Tellurium Q Cables

Tellurium Q build every cable around a single argument: any material in the signal path acts as an electronic filter whether the designer intends it or not, so the job is to make that filter as close to neutral as possible. Geoff Merrigan founded the company on that principle, coming to it from industrial chemistry and materials science rather than from audio.

The specific target is relative transient phase distortion, the smearing of the leading and trailing edges of sounds. The reference point is Bell Labs research from 1930 into phase distortion in speech, which found that distorted speech carried audible artefacts that were extraneous to the speech and transient in character. Tellurium Q state their focus as the phase relationships in a system, and they ask to be judged on listening rather than on published figures.

Cables are made in the UK, and the company holds the Queen's Award for Enterprise, granted in 2018 and again in 2021. The upper ranges use the company's own tellurium copper connectors, the material Tellurium Q takes its name from.

The power cable range runs from the Blue and Black families, through the Silver ranges, to the Diamond and Statement cables at the top. Each step is intended to carry the same tonal character further rather than change it, so moving up the range sharpens what you already have rather than giving you a different sound.