The actual information might be right (e.g., relative conductivity of gold versus silver), but your interpretation of it and conclusions (e.g., "From my understanding a RCA connector made of brass and cold plated is only going to transmit 28% of the signal which is traveling down the wire") is utterly wrong.
It is the attenuation I was to eliminate. What it comes down to is sound. The silver will be clearer.
28%
28% Gosh! Does that mean 72% of the musicians just disappear, that's even more than MP3.
Ive heard a few tall tales over the years, but this one takes the biscuit!
BTW I use the finest connectors available, that's maybe why I can hear more than just a solo artist. My only advice, if your using a solid silver RCA plug you'd better be using solid silver RCA sockets too.
28% Gosh! Does that mean 72% of the musicians just disappear, that's even more than MP3.
Ive heard a few tall tales over the years, but this one takes the biscuit!
BTW I use the finest connectors available, that's maybe why I can hear more than just a solo artist. My only advice, if your using a solid silver RCA plug you'd better be using solid silver RCA sockets too.
What attenuation? Please see my earlier questions- you have some serious misunderstandings of the basics of signal transmission, which makes you a very, very ripe target for scammers (of which there are far too many in audio).
What your amplifier amplifies is a voltage. It dumps that amplified voltage into your speaker and the more voltage you have the louder the volume. When you turn down the volume the only thing you are really doing is dividing that voltage so that when the amp amplifies (multiplies) the voltage the result is just less voltage than at full volume.
When you insert a certain amount of resistance between your cd player and your pre amp or between the pre and the amp then you do very very slightly change the amount of voltage because there is usually a series resistor followed by a shunt resistor directly inside the amp right after the amps input rcas. So you just added a tiny bit of resistance. The volume wont change because if its brass, lead or unobtanium (but you happened to get some) it is only a tiny fraction of the signal, meaning its like .000001% of the signal.... maybe. And its not the signal as in the 'information' its the signal as in the amount of the original voltage that carries the signal or 'is' in a sense the signal. The frequencies are what are the information and the resistance does not change this at all. I have a set of 400 ohm rca cables that sound wonderful to me. I intentionally built the resistance into them using resistance wire instead of copper or silver which I often use. It sounds great.. they all do. And all of them send the same signal through. Its the capacitance that can hamper the signal because a capacitor can fill in a drop in voltage if its in a shunt position and it can stop certain frequencies if its in a series position. So for your cables and your rcas please concern yourself with capacitance instead and now you should find out how much capacitance it takes before anything near 100khz is effected.
When you insert a certain amount of resistance between your cd player and your pre amp or between the pre and the amp then you do very very slightly change the amount of voltage because there is usually a series resistor followed by a shunt resistor directly inside the amp right after the amps input rcas. So you just added a tiny bit of resistance. The volume wont change because if its brass, lead or unobtanium (but you happened to get some) it is only a tiny fraction of the signal, meaning its like .000001% of the signal.... maybe. And its not the signal as in the 'information' its the signal as in the amount of the original voltage that carries the signal or 'is' in a sense the signal. The frequencies are what are the information and the resistance does not change this at all. I have a set of 400 ohm rca cables that sound wonderful to me. I intentionally built the resistance into them using resistance wire instead of copper or silver which I often use. It sounds great.. they all do. And all of them send the same signal through. Its the capacitance that can hamper the signal because a capacitor can fill in a drop in voltage if its in a shunt position and it can stop certain frequencies if its in a series position. So for your cables and your rcas please concern yourself with capacitance instead and now you should find out how much capacitance it takes before anything near 100khz is effected.
Belief is a strong force. I still don't understand how silver could be clearer than copper. But to add some spice to the discussion I'd like to introduce the following:
Van Den Hul - The FIRST ® Ultimate (Metal Free and Halogen Free) | Product (cable)
Carbon based cables, no metal conductors, slightly more resistive than copper!
"The individual strand insulation prevents electrons to cross from fibre to fibre. The direct result is that electrons exclusively move trough the 7 micron strands in one dimension. Side movements are virtually impossible. This prevents a lot of audio problems."
realy? one dimension?
realy? one dimension?
Since SY didn't take my bait, we can be serious for a moment.
Let's say your copper wire interconnect has a resistance of 10 ohms. OK, it would need to be rather long for that*, but let's use easy numbers. From that we can determine that wires of the same length made of other metals would have a resistance of:
A difference to be sure. But to attenuate the signal, that resistance has to be part of a voltage divider. The other parts of that voltage divider are the input impedance of your amp or preamp and the output impedance of the source driving the cable. Let's take a typical value of 20K Ohms, input, 600 Ohms output. How much difference will the difference resistances (metals) make? Let's start with a typical 2V, line level signal.
Even if your output impedance was high, like 1000 ohms, and your input impedance low at 10K, it still wouldn't make much difference.
Let's say your copper wire interconnect has a resistance of 10 ohms. OK, it would need to be rather long for that*, but let's use easy numbers. From that we can determine that wires of the same length made of other metals would have a resistance of:
- Copper: 10 Ohms
- Silver: 9.4 Ohms
- Brass: 17 Ohms
A difference to be sure. But to attenuate the signal, that resistance has to be part of a voltage divider. The other parts of that voltage divider are the input impedance of your amp or preamp and the output impedance of the source driving the cable. Let's take a typical value of 20K Ohms, input, 600 Ohms output. How much difference will the difference resistances (metals) make? Let's start with a typical 2V, line level signal.
