Oxygen free copper?
According to Wikipedia:
"Oxygen plays a beneficial role for improving copper conductivity. During the copper smelting process, oxygen is deliberately injected into the melt to scavenge impurities that would otherwise degrade conductivity.
See also: http://www.copper.org/publications/newsletters/innovations/1997/12/wiremetallurgy.html#xgncntnt
PS: Mexcel is using copper containing <1ppm oxygen.
According to Wikipedia:
"Oxygen plays a beneficial role for improving copper conductivity. During the copper smelting process, oxygen is deliberately injected into the melt to scavenge impurities that would otherwise degrade conductivity.
See also: http://www.copper.org/publications/newsletters/innovations/1997/12/wiremetallurgy.html#xgncntnt
PS: Mexcel is using copper containing <1ppm oxygen.
Attachments
Re: Oxygen free copper?
So, Edmond, if I read that graph correctly, going from 2N to 5N copper in my cables reduces the cable resistance by a whopping 2% or so! As the man said, well worth the price 😀 !
Edit: I found this secret recipe that does the same. I cut 4 inch of my 15 feet length speaker cables. What do you know: a 2% reduction in resistance! And it's free!
Jan Didden
Edmond Stuart said:
So, Edmond, if I read that graph correctly, going from 2N to 5N copper in my cables reduces the cable resistance by a whopping 2% or so! As the man said, well worth the price 😀 !
Edit: I found this secret recipe that does the same. I cut 4 inch of my 15 feet length speaker cables. What do you know: a 2% reduction in resistance! And it's free!
Jan Didden
🙂
Are we discussing assesoires like Audio Cables now 😀
Again !!!!
I though we had better to do ... in this Blowtorch topic.
--------
============================================
🙂 I use 2 x 6.0 mm2 multi stranded speakers cables.
No one, not even our master of this class, John Curl,
will ever be able to convince me to buy anything more 'fancy'
🙂 I use pretty normal priced unbalanced RCA cables from
Goham Cables
🙂 My RCA Connectors are goldplated, but very low priced RCA connectors.
You can get them in your nearest good audio shop.
Gotham Cables GAC-1
http://www.gotham.ch/products_de/gac/gac/datsheet/gac_1.htm
Construction of this cable is as following:
Lineup
Are we discussing assesoires like Audio Cables now 😀
Again !!!!
I though we had better to do ... in this Blowtorch topic.
--------
============================================
🙂 I use 2 x 6.0 mm2 multi stranded speakers cables.
No one, not even our master of this class, John Curl,
will ever be able to convince me to buy anything more 'fancy'
🙂 I use pretty normal priced unbalanced RCA cables from
Goham Cables
🙂 My RCA Connectors are goldplated, but very low priced RCA connectors.
You can get them in your nearest good audio shop.
Gotham Cables GAC-1
http://www.gotham.ch/products_de/gac/gac/datsheet/gac_1.htm
Construction of this cable is as following:
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
Lineup
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lyra
Hello Arthur,
I do prefer the nude bulk metal foil made by Texas Components callled the TX2352s. You can get the directly from TC, or from Percy Audio. I use them whenever their power limits allow me to. I also use the bulk metal foil trim pots in my amplifiers.
I might add that I like a non coloured sound with as much resolution as possible, which some people surely would call non musical or non warm. One of the highlights for the TX2352s is the bass reproduction which is firm and dry. The MK132s on the other hand have a more blurry bass response with a bit too much "warmth" for for ex male singers. IMO.
Regarding the nr of steps I do prefer to have at around 60 steps. The relay based attenuator I use today has 1dB steps which is fine for most of the range, but on my wish list is 0,5dB steps at the end where I do most of my listening. At the lower end 2 or 4dB steps would be fine for me.
I also have used stepped attenuators with 24 steps each 2dB but that was too coarse for me.
