Interesting cable talk :

Don't know if you've already come across this, cable people but I found it quite interesting reading:

http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue30/toc30.htm#interview

 

A bollocks of snake oilers?

Someone remind me, is this the correct collective noun?

 

A deception of snake oilers perhaps?

 

Ah the enlightened approach .....Mosfet won't tell us what cables he uses [well he didn't last time he made such silly statement] but I bet it's not the freebies. Which is odd because if you followed his twisted logic they should sound exactly the same as any other....which they plainly do not.

Where he is right is that great deal of bollocks is talked about cables . This can be boiled down to money and profit ....ie to weedle your money out of your pocket ....if you can sell a copper cable at £120 your going to make a hell of a lot more profit than if you sell a gold cable at £120.

Several things you need to remember about cables ....imo!

the signal from cdp to amp etc is effectively AC and as such each side [+/-] should be treated in the same way everything else being equal. so why use coax ?

I then hear the cry because of rfi /emi ....well all I can say is try a cable with out a screen and that blows that idea out the water.

Cables are simple and the sound is affected by resistance inductance and capacitance ...plus topology and conductor material.

Silver is added to copper for no other reason than to stop metal migration in solder joints ..specified by the military spec sheet for such wire. Metal migration can cause solder joint failure, not a great idea in a jet fighter traveling at mach 3!

Remember that copper costs 1/100 of silver, silver cost 1/8 of gold, gold cost 1/10 of palladium, palladium cost 1/5 of platinum .

If your going to buy a mile of cable as a manufactor are you going to buy the best sounding or the cheapest ?

There is no such thing as 6n silver ....[925 silver cost about £1000/kg 4n silver is approx £1500/kg 5n silver is aprox £10k/kg] if your offer a 5n silver cable at less than £100, the diameter of the conductor in the cable will be about 0.3mm [about the smallest that you can work with]. Any cheaper you can be pretty certain your being mislead unless of course the builder is a charity !

The purity of a metal is never assayed beyond ingot level as it cost about £30 per assay ....so even the purest metal once drawn into wire will become contaminated and will no longer be the stated purity. I personally can't hear any difference between 4n and 5n silver for instance.

If you have a £1000 cable are you going to take it apart to check if the unobtanium advertised is actually there and if you do would you recognise it ?

I've had personal experience of repairing a very expensive [$800] silver cable that was not all it was advertised .....I'm still waiting for the makers to respond to my emails.

Oxygen free copper...... If a cable was not oxygen free it would be made of copper oxide and would no longer conduct...[oxygen is added in small amounts to the copper making process and does improve its conductivity but attaching it self to impurities]

on the other hand continuous cast copper does reduce the grain size....

so you need to be able to pick your way through the jargen.

If you hear people say that there silver cable sounds sharp and bright I bet that if you took it apart you'd find that its probably silver plated copper ! true silver sounds smooth, fast, natural neutral and does not rise in the treble. This is a misnomer as any cable act as a filter ...so the very best cables filter least.

in general I find the following metals sound ......
steel
unlistenable
aluminium
surprisingly good and even
lead
very good but impossible to make
chromium
sharp bright thin
copper
sounds warm and plumby, has a pronounce bass hump at about 100hz in multistrand sounds thick and muddled.
silver
smooth across the freq range can sound thin [lack of body] but not sharp.
silver plated copper ....
bright, sharp, one note bass, in your face and aggressive
gold
warm smooth full bodied
silver gold
fast clean smooth full bodied
platinum
smooth smooth fast make the rest sound harsh and unmusical


I've built all the above into similar cables to listen ... so I'm not talking totally out of my bum.

do rca plugs affect the sound ?...yes but its not normally worth the added expense against the small increase in performance...unless money is no object.

does insulation effect sound ...much less than your lead to believe. Remember ptfe is normally part of the mil spec ....so a great many cables are made with ptfe insulation. The best insulation is a vacuum then air ....the best sounding imo is cotton but its often impractical to use.

 

COOL post Zanash !!

 

pete have you actually made up cables with identical gauge wires and topologies with similar rcas with different metals, or are you basing your views on your different wires in different topologies.

i ask because theres not really any way you can compare a silver in cotton against a silver in teflon, the geometry would be different due to different thicknesses between the cotton and teflon and the reduced flexibility of weave/braid in teflon, so it kinds of nullifies the comparisson.

to make a valid comparisson re metals the geometries would have to be 'identical', not just very similar....

ie i prefer my venhaus Ag in cotton over a similar geometry and ideintcal rcas made in silver and teflon, but i dont for one minute assume the geometries are 'identical' despite them being the same length, having the same braid and same number of twists.

 

They were all twisted pairs made identically with mostly the same plugs ...obviously there will be some variation and gauge size was usually about 0.4-0.8mm dia.

Insulation on the conductors that were bare...ptfe
other insulation was fep on the chromium

In general these were carried out between 3-5 years ago I now only use those that I liked.....!

I'm not saying that its a definitive list ...its just my take on what I've heard.

I like cotton too but never been able to get consistant looking results with it ...I always end up having to heat shrink over it as it looks a mess.

 

Zanash hi, presumably even if the cables were manufactured with the same gauge wire with the same dialectic, same plugs and topology, the very fact that you were using two different conductors would change the LCR characteristics?
The differences I hear betwen otherwise identical cables could they just be differing LCR specs? Keith.

 

How about, A bunch of lying bastards?

Works for me

-- Ian

 

i think it's just down to lcr,i dont think you can hear grain boundaries in cables, though i expect purity does make a difference somewhere somehow.

my personal choice is just for pure silver, best conductivity, has to be a good place to start. though i imagine you can match the sound of any material with enough of any other.

 

The majority are bullshitters who use expectation cues and bad science – others, I think, are genuine in sentiment but subject to self-deception. The same can be said for psychics, faith healers and the like.