Silver Dragon Premium Cable for RAAL SR1a Headphones

The Silver Dragon Premium cable paired with the RAAL SR1a headphone is the perfect choice for audiophiles who love critical listening. The SR1a has an analytical sound, meaning it's already quite detailed, so we usually recommend pairing it with a Black Dragon cable to add some body and warmth. But if your system leans warm or if you just love detail, the Silver Dragon will bring the SR1a to new sonic heights. Silver conductors will tighten up the low end, expand the soundstage, lend great energy, and find "lost" middle and high frequencies, lending even more detail and clarity to your music. The Silver Dragon pairs well with all genres, especially classical, jazz, and other music with lots of nuance and instrumentation. If you are a self-proclaimed "detail freak" who can never get enough, the Silver Dragon will be your cable of choice.

Our Silver Dragon Premium cables use 4 x 24.0 AWG Teflon-insulated stranded conductors using pure single crystallized UP-OCC silver with 7N purity 99.99998% and feature enhancements like Mundorf Msolder SUPREME SilverGold and premium Furutech connectors to enhance the look, feel, and pleasure of your hi-fi listening sessions. If you want the best of the best, our premium cables are the ultimate match for your favorite audiophile headphones.

"The air and separation of the musicians and instruments were more noticeable. Vocals became crisper and the transparency increased...I forgot about the cables and just enjoyed the music."

Frank Iacone, Positive Feedback | Issue 73, May/June 2014

Connectors

The electrostatic design of this headphone limits the connector options to one configuration:

Amplifier: Furutech Rhodium FP-706F female 4-pin XLR
Headphone: Dual 3.5mm headphone connectors

Premium Dragon Cables offer the same quality construction as the standard line, featuring UP-OCC 99.99998% pure conductors and matching cable designs with a few upgrades. Cardas Silver Solder is replaced with Mundorf MSolder SUPREME Silver-Gold mix at every connection point, and premium Furutech Rhodium connectors are included to enhance the look, feel and listening pleasure of all your hifi music sessions. When you are trying to squeeze out every last percentage point of performance, the Premium version makes sense. The Furutech Top Line connectors are quite simply the best made, and every point of signal saturation makes a difference.

Is there a night and day difference between the sound quality of the standard and premium? No. Is the Premium the best of the best? Yes. These cables are meant for cream-of-the-crop headphones where every detail makes a difference in bringing you closer to audio bliss.

Cable Design

The Silver Dragon Premium Cable for the RAAL SR1a is a Version 3 of our popular Silver Dragon Headphone Cable, with some premium enhancements. We've improved the conductor properties on the Silver Dragon V3 Headphone Cable over the previous Version 2, as these conductors are free from impurities and have virtually no crystal boundaries. The conductors have almost no distortion compared to ordinary silver conductors. The previous version used 4 x 99.998% ultra-pure silver 24AWG Teflon-insulated stranded conductors. Therefore, we have stepped up the purity to the purest available by today's technology. The Silver Dragon Headphone Cable V3 uses 4 x 99.99998% UP-OCC stranded silver 24AWG Teflon-insulated stranded conductors.

Each conductor is made up of a special varying sized stranded geometry. The silver strandings are mixed with Kevlar standings to reinforce the conductor making it stronger overall and less prone to failure due to the harsh constant flexing that headphone cable experience. Each conductor is encapsulated in a Teflon casing. The conductors are then surrounded by cotton and a thin layer of aluminum foil. The cable is then protected by a 100% coverage silver-plated copper secondary shield and placed in a polyethylene jacket for further protection. To improve its flexibility, we are no longer using a Techflex jacketing as we did with our previous versions.

For the Silver Dragon V3 Premium version, we are using the Furutech FT-610 connector. Furutech’s beautifully finished, beautiful-sounding connectors are the result of meticulous engineering and careful audition of various suitable materials. The FT-610 features an α (Alpha) phosphor bronze conductor and nylon-fiberglass 15% insulation for minimal impedance and a nonmagnetic stainless and carbon fiber finished main body and nonmagnetic stainless end ring for superior damping. The pins are nonmagnetic rhodium-plated α (Alpha) phosphor bronze conductors.

The wire is soldered to the connector with high-quality silver solder. The default 1/4" plug is the new Furutech CF-763. The CF-763 features a nonmagnetic rhodium-plated α (Alpha) phosphor bronze conductor and fluoropolymer insulation for minimal impedance and a nonmagnetic stainless and carbon fiber finished housing for superior damping.

There are two options for XLR connections. The first, an FP-601M(R) XLR, uses a beryllium copper and phosphor bronze α (alpha) conductor, and the body is a copper alloy with PVDF fluoropolymer insulation. The second options is a top-of-the-line CF-601M(R) XLR, which utilizes an α (alpha) beryllium copper and phosphor bronze rhodium-plated conductor with carbon fiber and nonmagnetic stainless steel housing. The body is PVDF fluoropolymer insulation with a specially designed cable strain relief.

What is UP-OCC?

UP-OCC stands for Ultra Pure Ohno Continuous Casting (OCC). This is not a material but a way of extruding silver and copper to prevent any impurities and fractures in the crystalline structure of the wire. The wire is drawn very slowly to cast as an almost perfect single crystal small diameter conductor. The resulting purity and the size of the cast wire makes a tremendous difference and there is less damage to the near-perfect cast state. We find this UP-OCC process produces a very clean and close to neutral sound in our copper- based and silver-based cables.

Hack Your Headphones

Dragon Cables are an easy do-it-yourself upgrade to your favorite headphones with detachable cables. With a wide array of connection options, a plug-and-play cable is just a few clicks away.

We also offer custom headphone hacks for your hard-wired cans, like many Grado, Sennheiser or AKG headphones. For more information on custom headphone modifications, visit our Hack Your Headphones portal.