When Lars Kristensen, one of the owners of Ansuz Acoustics, and Morten Thyrrestrup, Sales Manager Europe, stopped off at Dirk Sommer's listening room during their last year’s tour round Germany, they were armed with a host of new products, some of which were still in a pre-production stage. These also included the Sortz.

These novelties show up as plugs designed to terminate one or more unused inputs and outputs of a component to keep high-frequency interference and unwanted mechanical excitation away from the electronics. Usually we are completely unaware of our RF environment - caused by mobile phone signals, wireless LAN or computers, just to name a few sources. This is because we mostly do not even perceive their effects - the noise itself being far beyond our human hearing - and in direct comparison at best when we minimise them. If we could ground all devices and signals cleanly, then a lot would already have been gained. But there are devices - just think of my "special friends", the plug-in power supplies - that are not grounded at all. In the worst case, this can lead to interference signals circulating around uncontrollably. Cables as well as open inputs and outputs can become antennas that receive this RF noise and channel it not only into our audio systems but also into the ground connection of an audio component. Since all audio devices are in turn connected to each other via their earth connection, this RF noise is then also transmitted to all other audio components in play. Every time we manage to block or attenuate this noise, we get a better clarity, which can be heard very easily.

And this is exactly where the Sortz plugs enter the scene. However, technologically they are not in the least comparable to the simple metal or plastic caps or terminating plugs, which can also close unused sockets or short-circuit the input. With the Tesla coil technology and the anti-aerial resonance coil technology, Ansuz has integrated two highly interesting concepts into the Sortz. The Ansuz Tesla coils are designed as double inverted coils. According to Ansuz, when one of the two coils encounters a voltage peak, a counter-peak is to be induced in the counter-wound part of the other coil, which then neutralises the interfering voltage peak. As a result, common-mode interference between the ground and the signal connections should therefore be suppressed. The coils are wound around a rod made of zirconium. Zirconium contains about 5 % ferrite impurities, which show a weak magnetic behaviour. Ansuz also experimented with other metals, but zirconium is said to have sounded best.

The principle of anti-aerial technology is said to be based on a signal path with no terminated length so that it can no longer act like an antenna. This is to prevent airborne RF/EMI interferences - high frequency radiation/electromagnetic interference - from entering the circuits and then invading the audio system as disturbing "white noise". The Sortz are available in Basic, Supreme and Signature versions. While the internal construction is the same for all variants, the difference lies in the different coatings applied to the connector housing. The Sortz Basic model has a polished aluminum housing and the Sortz Supreme model features a housing with an acoustically optimised Supreme coating, whereas the Sortz Signature model has an additional layer of zirconium on top of the Supreme coating. The coatings are applied to the surface in a complex process using a particle accelerator (High Power Impulse Magnetron Sputtering Unit) to obtain a particularly fine and even layer.