I have absolutely no idea what is the role of impurities but very high grade pure silver sounds very clear, transparent and extended in the high end with very little perceived power in the lower registers. I wish i knew what kind of geometry, gauge, mechanical construction can result a pure silver cable with powerful and deep bass. Does such a beast exist?
cheers
peter
cheers
peter
Disclaimer: all threads concerning illogical assumptions, such as an extra nine in the purity of silver or gold greatly enhancing sound, are doomed.
Disclaimers aside, if cables are such a dammed hot topic, why not do away with the horrid beasts altogether and put the amp right at the speaker? Heck, build the amp INSIDE the speaker..yep, build the speaker frame out of aluminum for heatsinking ability.. even has its own forced-air supply if it's a woofer... Coaxial mounting would provide for short wire runs to the mid and tweeter.
Me, I don't see WTF is so damned hyped about silver. COME ON, IT IS BARELY MORE CONDUCTIVE THAN COPPER. Face it, it's only benifeit to sound is the placebo effect of the hugemongous price tag such wires carry. Time and time again, many such devices have failed in blinds testing.
-Oh, uh, </rant>.
Tim
Disclaimers aside, if cables are such a dammed hot topic, why not do away with the horrid beasts altogether and put the amp right at the speaker? Heck, build the amp INSIDE the speaker..yep, build the speaker frame out of aluminum for heatsinking ability.. even has its own forced-air supply if it's a woofer... Coaxial mounting would provide for short wire runs to the mid and tweeter.
Me, I don't see WTF is so damned hyped about silver. COME ON, IT IS BARELY MORE CONDUCTIVE THAN COPPER. Face it, it's only benifeit to sound is the placebo effect of the hugemongous price tag such wires carry. Time and time again, many such devices have failed in blinds testing.
-Oh, uh, </rant>.
Tim
ICENINE said:
Yeah? Y'ever hear of quantum tunneling?
Actually that's not quite true.
That works within the Drude model, but the Drude model is somewhat at odds with the QM model.
As per Pauli, no two electrons in a solid of the same spin can share the same energy level. Typical thermal and electrical processes in conductors don't add but a tiny fraction of an electron volt (eV) and since the Fermi level in typical conductors is quite high, only those electrons within a tiny fraction of an eV of the Fermi level can participate in those processes.
There aren't enough electrons participating in thermal conduction in the QM model to account for the observed thermal effects in conductors. It seems that lattice vibrations are largely responsible for thermal conductivity in metals rather than electrons.
se
mercury
give it a try with mercury filled silicon tubes acting as a conductor.
Since the conductor isn't solid, no discussions any more about how we have to wind the different strads into a wire.
It's a bit poisinous, but what the heck, so are most of the elco's, synthetic compound of them loudspeaker enclosures, glues used for loudspeakers, etc.
BTW: no more permanent tunnels for them electrons, it's a bit like a mud catch fight for them. They will lose quiet a bit of their energy between amp and speaker.... maybe a solution if you have kind of aggressif sounding system.
give it a try with mercury filled silicon tubes acting as a conductor.
Since the conductor isn't solid, no discussions any more about how we have to wind the different strads into a wire.
It's a bit poisinous, but what the heck, so are most of the elco's, synthetic compound of them loudspeaker enclosures, glues used for loudspeakers, etc.
BTW: no more permanent tunnels for them electrons, it's a bit like a mud catch fight for them. They will lose quiet a bit of their energy between amp and speaker.... maybe a solution if you have kind of aggressif sounding system.
ICENINE said:
Not that I know that much about metals but if a crystalline copper conductor has surfaces between the crystals which may oxidize ,or whatever, would that not mean that they could need burn in? Seems perfectly likely to me. If you can hear the difference is another issue.
jwb said:
I usually post:
http://www.jenving.se/direct.htm
They seem to be able to measure it easily. I have absolutely no problem accepting that a cable can be directional but rather expect it to be in a purely technical sense. Again, if you can hear the difference is another issue.
