What Is It?

Chord Odyssey speaker cable is almost identical to Rumour. It features 19 strands of silver plated oxygen free copper per conductor surrounded by Teflon® insulation and twisted together; the major difference being the overall gauge of the conductors. Whereas Rumour uses 16 gauge conductors, Odyssey has altogether more substantial 12 gauge conductors and will carry significantly higher currents. Like Rumour, Odyssey was initially only available as a simple twisted pair design and it was only later that the silicon jacket was added. Odyssey is available as an installation product without the silicon jacket and in a two (Odyssey 2) and four core (Odyssey 4) version with the silicon jacket.

Terminations

Odyssey can be terminated with almost any style of termination. Chord's standard is either gold plated 4mm Banana Plugs or BFA (Camcon) connectors

Uses

Like Rumour, Odyssey is extremely compatible and is used across a wide range of systems. Because of its compact construction, Odyssey is a great favourite with people installing high-end audio and home cinema systems. As a point of interest, for reasons of cost, people who need extremely long runs of speaker cable tend to fit cheaper cables because of the cost involved. Better quality cables can really come into their own when the lengths required are longer than average. It is worth encouraging customers to spend as much as they can in order to get the best performance from their system. With the increasing interest in multi-channel systems, one of the more common approaches is to use Chord Odyssey on the front left and right and centre channels and Chord.Chord Rumour or  Carnival Silver Plus for the surround speakers. Because of the strong family resemblance in all the cables, this is an entirely reasonable option.

How does it sound?

Odyssey brings real improvements to the dynamics of the sound, particularly in the bass, both in terms of weight and attack. This is also true of the mid and treble as well. Cymbals are noticeably more realistic and have greater weight and authority. The same is true of acoustic guitars and also pianos. The lower resistance of Odyssey also makes it a particularly good choice for longer runs.

Odyssey 4 was designed not only as a bi-wireable cable but also as a high performance cable for use with single input speakers. In this case the two sets of conductors are connected together at each end. This produces a very powerful and dynamic sounding cable with real gains in the mid range. This is particularly impressive with pianos, saxophones and human voice. Detail and realism in this area are dramatically improved.