Binding posts Brass vs Copper : does really makes differences ?

[JMFahey]

Originally Posted by diypass
in that little length does brass really degrade sound quality ?

It's irrelevant.
Resistance of of a 2mm length, 8 mm diameter path through any of those metals is non-existent compared to, say, the resistance present in 2 to 6 meters of 1 or 2 mm diameter copper speaker cables.

Not forgetting that you also have many other resistive/lossy paths inside the amplifier itself, plus soldering (ugh!! dissimilar metals ) or even worse, unsoldered physical contacts (connectors/terminals/capacitor legs/etc.)
And if the amp is a tube one, you have tens of meters of fine copper wire in series with the signals.
And the tubes will not be soldered but pushed into sockets.
And so on and on and on.

So in due perspective, worrying about that little and easy path compared to all others, sounds like a little too much.

Of course, keep the surfaces clean and the contact pressure tight.

[mondogenerator]

Originally Posted by David Wareing

I'm afraid that is an old wives' tale..

hmm ok. I wonder why HV busbars are 'tinned' with a silver alloy solder, if that is true.

I agree, it is pretty irrelevant, all in all.

[David Wareing]

Originally Posted by a.wayne

depends on the wife .......

If only they would test their own silver atomic oxygen sensors before sending them up into space on a rocket, or at least do some hard-core googling.. Wimin!

[diypass]

are these in real copper ?
PHO010SBP Red Coppper Rhodium Hi-End Binding Post 4 / pcs

[yai]

electrical conductivity of metal oxides is a complex topic, e.g. PbO is an extremely good conductor (a car battery easily can supply 100A and more) but TiO is an isolator, having the same crystallographic structure.
concerning rhodium: manufacturers use massive silver, coat with 100 microns of gold (costs nearly nothing, looks good, they can say it's gold plated), coat that with 20 microns of rhodium, which is very hard, to prevent the gold from beeing scratched und the silver from shining through after plugging/unplugging several times. They do the same thing with electrical components and with jewelry. Many cheap "gold" rings are made that way.

[speaker dave]

When I was designing amplifiers at McIntosh one of the amplifier engineers looked at the speaker terminals we were using and gave me some grief. It was some ferrous material and he said he wouldn't be allowed to use it on the amplifiers. It would prevent them from getting to .0001% distortion or whatever. He was serious that it would have a measurable impact on distortion.

Of course, on a speaker it would be absolutely undetectable relative to the typical driver distortion (even with LD/HP).

David S.

[diypass]

hi dave,
please, could you explain better ?

[speaker dave]

Originally Posted by diypass

hi dave,
please, could you explain better ?

Not really

My recollection was that it was a slightly magnetic material and so had a magnetic hysteresis loop. So it would be a slightly nonlinear resistor in series with the output. This was a vanishingly small nonlinearity but the amplifiers were so linear that it would make a measurable difference in output distortion and make it difficult to hit the intended spec.

This was Ron Evans, one of the chief designers and a solid engineer, so I would take his word for it.

Regards,
David S.

[diypass]

what bindimg post do you suggest me ?

[oldies]

Originally Posted by diypass

whay bindimg post do you suggest me ?

don't go for cheap GOLD PLATED (!) Chinese goods as they use cheap gold for plating. will fade after some time
go for WBT