I wonder if they would be able to measure it so easily if they *didn't * sell it?UrSv said:
They go on to say: "a US high-end enthusiast / researcher,
Doug Blackburn, suggests it is possible that when audiophiles say they hear sonic changes after changing polarity (by swapping conductors at one point - not by swapping ends as with conventional directionality*) that they’ve actually heard directionality instead".
Oh, spare me, please.
Has it never occurred to them that the signal is an *alternating* voltage therefore it changes it's polarity many times a second???? So are we to presume that untreated copper cables are nice to one half cycle but totally horrid to the other polarity half cycle? How can swapping the polarity of two wires have any effect on a voltage that changes polarity all by itself anyway?Even if there was a perfect
wire to be had, the whole thing would be dominated by the long length of copper wire in the crossover coils and the copper 
voice coil of the speaker, or maybe - horror of horrors - an aluminium 
voice coil. 
If the dc resistance of the predominantly *copper* of the voice coil and crossover choke is 7 ohms or so, for a normal speaker cable run of 3 to 5 metres, no matter how good the cable is, a conductor diameter of more than 5mm is going to do squat.
If the dc resistance of the predominantly *copper* of the voice coil and crossover choke is 7 ohms or so, for a normal speaker cable run of 3 to 5 metres, no matter how good the cable is, a conductor diameter of more than 5mm is going to do squat.
Hi Graham,
Sure, but DC resistance is not the only arbiter.
Shunt capacitance and series inductance are the other two.
Throw this in with load dependant amplifier and reactive loudspeaker.
In my experience differing conductor materials can impart different characters in sonics that do not correlate with differences or similarities in dielectrics, construction or standard measureable characteristics.
Eric.
Hi Graham,
Sure, but DC resistance is not the only arbiter.
Shunt capacitance and series inductance are the other two.
Throw this in with load dependant amplifier and reactive loudspeaker.
In my experience differing conductor materials can impart different characters in sonics that do not correlate with differences or similarities in dielectrics, construction or standard measureable characteristics.
Eric.
WELL said! I must warn you , however, that you should soon expect someone to berate your sense of hearing and then express their sorrow for your plight. Personally, within the quagmire of disparate materials, arranged non-directional as they are, when someone says they can readily hear a difference in the directionality of a few inches of silver wire, I smell something fishy. I am now waiting for an expression of sorrow and pity over my impared sense of smell!
I put on my special voodoo costum just to write in this thread .
How can it be possible that an atom with electrons that are being at every place at every moment in time is going to have directional preferences -> perhaps some electrons have a preference going backward (perhaps the free one in the n-edge ?)
Perhaps it's like milk that there as a left and right stirring (eg better) atom/molecule
Ralph
.How can it be possible that an atom with electrons that are being at every place at every moment in time is going to have directional preferences -> perhaps some electrons have a preference going backward (perhaps the free one in the n-edge ?)
Perhaps it's like milk that there as a left and right stirring (eg better) atom/molecule
Ralph
buglehead said:
Not at all. It is a known fact that we all hear differently. We all suffer different levels of frequency dependant loss over our life span, so why shouldn't our hearing be different. I never see this discussed when double blind testing is mentioned. I can't hear above 15.5k. I realize those higher freq. affect the ones I can hear but not like they would if I could hear them. So maybe you really can hear something I can't or vica-versa
.
UrSv said:
They're just citing a "test" that Ben Duncan did for Hi-Fi News a while back. The test results are ambiguous as the difference due to flipping the cable around could be explained by nothing more exotic than a difference in contact resistance.
The problem with people like Duncan and others is that they're more interested in proving some pet theory than actually getting at the truth. So if they happen to come up with something which might support their pet theory, they're very lax at considering alternate explanations for the results of their tests.
Duncan was taken to task on this account for another "test" of his in which he seemed to have measured a change in phase with a change in current. It was shown that this result could also have been achieved by not accounting for the change in the load resistance he was using.
Duncan's work has just been too sloppy to take at anything more than face value.
se
ICENINE said:
Well excited electrons contribute to all current flow. Just that there aren't as many participating as the Drude model assumes. The only thing this really effects is drift velocity. Instead of having a lot of electrons with slow drift velocity, you have fewer electrons with a higher drift velocity.
It all comes out the same in the end.
se
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