best interconnect cable?

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There's an & between DC power cabling and VHF cabling.
Just like there is a , between transformer wire and DC power cabling.
I'm referring to three examples where power loss in the cable could be an important criteria in choosing the resistance of the wire.
 
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The heat inside a transformer is often the limiting factor in determining it's VA capability.

If you find the appropriate wire size for a particular VA and then some assembler substitutes a different resistivity wire for the copper assumed in the transformer design, you can end up with overheating.
The one example shown so far indicates nearly double the heat for a 0.5% addition of a contaminant to a copper wire.
 
But this thread is about audio interconnects, where anything from the conductivity of copper to the conductivity of mud is acceptable. By all means use high quality copper in your transformers, but it really doesn't matter for interconnects - provided you can get a good soldered joint to it.


Look at the harmonic distortion measurements here of Non-OFC Copper, OFC Copper and 7N Copper.


M.R.O.: The effect of headphone cables: SONY MDR-EX1000



http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JwDW4jTCXic/T4q3rjJIs2I/AAAAAAAAAdc/97bmRIQjbNY/s1600/Left_thd.png
 
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Kastor L said:
Look at the harmonic distortion measurements here of Non-OFC Copper, OFC Copper and 7N Copper.
Difficult to make much sense of them, as no measurement details given. However, at face value they show little or no difference - as might be expected. Note that transducers tend to have frequency-dependent and slightly non-linear impedance, and this impedance is only a few orders of magnitude different from the cable resistance. Quite unlike an interconnect, so even if swapping headphone cables made a gross difference (which it doesn't) this would not mean that swapping interconnects has a similar effect. 'Audiophiles' need to learn the physicists' trick of estimating the likely order of magnitude of an effect before worrying about it.
 
Normal people don't really care"

Hmm so it's something like playing chess or having a niche interest in history isn't it?

Normal people don't care about that, I'm trying to understand the difference.

What I am trying to say is "interconnect cables" really!!!
 
Difficult to make much sense of them, as no measurement details given. However, at face value they show little or no difference - as might be expected. Note that transducers tend to have frequency-dependent and slightly non-linear impedance, and this impedance is only a few orders of magnitude different from the cable resistance. Quite unlike an interconnect, so even if swapping headphone cables made a gross difference (which it doesn't) this would not mean that swapping interconnects has a similar effect. 'Audiophiles' need to learn the physicists' trick of estimating the likely order of magnitude of an effect before worrying about it.

Actually I agree with you about interconnects.

If any cable makes a distinct difference, it's the cable leading up to the transducer.


Note that transducers tend to have frequency-dependent and slightly non-linear impedance

He measured the impedance, the thicker 7N cable was around 1 ohm less.

Are you saying this will affect the THD?


However, at face value they show little or no difference - as might be expected.

I'd call it little difference, the 5th harmonic and such is different enough to show that a little harmonic interaction is at play, due to the purity of the Copper it looks like.

Aside from that I agree that cables are massively overpriced sink holes without any respect to perfection.

Plus that defending "passive equalizers" as sone do is a laugh.

Just putting that out there.
 
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When a load has a non-linear impedance and is fed from a cable with non-zero impedance then there is scope for producing re-entrant distortion. This is exactly the same as can happen with feedback. Interestingly, all those people who want to avoid feedback and so are content with high output impedance amps are laying themselves open to this problem - but if they knew enough to realise this they would also know enough to be happy with feedback.

The effect can be thought of in this way: the voltage signal applied to the load (typically a transducer) creates a distorted current. This creates a voltage drop across the cable resistance, which in turn gets fed back to the load. By this means a load with a pure second-order distortion can produce all orders of distortion. Note that the finite cable resistance is not causing the distortion (copper etc. are quite linear conductors) but it is allowing it to happen.

This effect will only be seen where the cable resistance is not too different from the load resistance, which typically means transducers. Elsewhere it will be present but far too small to be of any significance. Even with tranducers it is likely to be well below the tranducer's own higher order distortion, so relevant to cable sellers wanting to spread FUD with alarming graphs but of little interest to people who just want to listen to music.

Of course, if your amp has a high and non-linear output impedance (e.g. SET) then cable resistance becomes irrelevant by comparison. You then get two non-linear impedances interacting with each other.
 
C11000 - also known as Electrolytic-Tough-Pitch (ETP). This is the most common copper. It is universal for electrical applications. ETP has a minimum conductivity rating of 100% IACS and is required to be 99.9% pure. It has 0.02% to 0.04% oxygen content (typical). Most ETP sold today will meet or exceed the 101% IACS specification. As with OF copper, silver (Ag) content is counted as copper (Cu) for purity purposes.

This seems suitable for most areas of electronics I have been involved with, how come it isn't good enough for audio...one wonders....could there be a conspiracy within audio to promote high profit margin wonder cables and over play the importance of what is basically a piece of wire connecting two bits of electronics.
Of course we all know the crystal boundaries within copper cause lots of noise, mainly on this and other forums.......
 
The transducer impedance is fixed, when we vary the cable resistance by lets say 50 ohm then the transducer FR will at times vary wildly.

This is exactly what happens in some cables and why some people claim they sound different, because they do, they sound extremely different! If you vary the impedance by 50 ohm.




What we're looking at here is 1 ohm, due to the thickness and perhaps 7N to a lesser extent.

That varies the volume and FR slightly but it should not affect the THD.


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JwDW4jTCXic/T4q3rjJIs2I/AAAAAAAAAdc/97bmRIQjbNY/s1600/Left_thd.png

D5 comes in at 0.002, 0.006, 0.003.

They're 'supposed' to come in the same, since three kinds of Copper 'should not' affect harmonic spectrum.

In most cable measurements I've seen asserting they're the same they compare the SPL and call it a day.

The Nelson Pass measurements and this Rin Choi link show more than SPL and they show slight differences.

This is comparing various purities of Copper.

There's no question that Silver has significantly higher conductivity.

Chrome has significantly lower.

Unless you're an alchemist you can not convert one metals intrinsic lattice and crystal structure into the other.
 
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