Hi-Fi - Chord Company
A well set-up hi-fi system can sound incredible and dramatically improve your enjoyment of music. We specialise in proper hi-fi separates and matching these to suitable hi-fi speakers and pride ourselves on offering expert advice by phone or e-mail and in our showroom. Our carefully selected range of hi-fi equipment includes many industry award winners and spans between great value products, exclusive Audio Affair hi-fi offers and some of the finest music systems available.
You can browse our range of Hi-fi Separates, which includes hi-fi amplifiers and music "source" components, like hi-fi streamers (for enjoying music over the internet and stored on your home network), DACs (for the best sound from your Mac or PC), media servers (for storing music including high res files) and CD players. We also sell a range of one-box hi-fi systems like the Naim Uniti range - just add speakers!
You can also browse our range of Turntables & Cartridges to view our range of turntables, phono cartridges and turntable phono stages (pre-amps) or select Vinyl & Accessories to browse our range of music LPs and turntable essentials and upgrades.
We pride ourselves on good service. If you need any further advice on a new hi-fi system or upgrade for your existing system, please call or e-mail us.
Chord Company is a multiple award winning UK based cable manufacturer; renowned for their class-leading hi-fi and AV cables spanning budget cables to the ultimate in high end. Most of these cables come with a 10 year warranty.
With over three decades of experience Chord's most noteable cable ranges include Clearway, Sarum, Sarsen and Rumour 2. They now sell audio cables, HDMI cables, digital cables, speaker cables, mains cables and many more. Every cable they supply is designed in-house and apart from a couple of exceptions, every product is manufactured and tested at the company's facility in Wiltshire.
Chord Company began with the Chrysalis cable, which had a remarkably well-balanced set of performance characteristics, from the Chrysalis a huge range of varied interconnect cables, have been developed. The Chord’s range of cables have evolved organically but always they are always based on an existing Chord cable.
This organic design method ensures Chord interconnects and speaker cable’s are remarkably consistent. Balanced performance is consistently maintained throughout the range of cables. They continually understand the need to ensure that the manufacture and termination process of its cables is absolutely consistent.
An obsession with the production process facilitates an understanding that it is the critical factor in maintaining the remarkable coherent performance and quality that Chord’s reputation is based on. Chord Company maintains consistency and brand ethos by encouraging every Chord Company employee, irrespective of their role, to gain experience in the production department, so they understand first-hand the incredible effort that goes into a product.
Chord are justifiably proud of the level of consistency they achieve, which is a direct result of their production methods with the quality assurance and testing that every product must go through before leaving the factory. For the Chord Company they acknowledge that cables and interconnects can significantly change a systems performance but some listeners find it difficult to perceive these improvements.
Therefore, central to the Chord Company design process is that they believe that anyone who listens to their cables should be able to clearly and easily perceive the benefits that their cables can bring to the listeners’ enjoyment. Subsequently, the acoustic benefits of any cable should justify the final cost of the product.
Furthermore, In-house production allows them to respond quickly and efficiently to customer demand, be it unusual terminations or non-standard cable lengths. Chord Companies rigorous quality assurance and testing procedure allows them to offer a fantastic warranty on all their products. The close association with many leading manufacturers of hi-fi and home cinema equipment means they will respond efficiently and effectively to the performance demands that new innovations may make on their cables.
Once you try a cable from the Chord Company you will understand how a good quality cable upgrade can make virtually any system sound better. The Chord Company products have been recognised by a whole host of stellar reviews and awards throughout the years.
The Chord Company cables are recognised as some of the finest in the industry, and they have a cable for every budget, ranging from entry level, such as the Chord Company C-line cable, right up to reference quality speaker cables and interconnects. Cables can be provided at virtually any length and with custom terminations available.
Traditional hi-fi speakers (either bookshelf speakers or floorstanding speakers) are passive and require a separate hi-fi amplifier. The most popular type of amplifier is an integrated amplifier (a single box designed to be the heart of your hi-fi system, connecting to all of your music "source" components like hi-fi streamer, CD player etc and to your speakers).
Generally however, the most desireable and best sounding type of amplification though is to have a separate power amplifier (which connect to your speakers) and pre amplifier (which connects to your music "sources" and the power amplifier). By having these two boxes rather than one combined box (hence the word "integrated"), each box is designed specifically to perform that part of the amplification and by splitting these duties up, each section benefits from this dedicated design, separate power supplies, and sometimes better components, resulting in better sound quality through your speakers.
Whatever your choice and budget for amplifier and speakers, we have a range of equipment to suit. We also sell a range of valve amplifiers, which offer a warm, rich sound and a heritage of hi-fi listening that is as endearing to look at as it is to listen to. This valve amplifier range also includes in itself both "integrated" and "pre" / "power" valve amp models.
As mentioned, our range of music "sources" is also comprehensive. Hi-fi streaming has gradually taken over CD players (although we still offer CD players and dedicated CD transports which can be connected directly to a DAC). Streaming music didn't used to be taken very seriously in the hi-fi community back in the days of mp3s and highly compressed audio viles, but with the advent of better content available online, using a hi-fi streamer is now a serious option as a music source and can even sound better than a CD player if you play and collect high res audio files.
The popularity of turntables for playing vinyl has also massively increased in past years (beyond that of CD players) but please note that your hi-fi amplifier must have a "Turntable" (or sometimes labelled as a "Phono") input to be able to play vinyl on your turntable, as the output level from most turntables is lower than that of other music "sources". If your amplifier doesn't have this input (or even if it does), we recommend using a high quality turntable pre-amp, referred to in hi-fi circles as a phono stage. We also sell a full range of replacement phono cartridges and other turntable essentials to get the best sound from your vinyl.
If you would like further advice, please call or e-mail us or visit our Birmingham showroom and one of our hi-fi experts can assist you. Don't forget to browse our full range of speakers and our Audio Affair exclusive offers as well.