the best cryogenically treated monocrystalline OCC conductor materials.

CONVENTIONAL PRODUCTION

In the conventional production of wires, thick copper or silver strands are repeatedly drawn through so-called drawing dies until the wires are thin enough for further use. Each individual drawing process causes enormous mechanical stress and damage to the crystalline lattice structure of the material. Transported audio signals have to find a diffuse path through many of these unchained grain structures. The flow through the grain boundary transitions from grain to grain generates an enormous resistance potential each time, which is known to cause a slowed signal transport.

A more complex casting process is often used for higher-quality audio cables. Liquid copper or silver is poured continuously into molds, resulting in longer grain structures. In the even more complex monocrystalline OCC or UPOCC (Ultra Pure Ohno Continuous Casting) processes, the molds are heated and cooled slowly to prevent the material from solidifying too quickly and to achieve the longest possible crystal structures.

The standard market approach (special casting processes, OCC, UPOCC, cryogenic processes, etc.) is to combine several individual ice cubes into long ice cube chains in order to create a structure that is as monocrystalline as possible, with fewer gaps that detract from the sound. However, during bending processes, usually immediately after the manufacturing process during drumming, long structures quickly break up and disintegrate, greatly reducing the theoretical benefit.

INNOVATIVE CONDUCTOR TECHNOLOGY

Our ATOMIC BONDING process is a breakthrough.

Long-chain metal structures are sensitive and disintegrate easily during manufacture. ATOMIC BONDING does not compress individual “ice cubes” into the most closed, long-chain mono-structure possible (a complex process which takes weeks or months). Instead, the cubes are crushed to produce the smallest structural components. These are then compacted into a stable, homogeneous mass with very high cohesive forces in the tube.

A compacted, fused “ice mass” has a closed, extremely stable structure – without gaps.

This complex formatting process achieves an extraordinary material quality that differs from elaborately treated, high-purity, long and monocrystalline OCC metal structures. It enables loss-free information transmission with increased information density as a high-purity pulse chain, redefining audiophile parameters like resolution, spatial imaging, dynamics and naturalness.

A comparison of the best conventionally available conductor quality with ATOMIC BONDING showed that ATOMIC BONDING conductors were still clearly superior up to 20 times the length.

In contrast to the significantly lower and often only temporary advantages of e.g. cryogenization or OCC or UPOCC casting processes, SCHNERZINGER cables with ATOMIC BONDING conductors also enable consistent, permanently high conductor quality.

BIDIRECTIONAL BARRIER

The influence of interfering fields via cables is an important and at the same time complex subject, which we pay a lot of attention to in the development of our cables – because conventional shielding techniques have long since reached their limits.

Since conventional shielding techniques have long since reached their limits, all SCHNERZINGER cables are equipped with an innovative protection against interference fields – the BIDIRECTIONAL BARRIER.

OUTSIDE

External interference fields emitted via the mains and cables are blocked and do not enter the signal path.

INSIDE

The internal electrical interference fields caused by the HiFi devices themselves or penetrated into the signal path by external cables are not transmitted to other hi-fi devices, but are discharged to the outside.

LOSSLESS

All this without reducing the signal bandwidth and signal speed in the slightest through ground / earth discharge or capacitance-related filtering.

CABLE PROTECTOR

In the event of very high interference field loads, the effectiveness of the BIDIRECTIONAL BARRIER in the RESOLUTION LINE cables for cleaning external interference fields can be increased by an optional, switchable power amplifier, the CABLE PROTECTOR.

The consistent use of SCHNERZINGER products creates a closed system in which the operation principle oft he bidirectional barrier is not interrupted.

OTHER UNCOMPROMISING FEATURES

Unprecedented levels of sound can only be achieved when all the components are perfectly matched. Combined with our ATOMIC BONDING and BIDIRECTIONAL BARRIER technologies, there are other features and tweaks down to the smallest detail that will take the potential of your HiFi system to levels you never thought possible.

DIELECTRIC CHARGING

Best transmission characteristics

BETTER FLOW – CONNECTOR ASSEMBLY

Best material transitions and minimization of resistances

BETTER SKIN

Simultaneous transport of all frequencies

BETTER GEOMETRY

Optimally coordinated conductor geometry

RESONANCE CONTROL – VYBRA STOP

Best dissipation of unavoidable resonances

ANTIMAGNETIC

Reducing magnetism to an absolute minimum

BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE

THE PROBLEM OF INTERFERENCE FIELDS

Due to the sharp increase in radio-controlled transmission technologies (WLAN, mobile telephony, etc.), the radio frequency load on your hi-fi setup has increased significantly. Cable manufacturers are therefore going to great lengths to compensate for the negative effects with shielding, filters, etc.

Shields made of copper, aluminum or silver braiding, foil or particles are a simple and common method of suppressing interference. These earth-derived shields protect the conductors in the cable from low-frequency external interference fields. In test series, however, such cables act like antennas that attract the much more critical high-frequency interference fields and conduct them via the earth directly into the signal path of the devices connected to the cables. Particularly in rooms with high levels of high-frequency interference (WLAN, cell phones, DECT telephones, etc.), this can impair the flow of electrons and limit the achievable sound potential of the audio devices. In our opinion, this compromised approach is also the reason for the heated discussions about shielded cables.

