So do copper and silver conductors transmit all audio frequencies at the same amplitude, at least relative to themselves?
Does the conductivity difference between copper and silver introduce phase shifts, in silver plated copper conductors?
Even if the answer is no, will Synergistic Technologies have a fix for it, soon?
Does the conductivity difference between copper and silver introduce phase shifts, in silver plated copper conductors?
Even if the answer is no, will Synergistic Technologies have a fix for it, soon?
Exactly the same, bulk resistivity has nothing to do with the method of conduction for pure metals. Why does time keep getting wasted on this nonsense?
Method of conduction is drift current of highly mobile electron carriers, so yes.
7% of essentially zero V^2/R is still essentially zero. Easily compensated by conductor sizing if that's a concern at all. As stated, there's other practical reasons for the materials "sensible people" (TM) use, but probably not the 7% factor at audio frequencies.
Silver is mechanically different from copper. If a long piece of wire or wire in a transformer vibrated, there could be some interaction with EM fields that gives a little sound. I don't know if there is or isn't. The only point is that if silver wire does sound a little different from copper in some application, it has to be explainable by ordinary physics. And it probably won't have to do with differences in conductivity. It would most likely be through some mechanism we just aren't considering.
If one had a transformer wound with silver wire, it might be fun to run a little DC through one winding or just use residual magnetization and connect another winding to a low noise amp input. Then put it on a shaker table and see how microphonic it is.
Or put it close to another transformer and see what it picks up from leakage as compared to an "otherwise identical" copper transformer. If it sounds different, keep looking until you can prove why.
The thing is if someone has something unusual that other people aren't likely to believe, the thing to do is not to offer untested theories. Just investigate until you figure out what the cause is. If not one thing, it must be another.
As humans, there is often a natural tendency to jump to conclusions powered largely by confirmation bias, and go off in one direction or another, that quantum mechanics and entangled particles must be the answer, or that people making claims are hallucinating, or liars.
I have seen over the years many times when engineers claimed something was impossible and that the "users" were crazy, doing something wrong, causing the problem, etc., only to find out later that there was an design or manufacturing problem nobody thought of, sometimes of an intermittent nature, and sometime not. Especially true with highly complex systems or when nobody bothers to investigate the simple systems.
If one had a transformer wound with silver wire, it might be fun to run a little DC through one winding or just use residual magnetization and connect another winding to a low noise amp input. Then put it on a shaker table and see how microphonic it is.
Or put it close to another transformer and see what it picks up from leakage as compared to an "otherwise identical" copper transformer. If it sounds different, keep looking until you can prove why.
The thing is if someone has something unusual that other people aren't likely to believe, the thing to do is not to offer untested theories. Just investigate until you figure out what the cause is. If not one thing, it must be another.
As humans, there is often a natural tendency to jump to conclusions powered largely by confirmation bias, and go off in one direction or another, that quantum mechanics and entangled particles must be the answer, or that people making claims are hallucinating, or liars.
I have seen over the years many times when engineers claimed something was impossible and that the "users" were crazy, doing something wrong, causing the problem, etc., only to find out later that there was an design or manufacturing problem nobody thought of, sometimes of an intermittent nature, and sometime not. Especially true with highly complex systems or when nobody bothers to investigate the simple systems.
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Given the option between assuming "something else is afoot" and "silver has worse group delay", I'm going to err on the side of what Mark wrote above about "it may have an effect, but it's probably not what you're describing".
Or it may not have an effect! In any case, I didn't read the article, and the first post didn't suggest much past "eh, computational artifacts?"
Or it may not have an effect! In any case, I didn't read the article, and the first post didn't suggest much past "eh, computational artifacts?"
I would not think that there would be a significant or necessarily an audible difference between 1 meter interconnects, but I heard the difference 40 years ago.
I bought this silver wire connecting cable in Tokyo for about $30 in 1978, and it was just to buy something for my hi fi that I didn't have in California. This was when cables were just starting to be considered important. This cable appeared to be very well made with really nice RCA connectors (about the best I have ever had) and while $30 was a lot for a cable at the time, I wanted a souvenir of my trip, perhaps to show my friends how 'crazy' the Japanese were about audio at the time. I took it home, plugged it in and found that it sounded bright, even harsh! I measured the thd and IM down to about 0.001% and found nothing. So I gave it to a local hi end dealer to try at their premises and they found the same thing. I kept it around and finally used it as the output cable for a NAK 550 where its 'brightness' was balanced with the NAK's character. Over the years, it seemed to sound smoother. Was it my ears? Or was it break-in? Twenty years later my friend and later CTC Blowtorch partner found that most silver wire did indeed sound too 'bright', even harsh, BUT he found a solution: He found a brand of silver wire, when 'burned in for days or weeks' could sound better than any copper or even any other silver wire that he could find, and he took wire differences very seriously. He finally convinced me to try some of this wire, when rewiring my Vendetta preamps during an upgrade, and we decided to make the CTC Blowtorch preamps with it exclusively. My own CTC Blowtorch is made with this wire, and it does sound wonderful, better than any other product I have been associated with. Then 10 years ago, after Bob Crump unexpectedly died, he left me to wire 5 Blowtorches or to give back the $50,000 that the Japanese had put up as a deposit. What to do? I TRIED to get the right silver wire, but it was not available, so I tried to replace it with the best copper hookup wire that I could find, and I wired the 5 Blowtorch preamps with it. Then I compared a copper wire based preamp with a silver wire based unit (all else being equal) and I found that the copper ones did indeed sound 'softer' and perhaps preferred by some people, but not as 'clear' sounding unfortunately. Now, and for the last 12 years I have had no access to the 'silver' wire that I like, but that does not mean that I am happy with the situation, I just have to live with it. One must TRY and be open to hearing differences, if one is to be successful in audio design. Undergraduate engineering-physics is not enough.
