Actually, I can't agree completely, because there is _something_ behind all these 'fetishes' but it has usually been perverted and misused and blown out of proportion. As a result often completely unsound ideas become accepted as the norm, in fact as the standard how thing should be made. A few examples:
IMHO cables have become increasingly WORSE as a result of this. All sorts of exotic cables have appeared which are actually electrically questionable and indeed DO sound different, imparting their own signature, simply because they do not do what they are supposed to - be a simple wire. Isn't it funny how physics-based cables all seem to sound alike, like ordinary cables? Not so the physics free ones. Some, as I have recently had a chance to learn, are positively dangerous. The particular ones in question were designed to 'make a contact to your connectors in only one point' (I'm still trying to figure out where that idea came from and why). In fact, they do not even have the standard RCA connector on the ends, instead there is a thin tube made out of insulating material (and of course, not just ANY insulating material...) with a wire just passed through the center hole and bent over the edge, the whole thing is designed to emulate the central RCA pin. Same thing with the outer contact, just the other way around, the wire goes on the outside of a largerny tube and bends inwards. Needles to say it takes a lot of fiddling to even get a contact at all, and then you better not even breathe at the 'cable' or it will fall out of the plug. The manufacturer justifies this by mentioning that a cable is not something one would often change, once it's chosen to provide the 'sound you want' (really, and really???!). So, not only is it mechanically unstable but also you need a few square feet behind your setup in order to fit the cable loops (very gingerly!). No surprise, it DOES change the sound (and I will not go into the 'construction' of the cable :| ) so it's also electrically unsound.
Also, connectors have become WORSE. In fact, most of the new 'high end' male RCA plugs will not fit older type sockets, and some will in fact destroy them if you attempt to plug them in with the force required to do so. Some constructions with conical 'vice-like' locking mechanisms will do the same.
And, there is a sudden aversion to solder - a screw is used to tighten the wire (which will usually just turn into mush if some useful retaining force is to be had or you constantly need to re-tighten the screw, which gives you the same result just later).
Again, there is 'something' to all these ideas but they have mostly been perverted and misapplied.
Similar thing with speakers on spikes on small metal pads. The idea of spikes was originally to couple the mass of the speaker cabinet with the mass of the floor. And indeed this DOES work (very audible results are not to be had often and only occur in rare cases which I will not discuss here, but you can actually measure some difference). But - it leaves holes on the floor, makes the boxes basically fitted to the floor which may result in a low WAF and/or problems with cleaning and people who do not know the situation and attempt to move the speakers. Hence we get a chance for a new fetish - additional pads which 'work even better' without making holes in your floor. Except they completely negate the idea, often make things worse and in fact in many cases make it easyer to topple the speaker over because trying to move it will often knock one of the pads out of place making the speaker tilt.
I'm sure lots of other examples could be made...
I had no idea that the cable fetish thing had deteriorated to such a degree. single-point of contact? Outrageous! The whole point of a connector is to reduce its impact on a signal by having the lowest resistance possible, and to "upset the electrons" also in a minimal way (by not being tangled masses, coils, and other things that add inductance and/or capacitance).
The connector fetish ... is also a point we agree upon. It has become bizarre. Everyone is trying to outdo the next monkey, and they're all heading toward stupidity. Tin hats anyone?
Speaker-spikes ... coupling the mass of the speaker to the floor ... and Now New and Improved (and Negated) with little pads! Yeah... at high volumes (only) the coupling of the speaker (not mass, but moment!) to the floor more effectively certainly imparts a stabilization to doppler shift of the higher frequencies and harmonics. I, too, have measured the effect, digitized it, and seen the sidebands on the good ol' Fourier analysis. Its amazing, but true. However, the volume levels have to be pretty loud. Most often, the crap (and people) milling about in the room has an even more profound sound effect. And, whenever I'm listening to really esquisite orchestral or organ music, I have the volume levels low enough so that I'm enjoying the music, not being gripped by it.
Most interesting of all is the lack of sound-pattern dispersers on the fronts of the speaker cones. They clearly are not acting as point sources. That in turn lends all kind of inadequacies in their output fidelity.
Thanks for the post.
GoatGuy
The connector fetish ... is also a point we agree upon. It has become bizarre. Everyone is trying to outdo the next monkey, and they're all heading toward stupidity. Tin hats anyone?