Attempted solutions in the form of capacitor- or diode-based circuits, multiple shielding, series and parallel filters, extreme conductor cross-sections or similar measures either generate timing errors, act as energy storage, carry the signal away and/or cut (filter) the high-frequency component due to their capacitive load. As a result, the audio signal required for maximum openness and spatial resolution of the sound image is also clipped in the theoretically inaudible range, instead of simply protecting the signal from the corresponding interference.

So-called “informed” components have also been used in the cable sector for some time. Here, certain frequencies are “stored” on small crystals or other media to suppress external interference, which emit them at their position. The major limitation of this technology is that it is only used “across the board” against assumed interference frequencies and cannot react to actual interference. This leads to false and overcompensation that is subject to compromises. In addition, this technology is now also used undocumented by various manufacturers in their products. “Too much” is not better here, but ultimately counterproductive.

With these compromised measures, you are involuntarily compromising the potential of your system instead of specifically promoting it.

CRYOGENIC PROCESSING

The cryogenic processes that have been used in the metal industry for decades have also been marketed in the audio sector for some time now. The material to be treated is cooled in professional, computer-controlled cryogenic systems at special intervals to approx. -150 to -196 °C and below, kept at the lowest point and then brought back up again. Nitrogen or even more deeply cooling substances are used.

Although the results of these comparatively inexpensive cryogenic applications have a reasonable cost-benefit ratio, in the SCHNERZINGER test series they only exploit a fraction of the potential that can actually be achieved and also appear to diminish over time.

We definitely advise against simply immersing the materials in nitrogen-filled containers, as the material structure “breaks up” over time as a result of such “extreme quenching” and the sound increasingly loses its naturalness after initial improvements.

HEAT PROCESSING

In a series of tests, we heated the conductor material with various parameters in order to positively influence the material structure. However, this was not of unlimited and lasting benefit, as the aim in the production of high-quality audio wires is to achieve a material structure that is as pure and oxygen-free as possible. However, heating in air leads to contaminating oxygen inclusions and promotes oxidation processes. Further tests in an oxygen-free environment improved the results, but the positive effects appeared to be limited, not lasting or even counterproductive in some cases.

CONDUCTOR MATERIAL

Silver has the best conductivity of all metals (approx. 5% better than copper). However, very pure silver is significantly more expensive than high-purity copper. For this reason, silver is usually only processed to a purity of 4N (99.99% purity). Copper, on the other hand, is available at comparatively low prices up to a purity of 7N (99.99999 % purity).

If one compares inferior silver with high-purity copper, the performance of copper is generally superior, as inferior silver tends to produce a glassy and strenuous signal transmission in the high frequency range. The superiority of silver or copper, for example, is therefore decided on the basis of the purity of the material, but is always in the range of small percentages. The characteristic sound properties of the different materials can also have different effects in different chains.

Although SCHNERZINGER uses the best conductor materials in the highest available material grades, we deliberately do not disseminate any material information on our conductor or connector materials, which are used individually depending on the application. In this way, we avoid the usual pseudo-discussions on comparatively irrelevant aspects.

The reason for this is that the processed crystalline structure of the material is much more decisive for the conductivity than its purity. Similarly, the cost differences for different materials and degrees of purity relate to the disproportionately higher costs of our grain structure recrystallization processes.

ALLOYS

Before SCHNERZINGER had the technology applications of ATOMIC BONDING at its disposal, we experimented for a very long time with countless different alloys, i.e. the mixing of different metals, to find the best conductor material.

The SCHNERZINGER development results confirmed our initial assumption that the electrons in the gaps between the grains of the crystalline metal structure “swirl”, causing related tones to be torn apart and distorted.

Attempts to “fill up” the grain spaces of tonally inadequate silver structures by adding copper, gold, bronze, palladium or aluminum, for example, in order to dampen the disharmonious tonal spectrum, led to an apparent error reduction in terms of the swirling and resonance behavior of the material structure, but:

The different “conduction speeds” of the various metals resulted in a compromise that was at first partially appealing, but tonally colored and clearly limiting. This stood in the way of a far-reaching, unrestrained and, above all, simultaneous transmission of information – the ideal image of a pure impulse chain.

To illustrate this, imagine a sprinter running the 100 m course 10 m over rubber and 10 m over asphalt. He gets out of step and his time deteriorates.

Physically, an alloy reduces the conductivity of pure metals and thus “dampens” their better transmission capacity. Thus, by reducing the conductivity, the disharmonious timbre of an inadequately prepared metal structure can be dampened

There is no doubt that alloys can be used to cover up the tonal deficits of a suboptimal material structure – but this is not what SCHNERZINGER wants, because:

In our experience, the better conductivity of pure metals always leads to improved transmission quality compared to the best alloys – but not if:

a) the preparation of the crystalline material structure is not sufficient,
b) the inadequacies of other cable components do not allow for sonic progress and
c) the higher conductivity emphasizes the shortcomings of the other cable components.

Reducing the enormous conductivity of silver by adding a proportion of gold, copper, palladium, aluminum etc. in order to attenuate the tonally discordant spectrum of an inadequately prepared crystalline metal structure did not correspond to our ideas of an optimal solution.

This compromise was therefore not a real solution for us – a realization that laid the foundation for the development of “ATOMIC BONDING” in 2003.