If the very highest of Audio Frequencies start to get affected by the skin effect, could the increased impedance at these very high frequencies be audibly affecting the sound?
If skin effect is having a small audible effect, what test would show that parameter as becoming significant?
Now to corrosion of the skin of silver and copper cable.
Does the corroded surface be it 1mil/thou thick or 0.1mil/thou thick have a higher resistance than the un-corroded core?
Now with a corroded surface what happens to the skin effect? Does the signal now travel along the surface of the un-corroded core (i.e. just below the corrosion layer) now that this is the least impedance to the highest frequencies?
Apply all of those questions to the digital signal transfer through a corroded silver or copper cable?
Are any of the answers different?
Would any of this affect the cables ability to perform?
Would there be more dropouts? or no change?
Finally,
does resistance of the core have an effect on the characteristic impedance of a cable?
How much resistance change would be required to create a significant change in the characteristic impedance?
How big a characteristic impedance change is required to increase dropouts in a digital signal?
If skin effect is having a small audible effect, what test would show that parameter as becoming significant?
Now to corrosion of the skin of silver and copper cable.
Does the corroded surface be it 1mil/thou thick or 0.1mil/thou thick have a higher resistance than the un-corroded core?
Now with a corroded surface what happens to the skin effect? Does the signal now travel along the surface of the un-corroded core (i.e. just below the corrosion layer) now that this is the least impedance to the highest frequencies?
Apply all of those questions to the digital signal transfer through a corroded silver or copper cable?
Are any of the answers different?
Would any of this affect the cables ability to perform?
Would there be more dropouts? or no change?
Finally,
does resistance of the core have an effect on the characteristic impedance of a cable?
How much resistance change would be required to create a significant change in the characteristic impedance?
How big a characteristic impedance change is required to increase dropouts in a digital signal?
It's like cotton. There's a large table of dielectric constants you can find on several websites out there. In it, it lists the dielectric constant for cotton as 1.3-1.4, which is even lower than Teflon's 2.0. So a bunch of audiophiles jumped on the numbers game cotton bandwagon.
But what they didn't know, and what they never bothered to question, is under what conditions cotton had such a low dielectric constant. As it turns out, it only applies to cotton in its raw, loosely packed form (think cotton balls), with a packing density of only about 10%, i.e. 90% air. In textile form, such as cloth and thread, it's dielectric constant is much higher. In fact, it's no better than the dreaded PVC.
se
Right. Except that I haven't seen anyone string their wire through cotton balls in order to achieve that 1.3-1.4 dielectric constant. Oh yeah, and they'd also have to use it in a low humidity environment seeing as cotton is pretty hygroscopic.
se
OK, so we take your silver cables to interconnect between lead/tin solder, nickel chrome plated RCA jacks, tin plated copper wire internal interconnects, copper circuit board traces, various compounds used in the semi conductors throughout, then run it through either plated brass binding posts or plated steel spring connectors onto copper wire to another set of either plated brass binding posts through copper wire to another final copper traced circuit board full of various components in the crossover then to more copper wire to plated steel solder terminals to braided copper tinsel leads to an aluminum wound voice coil. (ahhh, exhale)
So, you mean to try to convince us that that couple of feet of silver wire in the middle is going to make all of the difference?
What about all of the other metals along the way that you cannot change? After all, any system is only as strong as its weakest link. There are other things in the chain that you would need to change to prove your opinion plausible let alone defy the laws of physics in the first place.
As a last note, I can't hear any difference is silver vs. copper vs. brass vs. steel vs. "mud" 😀 conductors etc... because I have never heard a cable make any sound at all unless it was used to whip some sense into some of you. Last I heard, cabled don't make any sound at all, speakers do. That's what I use to couple the electrical signal to the surrounding atmosphere.
The gullibility of some on here is asstounding. (pun intended)
If silver cables appear to sound brighter than copper cables then there must be issues in the used setup that needs to be investigated / improved / repaired...
Silk is the dielectric I have gotten the best SQ results with.
It took some time to source the best silk quality and also some time to design and build a machine to put the silk on conductors in a controlled manner. Tested also with cotton, but it was wasted time as I did not get any good SQ..
