Bass Line Blue

The REL Bass Line Blue is a high-level subwoofer cable designed to improve the overall performance of the host system, not only in the bass region. Its effect extends across the soundstage, bringing greater illumination, contrast, clarity and dynamic shading. This illumination is distinct from brightness, adding light to the presentation without describing it as brighter.

Bass Line Blue is sensibly dimensioned and constructed with a carefully considered internal cable geometry. REL uses slow-drawn, high-purity copper of a type and quality generally specified for military use and high-speed telecommunications. The copper is drawn in a nitrogen bath to minimise surface impurities, while each conductor receives a Teflon film immediately after leaving the extrusion die. This prevents impurities from affecting the wire during further processing. REL refers to the resulting conductor as Natural Drawn™ wire, with a pure and natural sound.

Each cable is hand constructed at REL’s California facility from cable made exclusively to REL’s specification by a North American OEM wire and cable manufacturer. The construction process is labour intensive and can take up to 1 hour per cable. Pure silver solder is used for every connection. Its conductive properties are intended to prevent sonic degradation as the cable ages and oxidation occurs.

REL developed a dedicated circuit for Naim amplifiers, particularly older classic models. These amplifiers have an unusual and complex output impedance, so REL worked with Naim engineers to model its behaviour and reproduce the impedance within each Naim cable. This makes Bass Line Blue safe to use with early Naim equipment. A stackable banana plug allows the cable to connect to Naim amplifiers with flush-mounted chassis banana sockets, with the speaker cables then connected directly to the rear of the plug.

At the subwoofer end, Bass Line Blue uses Swiss-made Neutrik SpeakOn connectors. REL specifies this connector for the input to its sub-bass systems, where it has been used across more than 100,000 REL systems. The connector is reliable, neutral and mechanically suited to REL’s high-level input circuitry. The cable also has gold-coated spade lugs to minimise oxidation. If an amplifier requires a bare-wire connection, the red, black and yellow leads can be re-terminated by hand.

The standard high-level connection is as follows:

• Attach the red wire to the amplifier’s right positive speaker output terminal.
• Attach the yellow wire to the amplifier’s left positive speaker output terminal.
• Attach the black wire to whichever of the amplifier’s ground output terminals is convenient.
• Plug the SpeakOn connector into the sub-bass system’s high-level input.