I bought this silver wire connecting cable in Tokyo for about $30 in 1978, and it was just to buy something for my hi fi that I didn't have in California. This was when cables were just starting to be considered important. This cable appeared to be very well made with really nice RCA connectors (about the best I have ever had) and while $30 was a lot for a cable at the time, I wanted a souvenir of my trip, perhaps to show my friends how 'crazy' the Japanese were about audio at the time. I took it home, plugged it in and found that it sounded bright, even harsh! I measured the thd and IM down to about 0.001% and found nothing. So I gave it to a local hi end dealer to try at their premises and they found the same thing. I kept it around and finally used it as the output cable for a NAK 550 where its 'brightness' was balanced with the NAK's character. Over the years, it seemed to sound smoother. Was it my ears? Or was it break-in? Twenty years later my friend and later CTC Blowtorch partner found that most silver wire did indeed sound too 'bright', even harsh, BUT he found a solution: He found a brand of silver wire, when 'burned in for days or weeks' could sound better than any copper or even any other silver wire that he could find, and he took wire differences very seriously. He finally convinced me to try some of this wire, when rewiring my Vendetta preamps during an upgrade, and we decided to make the CTC Blowtorch preamps with it exclusively. My own CTC Blowtorch is made with this wire, and it does sound wonderful, better than any other product I have been associated with. Then 10 years ago, after Bob Crump unexpectedly died, he left me to wire 5 Blowtorches or to give back the $50,000 that the Japanese had put up as a deposit. What to do? I TRIED to get the right silver wire, but it was not available, so I tried to replace it with the best copper hookup wire that I could find, and I wired the 5 Blowtorch preamps with it. Then I compared a copper wire based preamp with a silver wire based unit (all else being equal) and I found that the copper ones did indeed sound 'softer' and perhaps preferred by some people, but not as 'clear' sounding unfortunately. Now, and for the last 12 years I have had no access to the 'silver' wire that I like, but that does not mean that I am happy with the situation, I just have to live with it. One must TRY and be open to hearing differences, if one is to be successful in audio design. Undergraduate engineering-physics is not enough.
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How do you know if you didn't find the cause? With long stretched out wires like in the photo you posted, maybe there is acoustic vibration and stray EM field coupling.
~3ms group delay around 50Hz? How long is the cable, and is it coiled? All the cables are exact same materials and construction, except copper or silver metal used?
Audio Note goes to great lengths to control vibration in transformers and they have a wax impregnation machine to this end. So, yes, the mechanical properties of the wire matter to them.
Audio Note seems to be saying that copper oxide is non-linear and silver oxide is linear.
Okay. Still have to test it. Guitar pickups are sometimes wax impregnated for the same reason. Wax is not the best material for that purpose, IMHO, but its easy to use. Pumping the air out with a vacuum pump while the wax is molten will get the air out and the wax in.
Regarding nonlinearity of conductance, it would be necessary to prove that conjecture. If it is the problem it should show up as a measurable THD difference. So, measure it and let's see. We would need to be very careful to make sure nothing else changed besides the wire material, of course. Also careful to make sure what we are measuring is due to material nonlinearity and not solder joint nonlinearity or some other more complex effect. When we have shown an underlying cause and other experimenters can replicate our results, then we would have a scientific explanation rather than somebody's guess.
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No. Not in the world of science. Would it have been safe to assume cold fusion was already proven so no replication necessary?
While refusing to feed the growth of the SOWIC (snake oil wire, interconnect and cable) business, enough people, I included, are still undecided that this is a nonsense, at least I have not found DBT or other tests and measurements convincing enough to decide. I found the subtle effect I was able to hear as not enough reason to justify a thorough study, nor extravagant budget. Perhaps for reasons of being a miser, I am comfortable with copper cables procured from local store. But I still find the subject too interesting to brush aside nonetheless.
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