Zu Oxyfuel delivers on its spiel of high value. It is a pure, stripped down coax design featuring a large diameter, pure copper deposit outer conducting path for center pin, microcellular foamed PE dielectric with a bonded high conductance, low magnitude aluminum shield. If you are looking for an audio interconnect that really will improve the fidelity of your system and don’t need fancy hi-fi salesmanship, slick packaging, or foo dust the Oxyfuel is your cable. Yes, it is stiff, but you can bend it into position without risk of harming performance or durability.
Zu Oxyfuel is an interconnecting patch cable designed for the analog transmission of single-ended line-level audio signal. Oxyfuel cable assemblies are made to set lengths and are very high precision. The design and processes used to create Oxyfuel yield a very consistent high tolerance interconnect.
Phono (RCA-type) Connector Options & Detail
Oxyfuel are made with standard phono connectors. Some have also been made with locking type connectors. Termination, metallurgy, and sound is identical between them, the difference is in mechanical usage—the locking having a lower insertion / removal force, so long as the collet is loosened first. If you have the black locking connectors and have never used locking RCA plugs, please see the usage illustration.
Oxyfuel is not a permanently directional cable. It can be used in either direction; however, we pay close attention to direction of manufacture of all points, and identify this by placing the labels at the source end, with the text reading in the direction of recommended signal flow. “Oxyfuel” as printed would read away from the source (transmitter), toward the load (receiver). Example: DVD player > preamplifier. Connecting it with the labels at the source ensures matching channel fidelity, increased burn-in speed, and allows the user to easily identify direction after cable or gear swapping.
Burn-in
OxyFuel will require some play before it’s fully burned in, roughly 200 hours. We do not recommend any burn-in devices or special recordings. We do recommend music you enjoy, preferably upbeat full spectrum recordings. Rock, roots, full orchestra, most film scores, big band.... For the possible hows and whys about burn-in please see our FAQ section of ZuAudio.com.
Oxyfuel Maintenance
No maintenance is required for the cable or the connector. The connectors on OxyFuel are gold plated, high copper brass alloy. They are very unlikely to ever need cleaning. Regarding contacts generally however, we offer the following information.
If the contacts of any connector become dull or tarnished you will need to clean them. This is likely to never be a problem with nickel, gold or rhodium platted connectors. Pure copper or silver contacts that are not plated may require cleaning. If your connector contacts are nice and bright, don’t worry about it; and the only time you need to check them would be if you disconnect the cables. In fact, anytime you are making an electrical connection make it a habit to inspect the contacts and clean them if they are tarnished or dirty.
