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Between a player and an amplifier, the analog signal is just a few volts and bears the imprint of everything it passes through: the conductor metal, the insulation around it, and interference picked up along the way. AudioQuest has built this cable by addressing each of these points, with higher-purity copper, a separate ground conductor, and plugs assembled without solder. It sits in the middle of the brand’s Rivers series, named after North American rivers.
All conductors are made of PSC+ (Perfect-Surface Copper+), the brand’s most refined copper grade at this price level. The metal has fewer grain boundaries, meaning fewer borders between its constituent crystals, and its surface is carefully smoothed. AudioQuest attributes some of the distortion a signal undergoes as it passes through ordinary copper to these boundaries.
The conductors are solid: each is a single wire, rather than a bundle of fine, twisted strands. In a stranded cable, the strands touch and interact electrically and magnetically, which the brand considers the main source of distortion in a conventional interconnect. A solid conductor eliminates the problem at its root. The trade-off is mechanical: the cable does not withstand tight, repeated bends as well as a stranded model. It is better to route it behind the equipment once and leave it in place rather than twisting it every time it is handled.
In most RCA cables, the shield also serves as the return conductor: the metal braid that protects the signal is also part of the circuit. The Mackenzie’s Triple-Balanced geometry separates these functions with three distinct conductors, one for the positive signal, one for the negative signal, and a third dedicated to the ground reference. The shield remains confined to its protective role, and both signal poles have conduction paths of equal quality.
This design does not turn an RCA connection into a balanced connection. The RCA connector remains inherently unbalanced, and the noise rejection characteristic of XLR connections is not available here. The benefit lies in a cleaner signal return, which no longer mixes with interference currents picked up by the shield.
Around the conductors, AudioQuest uses nitrogen-injected hard-cell foam. The injection creates air pockets in the material, and air is the best possible insulator for an audio signal. Any solid insulation absorbs a little energy and then releases it with a slight delay, superimposing it on the original signal. The greater the proportion of air, the less this phenomenon occurs. The rigidity of the cells has a second benefit: it keeps the spacing between conductors constant along the entire length of the cable, even when it is curved.
The next model up in the series, the Yukon, takes this approach further with conductors housed in polyethylene air tubes.
A shield that fully covers the cable is easy to make. The difficulty lies in what it then does with the radio interference it picks up: a traditional shield absorbs it and then drains it to the equipment ground, which also serves as the reference for the audio signal. The noise modulates there and ends up veiling the sound.
The Mackenzie’s three-layer dissipation system alternates metal layers with carbon-loaded synthetic materials. This combination absorbs or reflects most interference before it reaches the equipment ground. In a room full of radiation sources (internet router, Wi-Fi, switching power supplies, phones), this is the design feature that works hardest day to day.
The conductors are directional: AudioQuest controls the direction in which the copper is drawn and then installed to encourage radio-frequency noise to drain in a given direction. Arrows printed on the plugs indicate the connection direction, from the source to the device receiving the signal. Reversing the cable does not cut off the sound or damage anything, but the orientation intended by the brand is lost.
The RCA plugs are based on a high-purity red copper body, in other words unalloyed copper, which is more conductive than the brass used in most standard plugs. The silver plating is applied directly to this copper, with no intermediate underlayer. The conductor and plug are joined by high-pressure cold welding: the two metals are bonded by pressure, without adding tin, avoiding the introduction of a lower-quality metal at the precise point where the signal passes from one element to the other. The downside of this process is that a damaged plug cannot be resoldered at home.
The cable connects any device with a line output to an analog input: CD player, DAC, network player, phono preamplifier, or tuner to an integrated amplifier, a receiver, or a preamplifier, or a preamplifier to a power amplifier.
Both cables share Triple-Balanced geometry and solid conductors. The Mackenzie moves from PSC copper to PSC+ copper, which is purer and has a finer crystalline structure. Its cold-welded, silver-plated purple copper plugs are the same as those on higher-end models in the Rivers series, as is its three-layer carbon dissipation system.
No. A coaxial S/PDIF connection requires a cable with a characteristic impedance of 75 ohms, a requirement that is not part of the design of an analog interconnect cable. AudioQuest offers dedicated digital coaxial cables for this purpose.
The Mackenzie RCA is designed for line-level signals. The signal from a phono cartridge is hundreds of times weaker, and the tonearm-to-preamplifier connection requires a cable with a separate ground wire, which screws onto the dedicated terminal. However, the Mackenzie is perfectly suited for connecting the phono preamplifier to the amplifier.
If the source and amplifier both have XLR sockets and truly balanced circuitry, the XLR version of the Mackenzie benefits from the noise rejection inherent in balanced connections, and the same three-conductor geometry comes into its own. An XLR socket on the front panel does not always guarantee a balanced stage inside the device; the manufacturer’s manual settles the question. When one of the two devices only has RCA sockets, the RCA version remains the right choice.
The arrows printed on the plugs point toward the device receiving the signal: the plug at the tail of the arrow connects to the source’s output, and the other to the amplifier’s input. For a preamplifier placed between the two, each cable follows the same principle, from output to input.
The plugs are color-coded, red for the right channel and white or black for the left channel, following the usual RCA connector convention. Simply match these colors to those of the sockets on the devices.
Like the other models in the Rivers series (Golden Gate, Red River, Yukon), the cable is named after a North American river. The Mackenzie is the longest river system in Canada; it was first named “Disappointment” (disappointment) by explorer Alexander Mackenzie, who had hoped it would lead to the Pacific rather than the Arctic Ocean.
Stéphane
Great RCA interconnect cable, perfect for my system. Thank you for your advice 👌😊
Comment from 1 June 2026 — Experience from 21 May 2026
Daniel
Very nice cable, sturdy, beautiful finish.
Sound is more precise, more airy compared to an ordinary cable of good quality.
High price, but well………
Comment from 23 July 2022 — Experience from 27 June 2022