Speaker-spikes ... coupling the mass of the speaker to the floor ... and Now New and Improved (and Negated) with little pads! Yeah... at high volumes (only) the coupling of the speaker (not mass, but moment!) to the floor more effectively certainly imparts a stabilization to doppler shift of the higher frequencies and harmonics. I, too, have measured the effect, digitized it, and seen the sidebands on the good ol' Fourier analysis. Its amazing, but true. However, the volume levels have to be pretty loud. Most often, the crap (and people) milling about in the room has an even more profound sound effect. And, whenever I'm listening to really esquisite orchestral or organ music, I have the volume levels low enough so that I'm enjoying the music, not being gripped by it.
Most interesting of all is the lack of sound-pattern dispersers on the fronts of the speaker cones. They clearly are not acting as point sources. That in turn lends all kind of inadequacies in their output fidelity.
Thanks for the post.
GoatGuy
Please get back to the topic of solder. We have enough cable threads already 
Seems most has been said already but I'd like to add my personal experience:
For most soldering I havent found anything that betters 63/37 solder.
Primarily the wetting action and ability to inspect is unsurpassed.
Not so with say SN 62 where the solder will follow the iron tip and leads to joints that would look like disturbed solder. Also its my experience that this 62 solder often requires more attempts to get a good flow, and since this is the most extreme condition the joint will ever see it just doesnt seem like a good idea to do it multiple times.
Years ago many leads had a fair bit of silver and this may be part of the reasoning behind the occasional call out for silver solder (similar to gold imbrittlement).
Why one would subject an assembled board to resoldering seaking lower distortion is beyond me. This would just restart the soldering infant mortaility issue and once again expose the components to these high temperatures.
I never heard or had experiences which indicate that PTH are inherently less reliable than SMD.
Thanks
-Antonio
For most soldering I havent found anything that betters 63/37 solder.
Primarily the wetting action and ability to inspect is unsurpassed.
Not so with say SN 62 where the solder will follow the iron tip and leads to joints that would look like disturbed solder. Also its my experience that this 62 solder often requires more attempts to get a good flow, and since this is the most extreme condition the joint will ever see it just doesnt seem like a good idea to do it multiple times.
Years ago many leads had a fair bit of silver and this may be part of the reasoning behind the occasional call out for silver solder (similar to gold imbrittlement).
Why one would subject an assembled board to resoldering seaking lower distortion is beyond me. This would just restart the soldering infant mortaility issue and once again expose the components to these high temperatures.
I never heard or had experiences which indicate that PTH are inherently less reliable than SMD.
Thanks
-Antonio
If there is a difference its certainly not because of any resistance. Not sure how a .0001 ohm difference on either end of a 10k ohm resistor could have any effect. As to the cables that brought us off topic for a while.. All these 99.9999999%'ers are making cables with lowest resistance. I made a set of interconnects with a 400R resistance out of manganin wire. Wow. Really nice compared to my regular silver plated copper in teflon reference but thats subjective of course. Tried using Nichrome. Thats super hard to solder and had me stumped on how to do it reliably for over a year. You can get it to work sometimes or sometimes it appears to work but then the wire slides out of the hole its made in the solder. The Nichrome solution seems to be the silver bearing solder paste from Radio Shack. It solders the Nichrome really nice. I solder a lot of LDRs and heat really matters with these things. Silver solder sucks for them because of the initial high heat needed to melt it. The heat slightly damages them if your lucky and catastrophically if you are not. Then try removing one thats been soldered in with a 2-3% silver solder. Man that takes so much heat you could lift a pad. So I guess I see solder as application specific rather than as something that could by its chemical compound change the sound.
Good old thread warmed up a bit.....
I was always intrigued by this subject, so recently decided to experiment a little.
Putting together a new amp for a friend of mine (Hiraga 20W class A standard issue), I built the two cannels completely identical (parts, cabling etc.) EXCEPT on one channel I used the standard 63/37% tin/lead solder, on the other one 96% Sn 4% silver Stannol solder for all the solder joints.
I just could not believe the difference between the sound of the two... the one with the silver solder is just SO much better, both in dynamics, clarity, transparency, and all other aspects that you must really hear it to believe it. What was even more astonishing -and this is really hard to describe- that the bacground noise level of the recordings were reduced significantly.
To come up with a reasonable (scientifically proven) explanation is beyond my knowledge, I can just guess that lead and thin are not the best materials to make solder joints, since their conductivity is magnitudes worse than the one of the tin/silver compound.
If anyone ever had same experience, or have an idea why is this happening, I would be glad to hear about it......
I was always intrigued by this subject, so recently decided to experiment a little.
Putting together a new amp for a friend of mine (Hiraga 20W class A standard issue), I built the two cannels completely identical (parts, cabling etc.) EXCEPT on one channel I used the standard 63/37% tin/lead solder, on the other one 96% Sn 4% silver Stannol solder for all the solder joints.
