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Re: Why is Siltech the only line with a gold-silver conductor?

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I recently purchased pure "fine" silver wire from a wire manufacturer in 16 ga. and 20 ga. and correspondingly sized tubing from McMaster Carr to bi-wire my speakers. Single strands of the 16 ga. for the bottom-end and single strands of the 20 ga. for the ribbons.

Just yesterday I received my latest review of Stereophile. There is a rather long article on the principle of cable design. The gist of the article (as I humbly understand it) is that cable design and/or choice of wire makes very little difference in the quality of truly "accurate" sound reproduction. The real difference is to be found in the impedance of the output (i.e. CDP), the "impedance of the cable" and the impedance of the input (i.e. pre-amp).

This article makes perfect sense and exposes the whole cable industry scam (IMHO). Simply put, different cables have different impedances and therefore sound different. The article states that virtually any cable could be matched to the impedance of the source and the downline input. Think about it, resistors and caps can both be used to alter the "signal" in any other piece of electronic gear (amps, preamps, cdp, speakers) and in doing so, they alter the sound. Some cables may indeed sound better than others, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they are more accurate. But hey, if inaccurate or colored cables sound better to ya, then who am I to criticize.

Since every cable has its own impedance, it therefore imparts its own sound as well. For ultimate neutrality, cable manufacturers should simply be using any good quality wire (any wire!) and custom manufacture the impedance to match that of the individual's system. Unless, however, one "chooses" to intentionally change the impedance of the cable to alter the sound from total neutrality to something that simply sounds more appealing, accurate or not.

The next great cable company to emerge may very well be the one that manufactures custom cables on an idividual basis for all of us Joe Schmoes . This is not rocket science that we are talking about here. It is simply resistors used to match impedance. Cables would be sold at a fraction of the price that they are now and probably be far more accurate.

BTW, the silver cables that I made sounded better than my Audioquest cables within two hours of burn-in. With an additional three days of burn-in, they have all the bottom-end weight of the AQ, a beautiful mid-range and a very detailed high-end without being the least bit bright. All of the naysayers criticizing silver wire (bright, lean mid-range and bottom-end) were just plain wrong as it relates to "my" system and "my" ears. The silvers are much smoother and more musical without sacrificing anything to the AQ. Bare in mind, I am not saying the AQ cables are bad, they just simply aren't as good as my home-made $100 silver cables made from single strands.

What's the reason for this? For one, silver is simply a better conductor than copper and I suspect that the silver cables may simply match the impedances in my system a little better. When I have time, I am going to match the impedances of my system per the Stereophile article and see how they sound. Who knows, I may not like them as much! Maybe a little color is not a bad thing.

Having said that though, my goal is to reproduce the signal as accurately as possible and if the sound doesn't seem as good, I will try to re-educate my ears to prefer the accurate sound. I guess it could be akin to the ole saying of "having to acquire a taste for beer".


FWIW, I got the silver cable idea from:

http://www.laventure.net/tourist/cables.htm

(One note, I called "six" different wire companies that manufacture silver wire. They all said that 99.9% pure is the highest purity that they manufacture. I have also read that the techology doesn't exist yet to make better than 99.99% pure silver wire. Therefore:

I am very skeptical of companies that say they offer 5N or 6N pure silver wire. Hey, who's going to check them, right! Not me....and probably not you. I suspect that they are counting on that. They are probably willing to take the chance that none of us will be sending the cables that we buy out for purity testing. I guess they assume it would be rather simple to plead "mea culpa"....."Oh, it must have been a typo!")

Thad


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