The hard part for me is that some records I have are high in volume, whilst others are lower, so the optimal setting on the attenuator varies and has to cover a rather large span making it hard to only have say 0,5dB steps at a smallish intervall on the attenuator. I guess a compromise has to be made here 🙂
Sigurd
Hello Arthur,
I do prefer the nude bulk metal foil made by Texas Components callled the TX2352s. You can get the directly from TC, or from Percy Audio. I use them whenever their power limits allow me to. I also use the bulk metal foil trim pots in my amplifiers.
I might add that I like a non coloured sound with as much resolution as possible, which some people surely would call non musical or non warm. One of the highlights for the TX2352s is the bass reproduction which is firm and dry. The MK132s on the other hand have a more blurry bass response with a bit too much "warmth" for for ex male singers. IMO.
Regarding the nr of steps I do prefer to have at around 60 steps. The relay based attenuator I use today has 1dB steps which is fine for most of the range, but on my wish list is 0,5dB steps at the end where I do most of my listening. At the lower end 2 or 4dB steps would be fine for me.
I also have used stepped attenuators with 24 steps each 2dB but that was too coarse for me.
The hard part for me is that some records I have are high in volume, whilst others are lower, so the optimal setting on the attenuator varies and has to cover a rather large span making it hard to only have say 0,5dB steps at a smallish intervall on the attenuator. I guess a compromise has to be made here 🙂
Sigurd
PHEONIX said:
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lyra
Hello Sigurd
Sorry to ask you so many questions, but I have just one more. In the case of the power amp what is the make of the main bulk capacitor and low voltage regualtor capacitor.
Regards
Arthur
Sigurd Ruschkow said:
Hello Sigurd
Sorry to ask you so many questions, but I have just one more. In the case of the power amp what is the make of the main bulk capacitor and low voltage regualtor capacitor.
Regards
Arthur
lineup said:
While some seemingly only consider cable resistance to have an influence on SQ, try using 2.5 mm2 cables on your speakers. According to me you should get more detail in mid and high frequencies.
hehe
no way 🙂
give me one logical reason
why a little higher resistance (we are talking milliohms)
should be better than 6 square millimeter copper
regards ... lineup does not really want to get into cable sound polemics
... but sure will defend his own speaker cables, they are good!
no way 🙂
give me one logical reason
why a little higher resistance (we are talking milliohms)
should be better than 6 square millimeter copper
regards ... lineup does not really want to get into cable sound polemics
... but sure will defend his own speaker cables, they are good!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Lyra
Syn08,
thanks for the tip,
but I actually make my own interconnects 🙂
That way I can use whatever connectors I want and whatever wire I want with the length needed.
I am sure, though, that some people will like the cables in the link
even though the might look high in price,
and I am sure that some people buy these cables.
Maybe because they are high in price 😉
Nothing special with that, people by things all the time to show off how much money they have. And not only thngs but services, too. Mankind has been doing this thousands of years.....
Both men and women.
Sigurd
Syn08,
thanks for the tip,
but I actually make my own interconnects 🙂
That way I can use whatever connectors I want and whatever wire I want with the length needed.
I am sure, though, that some people will like the cables in the link
even though the might look high in price,
and I am sure that some people buy these cables.
Maybe because they are high in price 😉
Nothing special with that, people by things all the time to show off how much money they have. And not only thngs but services, too. Mankind has been doing this thousands of years.....
Both men and women.
Sigurd
syn08 said:
lineup said:
Just try it, then we talk. 😉
Cable behaviour is far more complex than RLC measurements.
Why are we talking about cables? I have heard differences in cables, but it is too controversial here to discuss them intelligently, and we do not have enough data on any specific cable to compare between them.
What I was confused about earlier is the deliberate use of oxygen to remove or isolate impurities in copper, and later apparently releasing much of it in final production. Then, there is the question of oxygen free copper and what it means, as well as linear crystal copper, and how it is made.
What I was confused about earlier is the deliberate use of oxygen to remove or isolate impurities in copper, and later apparently releasing much of it in final production. Then, there is the question of oxygen free copper and what it means, as well as linear crystal copper, and how it is made.
Re: Oxygen free copper?
This is called "intrinsic gettering" and it's a little more complicated than it looks at the first glance.