- Copper: 1.941 V
- Silver: 1.941 V
- Brass: 1.940 V
Even if your output impedance was high, like 1000 ohms, and your input impedance low at 10K, it still wouldn't make much difference.
- Copper: 1.817 V
- Silver: 1.817 V
- Brass: 1.815 V
Ok now I have a headache..... What I have heard comparing silver to copper is that silver is brighter, but copper warmer on base. From my understanding is that there is a skin effect, and this is where my brains fail, that some how the more resistant the wire the more the highs are forced to the outside of the wire which is what is called skin effect. I found a paper on this which goes into it in detail and even compares single stranded wire to multi stranded wire. What I am not understanding and accepting like a lemming is that a 24 or 28 gauge wire is better for the transmission of the signal than even 18 gauge multi stranded wire. Anyway what it comes to do is that I want to make the interconnects, nothing better to do and if I can do it myself for my audio success or failure what the heck.
If they sound great COOL, if they sound like garbage, toss them, look at them as a learning experience, and go by something better than Monster Cables. What better coolness than to show off the system and point out that I made the cables.
If they sound great COOL, if they sound like garbage, toss them, look at them as a learning experience, and go by something better than Monster Cables. What better coolness than to show off the system and point out that I made the cables.
And I think that the problem is that he sees 1.815 vs 1.817 to be a loss of signal which its not when we consider the signal to be a frequency. ALL the information is intact even if we go from 1.8V to 1V. Still the music will sound the same just less volume unless we adjust the gain of the amp to account for the voltage attenuation.
Loss of voltage does not equal loss of signal. Pano, I know you know that I just think this is the part he's missing.
Loss of voltage does not equal loss of signal. Pano, I know you know that I just think this is the part he's missing.
Yeah if you read the speaker cables cookbook you will find that and frankly my flat speaker cables sound better than what I replaced but I do accept it could be psychoacoustics. I also bought some super thin copper foil and make interconnects out of it and they sound great but so do the interconnects I make out of 40+ AWG wire until they break of course. The argument in that book is that there is more resistance on the inside of the wire than on the outside, the skin. So this resistance only effects the lower frequencies since the higher the frequency the closer to the skin it rides. So supposedly your lower notes arrive late to the party. So build your cables out of super thin stuff but dont sweat the resistance so much. If Allen is Wright, ahem 🙂, then the frequencies will arrive to their destination at a time relative to the resistance they went through. Soooooo, if that were the case then wouldnt we actually want them all to go through a LOT of resistance so that the difference between the resistance on the skin and the resistance in the center is less of a factor since the resistance to both is so high?
Lets look at that a little closer. If the resistance on the skin is .1 ohms and the resistance to the lower frequency on the inside of the wire is .15 then there really is quite a difference. But what if you had a 400 ohm interconnect like I built. 400 ohms on the outside/skin and 400.05 on the inside. I bet then if Allen was right then really this would be the better option. Hawksford was the other dude that thought this was true and he's the one who convinced Allen, on paper anyway.
Head hurt now? 🙂
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Could be, could be. The mistake is in thinking that 28% of the conductivity means 28% of the signal. It does not. You have to take the actual resistance of the wire in proportion to the other parts of the circuit (what it's connecting). Once you think about it that way, you see what a tiny difference it makes.
As for the sound of different metals, well that's another matter. Some people feel that there is a difference, after all, it's not the same stuff - right? But my mud, water, wine, banana, potato, etc wire testing pretty well showed that any difference in the sound of those is so tiny, it's almost impossible to spot. So why worry about different good metals?
As for the sound of different metals, well that's another matter. Some people feel that there is a difference, after all, it's not the same stuff - right? But my mud, water, wine, banana, potato, etc wire testing pretty well showed that any difference in the sound of those is so tiny, it's almost impossible to spot. So why worry about different good metals?
Sorry Merrisasjc .... you are buying into the snake oil BS!
Skin Effect does not occur within the audio range of frequencies.
Silver is brighter? Copper is warmer on bass (that is the correct spelling)?
There is nothing 'magic' about audio.
We are doing nothing more than attempting to duplicate the experience of a live performance.
Skin Effect does not occur within the audio range of frequencies.
Silver is brighter? Copper is warmer on bass (that is the correct spelling)?
There is nothing 'magic' about audio.
We are doing nothing more than attempting to duplicate the experience of a live performance.
"Skin Effect does not occur within the audio range of frequencies."
was thinking that, wasnt sure.
"There is nothing 'magic' about audio"
then you need to listen to somthing else. a good lp spinning is pure magic!
😉
"We are doing nothing more than attempting to duplicate the experience of a live performance. "
amen
was thinking that, wasnt sure.
"There is nothing 'magic' about audio"
then you need to listen to somthing else. a good lp spinning is pure magic!
😉
"We are doing nothing more than attempting to duplicate the experience of a live performance. "
amen
To be clear, there's only 1cm or so of conductive path through the RCA. That drops the "losses" from ridiculously low to ludicrously low.
"skin effect" only matters when you are dealing with Quantum Physics
the Audio World is way below that.
the Audio World is way below that.
Here's a thought experiment: if you could not show your cables to anyone, would you still build them? If yes, then cool. If not, then find something that you would build strictly for your own enjoyment.
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