Can you please reveal the dielectric constant for cotton in textile form?
I don't believe that the placebo effect is measurable with any means other than the internal belief that there is a change and projecting that non measurable effect onto others while defying the laws of physics.
After all, in clinical testing it has been proven that sugar pills cure cancer. :sarcasticallyrollingeyeslikeaslotmachineface: 😀
No. Well, maybe, if the circuit impedances are much much lower than is common for interconnects e.g. at or below speaker impedances values! Typical interconnects are at least 3 or 4 orders of magnitude away from this.AndrewT said:
HF loss. Would be difficult to measure at audio frequencies, but could measure ultrasonic loss and extrapolate backwards.
I will leave others to comment on surface corrosion.
No change.
At audio frequencies, huge (but irrelevant except for km distances). At digital/RF frequencies, very little.
Audio, little. Digital/RF, resistance affects attenuation rather than impedance unless resistance is rather high.
For a typical short digital interconnect dropouts would be rare. Jitter would increase.
Would depend on moisture content. Therefore would change with weather. Fortunately this doesn't matter very much. So if dielectric constant did matter for audio interconnects then cotton would be a bad choice. Hence the only reason for choosing it is a good reason for not choosing it!RayCtech said:
I use silk now myself. Though its dielectric properties are no better than cotton.
Machines for doing that have been around for about a century or more.
Around 3-5 depending on humidity.
se
As cotton is a soft material I suppose it is possible that its dielectric constant could depend on electric field - so it would be non-linear. This doesn't matter too much, provided that the source impedance is low.
Perhaps it is worth pointing out that early electronics used double-cotton insulated wire because PVC had not been invented.
Perhaps it is worth pointing out that early electronics used double-cotton insulated wire because PVC had not been invented.
I had to design my own to get it just like I wanted and to be able to control the properties I regarded important.
I still find it strange that the insulation on a piece of wire has an effect on the sound but the wire itself could be made of virtually any mineral you can name without any effect on sound.
It makes a nice change from reading literally hundreds of posts from people on hifi wigwam and pink fish media, claiming that they don't like silver cable because it sounds too bright. These same people would most probably tell me I was mad to suggest that if they used silk instead of PVC insulation, it would make more of a difference than any type of wire would 😀
Anyone here read about the madness of Peter Belt who prescribed placing a cd player in the deep freeze to re-arrange the molecules for a far better sound? (That was one his saner tip's)
Now he really was totally crackers 😱
It takes all kinds I suppose.
It makes a nice change from reading literally hundreds of posts from people on hifi wigwam and pink fish media, claiming that they don't like silver cable because it sounds too bright. These same people would most probably tell me I was mad to suggest that if they used silk instead of PVC insulation, it would make more of a difference than any type of wire would 😀
Anyone here read about the madness of Peter Belt who prescribed placing a cd player in the deep freeze to re-arrange the molecules for a far better sound? (That was one his saner tip's)
Now he really was totally crackers 😱
It takes all kinds I suppose.
Oh i'm not challenging it, I now know better, if enlightened ones say silk sounds better, well, just who am I to say they are wrong eh 😀
Well, if you're reasonably intelligent and open-minded, you'll want to know how they've demonstrated that extraordinary claim. Or if they've actually bothered and there's more there than claims of alien abductions with anal probing.
If you're relentlessly gullible, you'll accept remarkable claims at face value, spend years happily wasting your time and money while not improving your sound, and generating lots of forum posts proclaiming the wonders of whatever snake oil appeals to you at that moment.
I'd like to think more people fall into the first category and have a decent B****** Filter, but I'm a bit despairing of that at the moment. 😀
Fair enough. Personally I think we had cables pretty well nailed down about a century ago.
se
The wire needs to be a reasonably good conductor. The insulation needs to be a reasonably good insulator. That is it. The only assumption is that the source has low impedance and the load has high impedance and the connection is not too long - normal for domestic audio.davym said:
I prefer that the source and load impedance are identical and true differential for both digital and analog transmission.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.