I don't believe cables make a difference, any input?

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Hi,

analog_sa said:



Technically, by insignificantly higher conductivity. Not that it would matter at line levels and below. It is also difficult to make any generalisations about "silver" sound such as "bright" or "thin" as good silver wire is neither. For some reasons silver reveals slightly more inner detail but lacks ultimate mid-bass punch. My first intoduction to silver was lacklustre but eventually i found silver wire i really like.

In the days of my youth Kadoma was a great place to pass a driving test; still popular with out-of-towners? 🙂


Higher conductivity compared to Cu wire should call for a smaller gauge.
One of the theoretical advantages of Ag versus Cu are, amongst others, that silveroxide is still conducting whereas copper oxide is a semi-conductor.

Sonically, I don't think properly designed Ag cable lacks mid-bass punch. It just sounds cleaner, leaner if you you will.
My excuse for using six nines silver and exotic insulation is that it sounds fast and clean with detail that isn't thrown at you you but as a part of the acoustic environment.
IOW, detail is natural, not detached from it's musical meaning as is all to often the case.

A good example would be to be able to actually hear the wooden studio D. Manley used for his recordings. Or to be able to tell the different mikes in Dave Wilson's recordings.

There are many more examples of recordings (which I keep more for sanity checks than anything else) that are quite revealing when it comes to spatial clues and ambiance.
I'll spare you my shortlist of absolute favs.
Harry P. has already driven up the price of those to astronomical levels as we speak.

In short, Ag cables properly designed, are akin to a good ribbon speaker.
Most ordinary speakers are just to slow and coloured to even come close to the real instrument.

Silver can have this "see through" quality about it.

IME. 😀...

Cheers, 😉
 
huh???

BudP said:


<snip>

I have read that an amplifier is about 1k nanoseconds long. I am wondering just how complex an interaction can be occurring, during that momentary stoppage to change the field vector, if this vector change is occurring over a significant portion of the entire audio chain length that only includes cables as a part of the overall situation.

Does this question make sense?

Bud

the short answer is.... nope... 😀

geez...I always thought time and distance were separate dimensions...

maybe you meant the length of conjugate transmission media ascertained throughout myriad interstitial components comprising said entity of magnification between cross products of the vector field interactions?

then again...perhaps you're speaking of the ubiquitous "Roach Hotel" effect... or Don Henleys' interpretation in the classic "Hotel California" ??
 
Moi? Clueless?

"To clear up this minor distraction, my post indicated that the most common metallic impurity in commercial grade copper wire is iron, which is the case for the simple reason that steel is the material used in the machinery that processes copper wire and contamination is inevitable. Even if concentrations are low, the ferromagnetism of iron swamps copper's diamagnetism in concentrations of atoms per milligram."


"For the simple reason ..."

BS alert! Dive! Dive!
 
jlsem said:


To clear up this minor distraction, my post indicated that the most common metallic impurity in commercial grade copper wire is iron, which is the case for the simple reason that steel is the material used in the machinery that processes copper wire and contamination is inevitable. Even if concentrations are low, the ferromagnetism of iron swamps copper's diamagnetism in concentrations of atoms per milligram.

<snip>

Sheesh.

John

lessee... 29 mgs of copper = .001 mole = 6.023 x 10^20 atoms of copper vs. "atoms of iron".... hmmmn I don't think so

any references to this "eeeefect" from competent independent sources?

John L.
 
Hi,

SY said:
Brett, that's also my understanding.

Now, as to my still-unanswered question to John (major impurities in commercial copper do not include iron, but that's a distraction and not an answer to the scale question)... you can calculate the self inductance of the canonical wire, but the number won't be terribly accurate- the late, great jneutron gave me some data on calculated versus actual skin depths. In any case, the calculated number is about 0.01uH/foot. My measured value was less than that, but let's go with the worse number.

For a 10 foot cable, there and back, that's 0.2uH. If we assume that the speaker designer has thoughtfully Zobeled out the inductance of the tweeter and we have an 8 ohm impedance at both 1kHz and 20kHz (a non-Zobeled tweeter will show less effect here), would anyone care to calculate the phase shift and attenuation due to the inductive component?


If and when the sun is going to shine I won't be needing my umbrella.

Cheers, 😉
 
homeopathy ... maybe??

jlsem said:


To what effect are you referring? Please be specific or quit wasting time.

Thanks,
John


ummm... that iron somehow affects coppers' macro properties at concentrations well below any rational detection limit?? that would be at 10 ^-19 atoms (being diplomatic here)

talk about clueless...

nano..pico..femto.. atto... what's next???
 
coppers' macro properties

I wouldn't regard the permeability of copper to be a "macro property". I was only commenting on the fact that it doesn't take very much iron as an impurity to render copper "non-diamagnetic". Nothing to do with audio - just a sidebar dialogue on elementary EM theory. You really ought to at least read some my posts prior to my latest one before going on the offensive.

John
 
Re: some help from the gurus

auplater said:
I'm confused by some of the efforts to define electrical representation of music as "a bunch of frequencies being carried simultaneously in a cable". Maybe it's due to the rampant disemination of FT analysis, but i always pictured the analog signal going to the speakers as a single signal (Ha! always wanted to use this phrase...😀 ) that can be binned mathematically to whatever resolution feasible as an analytic tool only... to understand what the complex SINGLE waveform at an instant might represent in the frequency domain.

All this talk of low level signals riding on high level signals seems to miss the point entirely (and maybe an attempt to justify single xtal, dielectric effects, etc.). The amp produces an instantaneous electrical potential representative of the sum of all the frequencies required, but it's only one potential when measured at a significantly short delta(t).

Am I missing something?

John L.

I have the same thoughts on this.

An orchestra has many simultaneous complex sounds of all different freqs and amplitudes, but the resulting analog signal is just ONE waveform, described simply by a voltage level which slowly (20kHz max) varies over time. Any normal electronics and cables can handle this with ease.

The aural complexity of the original event (orchestra) just confuses some minds, I think.
 
Yes it is interesting how the same person can generate pages of babble about resolution and complex signals and bunches of frequencies (we just can't do it captain!) and then write a totally rave review of a 16/44 CD. This is a rhetorical comment about any number of writers that need to put food on their tables. No judgment implied I just wish people would address the implications of what they say.
 
Loss of Information

The often heard phrase, 'loss of information' is not the problem with reproduction IMO, it is rather the opposite, the "addition of unwanted stuff".

Mid priced electronics and cables have all the same information as Hi End electronics and cables, but there maybe stuff added in the cheaper system that obscures that information. IMHO. cheers
 
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