I just could not believe the difference between the sound of the two... the one with the silver solder is just SO much better, both in dynamics, clarity, transparency, and all other aspects that you must really hear it to believe it. What was even more astonishing -and this is really hard to describe- that the bacground noise level of the recordings were reduced significantly.
To come up with a reasonable (scientifically proven) explanation is beyond my knowledge, I can just guess that lead and thin are not the best materials to make solder joints, since their conductivity is magnitudes worse than the one of the tin/silver compound.
If anyone ever had same experience, or have an idea why is this happening, I would be glad to hear about it......
The difference, dragonweed wasn't the solder. Guaranteed. It was a small fraction of the components between the amplifiers being different. Or, as we say in computers "a bug" - a poor solder joint, a poor socket connection, oxide somewhere where it wasn't helpful (is it ever?). Not the solder, if you made competently shiny-bright solder connections on both.
Do you say that from your personal experience, or just a "reflex" shot from the hip? 
Believe me, I am not a newcomer in this field, so I can assure you that the differences we (because quite a few of my friends heard it too) heard were caused by the solder material, nothing else.... And again, the difference was not on the "maybe yes, maybe not" scale (All parts were measured, checked, matched for beta, and so on). And let me tell you, after 35 years in the trade I know how to solder
Believe me, I am not a newcomer in this field, so I can assure you that the differences we (because quite a few of my friends heard it too) heard were caused by the solder material, nothing else.... And again, the difference was not on the "maybe yes, maybe not" scale (All parts were measured, checked, matched for beta, and so on). And let me tell you, after 35 years in the trade I know how to solder 
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Enipig is not easy for low-cost board houses to get right - I'd stay away from it unless you know your board house can deliver reliable material.
Huhh... I don't know what to say... Convincing someone about something that doesn't exist is not my style -just to be on the front page for 2 minutes- so after repeated tests and listening sessions all I can tell you, is that the effect is very much real. Believe it or not, I am prepared to results where the modified, or altered state of a piece of equipment is not always better than the original.... (common problem with enthusiastic modders). Do yourself a favour, test it on any piece of equipment, and let me know your honest findings, but not based on prejudgements or others opinions....
Actually, the difference in conductivity is not that large, so overall resistance of the joints is not a factor.
Think about how the alloy is different, and what is required to compensate for that.
Pb/Sn 183 C, comparable flux. Sn/Ag, 221 C, high temp flux.
I'd look there first, temp, chemistry, and cleanliness post soldering.
jn
You are right, no big difference in conductivity, (maybe 10% plus for the Sn Ag), what might be more important -as in the case of normal vs. LC copper- is the difference in crystallization structure of the silver solder.
Or whatever else, but the difference is definitely there and clearly audible. Maybe with only a few joints on the board is not (or barely) noticeable, but with dozens of them you can hear it for sure.
If you work with it (the silver one) you will notice its higher melting temp, and the different "look" of the joint, it is not as shiny as the tin solder, also looks somewhat "rougher", like a cold solder joint made of tin/lead solder.
Or whatever else, but the difference is definitely there and clearly audible. Maybe with only a few joints on the board is not (or barely) noticeable, but with dozens of them you can hear it for sure.
If you work with it (the silver one) you will notice its higher melting temp, and the different "look" of the joint, it is not as shiny as the tin solder, also looks somewhat "rougher", like a cold solder joint made of tin/lead solder.
Hi,
Yes, I've done a similar experiment about 25 years ago as well.
Not an amplifier but a P2P wired (actually it was wire wrapped) valve preamp.
Built two preamps and the type of solder used was the only difference between the two units.
The two units didn't sound the same at all. The one using (in my case WBT) silver solder sounded better overall and was preferred by everyone hearing it.
IIRC it was Jean Hiraga (or one of the other authors of L'Audiophile) who mentioned the importance of the metal content of solder.
BTW, should you have access to lab equipment it might be worthwhile to see if any differences show up.
Ciao,
Yes, I've done a similar experiment about 25 years ago as well.
Not an amplifier but a P2P wired (actually it was wire wrapped) valve preamp.
Built two preamps and the type of solder used was the only difference between the two units.
The two units didn't sound the same at all. The one using (in my case WBT) silver solder sounded better overall and was preferred by everyone hearing it.
IIRC it was Jean Hiraga (or one of the other authors of L'Audiophile) who mentioned the importance of the metal content of solder.
BTW, should you have access to lab equipment it might be worthwhile to see if any differences show up.
Ciao,
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