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In Reply to: RE: Interesting Factoid posted by Joe Roberts on September 3, 2012 at 17:24:23:
I am well aware of the use of silver plating in RF circuits. Most rigid wave guide is silver plated.Why?
Well the received signals are very low voltages so conductivity is important. As skin effect is very real at say 10ghz, the thin plating is all that is needed. Anything thicker would be a waste.
Now some audio rag reads this somewhere and thinks because the trunk receive dish on a cell phone tower needs silver plating and skin effect is an important factor, well then it must be true for audio interconnects and speaker cables as well.
Engineering is all about numbers. Try to get into a good engineering university with a poor math background. It is this understanding of numbers or rather lack there of that breeds these audiophile claims.
Yes there is skin effect on a speaker cable! Yes it can be measured or at least proven on paper! However the true engineer knows that effect is so miniscule that it is irrelevant for the purpose at hand, that is an audio reproduction system. The non technical audiophile does not have the training or study in mathematics to sort this out. They don't understand the relevance factor derived from the math.
As I said initially there are many applications for silver wire in electronics as well as other exotic formulations. The difference is there is documented science behind the work like in the examples you provided. But just because some precision lab instrument needs the superior conductivity of silver does not equate to the internal wiring of an audio preamp. Likewise if a transmission line several hundred miles long benefits for a unique copper formulation does not mean it makes any detectable difference as a 20 foot speaker wire.
And I still maintain the legitimate uses for these exotic wire formulation came from the traditional electronics industry first. It's the hack audiophile companies that have taken this science out of context.
I was wrong about one thing though. Based on the prices they charge and get, I guess it's not much of a stretch to reason these audiophile wire vendors can get silver wire drawn to their specs at a tidy profit.
Edits: 09/04/12 09/04/12 09/04/12
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Follow Ups
- Skin effect! - gusser 11:35:32 09/04/12 (1)
- RE: Skin effect! - Joe Roberts 12:24:02 09/04/12 (0)
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