Thank you for visiting our website.  Below are a few short summary paragraphs about us, please explore the rest of the site to find out more.

 

 

Vertex AQ is a small UK Company based in the heart of Wales.  We manufacture a comprehensive range of cables, supports and mains products for hi-fi and home cinema use.  We have been in business since 1999, and have built up a strong reputation for producing outstanding products.  We have a small but good selection of dealers in the UK, and are now expanding overseas with a dealer in Stockholm and one in Monaco.

 

 

A short question.

 

"What is the essence of the Vertex approach, and the Vertex product range , and what's it going to do for me?"

 

A (not so) short answer!

 

A conventionally set-up hi-fi system, as a complete entity, will suffer from some seriously debilitating effects.  Some are external or 'environmental', others are 'interactive' in their nature. Looking closer we also find that some of these effects are constant, others are variable - and often a by-product of the constantly changing levels of energy that our systems generate (and therefore volume and music program dependent). We can categorize these problems broadly as follows:

There are some other concepts to bring in here now too, to aid understanding (we never said it would be easy!) - we call these the root causes.  Or in other words, what is it that the effects described above actually do to damage performance.  Firstly, unwanted RFI in analogue circuits raises the noise floor, loosing fine detail and phase information (blurring the image), and 'inter-modulates' with mid and upper frequencies causing a noticeable harshness and edge.  In digital circuits RFI raises digital distortion and effectively reduces the fidelity of the reproduced recording, sounding significantly flatter and compressed.  Unwanted acoustic vibration causes extensive damage to sound reproduction because almost all electronic components are to some degree 'microphonic' - that is, if they are vibrated, they will turn some of that vibration into a small unwanted electrical signal, which is literally added to the actual signal we want to process - they all act like mini microphones!  Vibrate a whole system, and the musical signal gets blurred and distorted, the damage varies massively with level so usable headroom is curtailed and important timing cues are lost.

 

If you have not heard about these effects before, or seen these sort of descriptions, they can all seem rather complex, and perhaps not really plausible - after all surely, over the past 6 or 7 decades of hi-fi design, these things would have been fully explained and tackled.  But, up until recently, they have been almost totally ignored.  What we have done at Vertex is carefully identify and understand all these effects and designed techniques to counter them.  And there's a very good reason why we have done this - when the 3 effects described above are significantly reduced, the improvement in audio reproduction is truly massive.  

 

So how do we counter these problems?  Well, the key in a way is that a hi-fi is not a set of discrete boxes at all, as we said, its a completely interactive system.  So, its actually the supports and interconnecting equipment that we use to tackle all the vibration and microphonic problems, and our various mains filters tackle the RFI issue.  Lets start with our supports, because the basic theories here are fundamentally the same as in all the other products.  The Kinabalu supports comprise an acoustically absorptive platform, a coupling tripod and a further 2 supporting feet (just to keep things level).  The tripod is specifically designed to be a low 'acoustic impedance', and when correctly set up, the arrangement allows damaging acoustics to flow out of the box being supported, through the tripod and into the platform.  Its a case of taking the acoustics away from somewhere you don't want it (the electronics) and dumping it somewhere else, where it cant do any harm (into the platform).  

 

Now, if we get significant results by draining acoustic energy away from the chassis, then its logical that if we drain energy directly out of the circuits themselves, we'll get further improvements.  And we have an easy way of doing that - by using the sockets in the back of those boxes.  You see, a Vertex cable, in acoustic terms, is similar to the Kinabalu system.  Plug a Vertex cable into a socket, and the connection and metal conductor behave like the tripod, allowing physical energy to travel down it.  The boxes on each cable essentially contain a low impedance absorptive structure, just like the platforms - so thats where the energy will then go.  This lowers significantly the acoustic energy content of the circuit which the lead is completing, greatly reducing the effect of that unwanted microphony again.  We should also mention here why our mains filters are a little different, but you've probably guessed it by now - the filter circuits are built onto their own acoustic platform too!

 

But what does this all mean to you?  Well, to hear the piece-by-piece introduction of a full Vertex suite into a system is a truly staggering experience - and once you get a few prized bits of Vertex back home and into your own system, you are going to be truly awestruck by the improvements - but hang on, we would say that, wouldn't we?  Perhaps better that you now go to the testimonials and reviews in the 'what others say' section.

 

 

If you have any questions for us, please use the feedback forms in the contact details under 'about us'.