The soundstage of the Black Cat cables was also very impressive. One of the qualities of the more expensive cables that they replaced was the extremely deep and wide soundstage that was evident on just about every record played.

This cable began experimentally as an eight-element “matrix” style conductor (eight individually-enameled, 36 AWG conductors formed in a tubular braid) braided over an insulated copper micro-tube (which is a conductor that has been unique to Chris Sommovigo designs since the early 2000’s).

At first Chris thought that the arrangement seemed counterintuitive, because the braided outer conductor is the signal-layer, and the internal copper tube was the ground plane. And yet, the resulting sound took him by surprise, because he found that it had a new level of musicality. For the 3202 he increased the conductor mass in the outer braid by four times by creating a 32-element matrix of 36 AWG pure copper conductors, and at the same time he decreased the dielectric constant, and employed a new process called “Airwave”, which ensured that a rather small center conductor would remain uniformly positioned in the air-dielectric of a thin-walled Teflon tube. This ensured that the magnetic fields generated by the signals traveling through the outer matrix would not be subjected to “braking”, that might be induced in the ground plane if it were deployed in the traditional manner, as a densely-woven grounding shield in the outer valence of a coaxial cable geometry.

A Matrix-32 outer shell forms the signal layer. Comprised of 16 individually-enameled pure copper strands x 16 Sn plated pure copper strands braided into a very fine tube of counter-rotating helices around a thin-walled PTFE ("Teflon") tube. An AERON layer (nylon/air) is deposited over the matrix conductors, and a nylon jacket is braided over this whole assembly.

A thin copper Airwave™ conductor, Nami-processed to ensure that it remains substantially suspended in the air, is run down the center of the PTFE tube.