Great questions/ideas. That old Siltech was LS-38, and some more modern variants. This wire annihilated the solid VS multistrand headache that has plagued builders for over a Century. Totally laid waste to it, and a bunch of other pet theories too... Using solid wires? Then, accept notchy bandwidth anomalies--- solid wire tunes according to length and diameter. Works fine in a Radio.... not so much in High Fidelity. Don't forget "skin-effect"-- it's very real, and more prevalent as wire diameter increases. Solid wire is very coherent, but alas! It, alone is only one tool of many, it's not High Fidelity. Multistrand? Copper oxidizes, giving us diode-like effects... Strands rub together, giving us less coherency and a more mushy, bloated, gutless sound. Use silver? Silver tarnishes. Fortunately, silver tarnish has nowhere near the horrible effects of oxidized copper-- so it isn't AS bad... Enter George Cardas, the man who tames copper multistrand. George has his own metals refining in California. Cardas Litz has individual strands that can't rub together-- they're coated with a dielectric. Want to hear copper perform? Siltech added some Gold to their silver metallurgy-- an amalgam was the result. Solder is also an amalgam. Their silver/gold metal does not tarnish, so has no diode- effects. Sounds just like a solid wire in that you have no non-coherent side-effects from using it. It is Multistrand, of course. And no, nothing outperforms it-- solid or multistrand. In Siltech's case, multistrand outperforms solid. How? It has a far more linear bandwidth. So, as long as the side-effects problem is solved, you have something that outperforms ALL solid wire. This was due to very careful metallurgical engineering, and careful Silicone, Kapton, or perhaps Teflon jacketing. We also have Cardas solid silver-- which is a very good short-length hookup wire for small signals-- I often parallel this or triple it, and gain more overall linerarity and "punch". We have AGSS from Kimber. It has a very slight "golden" sheen... Hmmmm-m? Alright, then... Silver Sonic continues to advance, and other silver wire people are catching up. All of this wire development is a huge advantage to builders. Now, we can find near Siltech performance from other vendors... which is already lowering costs. In the old days, I used the heavy Siltech multistrand silver/gold for nearly everything. The difference over anything else was very obvious-- you HAD to use it. The largest improvement of all came to me while I had a JBL Paragon. (83-88 db). The Paragon had over 80 feet of 14ga. silver wire in it from the factory. This special wire was carbon-granule baked, and then jacketed. I was using high-power tube amps to drive the Paragon. My 2A3 amps sounded wonderful on this monster, but couldn't get it to full power and glory-- I love marching bands, and a good Rock Band as well as other music. I re-wired the whole thing with Siltech LS-38. This was doubled-up for the crossover inputs from the amplifiers, (there are 4 crossovers) and for crossover outputs into the 15" woofers. The system was listened to-- the small 2A3 amps now easily had more power than the Paragon needed-- through THIS wire!! For any listening level that one could physically stand. Clean, clear, super dynamic and wideband. Awesome. Next, I "blueprinted" both the midrange drivers and the tweeters.... I went through several voice-coils until I got perfect fitting all around. The short wires inside the driver cups were replaced with Siltech LS-38. This garnered more improvements than the voice-coil fitting alone did! Together? NOW, we were talking!! The JBL Paragon became an indispensable engineering tool. It could reproduce every part of music with great transparency power and dynamics. The Integrator-panel across its front (see JBL Heritage) allowed far better see-through into recording venues, and inside acoustical instruments than most anything, yet transparency and bandwidth rivaled the best headsets. It delivered something headsets can't do-- it placed the venue into your room. It didn't merely "take you there", it took the venue TO YOU. The JBL Paragon became the ultimate design tool for amps, and everything else in a good audio system. Of course, it became obvious that amplifiers require the same quality wiring, and require different wire-fitting in different parts of an amplifier. Today, several brands and designs of wiring are used as wire advances continue.. What you use is up to you-- and it must be. This is only a Hobby-- you can play at any level you like. Don't let anybody fool you, or play around with your mind, or waste your time trying to "prove" clinically-provable assumptions with charts, graphs, etc., unless you NEED and can APPLY the data usefully. Personally, I read most of it, and sometimes learn something genuinely useful from it. Just remember one thing: it's all about performance in the real world-- does it make you want to get up and dance, or will it just play impressively until you sooner or later-- tire of it? The better the ingredients, the better the Pie. The better the Baker, also the better the Pie, and you get satisfaction!. -Dennis-
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