Stephen Creamer explored a wide range of options, including dramatically different structures and materials, but always returned to the elements he'd used before—and ended up with a design that combined elements of his two existing speaker cables, the SL and the entry-level Royale.

At its core, the S-X Ltd. has the Royale's two conductors, each a symmetrical Litz element consisting of 285 isolated strands of high-purity copper of several different gauges. In the S-X Ltd., the conductors are spaced slightly apart to minimize capacitance, wound into a twisted pair, and wrapped in FEP insulation.

The SL's eight smaller, 95-strand Litz-type conductors—also high-purity copper, in different gauges, and with FEP insulation—are then wrapped around the core in a direction opposite the pair's twist, to promote noise cancellation. A complex array of wire guides locates the conductors and damps vibrations; this assembly is wrapped in an insulating jacket of amorphous PTFE (Teflon) and air, and then an outer sheath of a polyurethane-based composite engineered to reduce static buildup. Each leg of the S-X cable, positive and negative, consists of one inner and four outer bundles.

It all sounds pretty formidable, but the resulting cable is quite manageable, about ¾" in diameter, and reasonably flexible. Like all Nirvana cables, it's beautifully constructed and finished, with solid, high-quality hardware and terminations.