"Intrinsic gettering" means impurity trapping sites created by precipitating suprasaturated oxygen out of the cristalline lattice. The precipitation of suprasaturated oxygen creates clusters that continuously grow, introducing stress to the crystal as this happens. These stresses may eventually reach the point where they need to be relieved and dislocation in the crystal are formed to provide the necessary stress relief. These dislocations subsequently serve as trapping sites for impurities, which in turn may have a positive impact on the crystal conductivity properties.
The key issue here is the oxygen concentration. An optimum exists, which for metal crystal grains conglomerates is pretty difficult to reach and control. To much oxygen and you fall on the other side, where the crystalline grains develop oxidized interfaces affecting the overall conductivity. Therefore, to the extend that I am aware of, nobody is relying on oxygen intrinsic gettering to improve the metals conductivity. It is much effective to completely remove the oxygen.
It's a different story for semiconductors. I recall the early days of silicon technology when scratching the back of the 3" wafers with a diamond stylus was the method of choice to create stacking faults acting as getter sites for silicon. Then phosphorus back doping, then polysilicon back deposition and I had a chance to experiment back oxygen implantation processes, to induce intrinsic gettering.
Now, back to BT and the magic audibility of TKD pots, metal foil resistors and switched attenuators. Are there any known best practices regarding the number of steps and the step increments? I can get some decent 2x24 pos. switches for $40 but everything over that starts to be absurdly expensive.
Edmond Stuart said:
This is called "intrinsic gettering" and it's a little more complicated than it looks at the first glance.
"Intrinsic gettering" means impurity trapping sites created by precipitating suprasaturated oxygen out of the cristalline lattice. The precipitation of suprasaturated oxygen creates clusters that continuously grow, introducing stress to the crystal as this happens. These stresses may eventually reach the point where they need to be relieved and dislocation in the crystal are formed to provide the necessary stress relief. These dislocations subsequently serve as trapping sites for impurities, which in turn may have a positive impact on the crystal conductivity properties.
The key issue here is the oxygen concentration. An optimum exists, which for metal crystal grains conglomerates is pretty difficult to reach and control. To much oxygen and you fall on the other side, where the crystalline grains develop oxidized interfaces affecting the overall conductivity. Therefore, to the extend that I am aware of, nobody is relying on oxygen intrinsic gettering to improve the metals conductivity. It is much effective to completely remove the oxygen.
It's a different story for semiconductors. I recall the early days of silicon technology when scratching the back of the 3" wafers with a diamond stylus was the method of choice to create stacking faults acting as getter sites for silicon. Then phosphorus back doping, then polysilicon back deposition and I had a chance to experiment back oxygen implantation processes, to induce intrinsic gettering.
Now, back to BT and the magic audibility of TKD pots, metal foil resistors and switched attenuators. Are there any known best practices regarding the number of steps and the step increments? I can get some decent 2x24 pos. switches for $40 but everything over that starts to be absurdly expensive.
Trick: combine a 23 or 24 position attenuator with a two position gain switch. It's like playing a chromatic harmonica.
SY said:
But it would require some pretty nifty wrist work to get from highest step on the low range to the lowest on the high range without a big discontinuity. (= bang!
)
Andre Visser said:
john curl said:
Both Andre Visser & John Curl.
regards.
I can not argue with you Andree.
I never can & will argue with anyone saying I would do some listening tests.
Because who can argue against or with anything subjective opinions?
It is more like a matter of taste .. and taste is different & personal.
John's statement is a quote of wisdom. Of age & maturity.
There is simple nothing to gain from discussing cable sounds.
It has been proved over & over again in this forum.
Better you drink your wine
and I drink my brand of champagne.
and then we respect each other's choice
in friendship & harmony here at www.diyaudio.com anyway.
Lineup -- again trying to be the wise guy
... there is actually a distinct difference between KNOWLEDGE and WISDOM.
if you do not know this .. you are probably not old enough .. to know 😉
cliffforrest said:
But it would require some pretty nifty wrist work to get from highest step on the low range to the lowest on the high range without a big discontinuity. (= bang!
Remove the detent if possible and go from highest to lowest in a single step ...?
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