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In Reply to: The three best conductors are silver, copper, and gold, in that order. (nt) posted by John Elison on August 1, 2005 at 20:34:54:
John, thanks for the link below on the metals.Since we are talking here about tonearm wire and since most of the silver used is solidcore wth teflon it is necessary to use a much smaller gauge than say the 33awg Cardas Litz wire. From experience one must use about 36-38awg solid silver to gt enough flexibility for use in a tonearm.
33awg copper has a resistance of 0.676 ohms/meter. To compensate for the better resistivity of silver add say 6-7% or let's say 0.723ohms. That is "just" 34awg of copper. 38awg copper is 2.19 ohms/meter so silver would be about 2.05 ohms/meter. 36awg silver is 1.22ohms.
So in general if it makes a difference, the resistance that is, a suitable (from a mechanical point of view) siler would be 2 to 3 times the resistivity of the 33awg Cardas litz wire.
And I personally have not been able to hear the "magic" of silver in trials using the same gauge silver, silver plated copper, tin plated copper, tin plated silver and pure copper. These were all 30awg used as interconnects.
Follow Ups:
Did you hear any difference between any of them? What was the geometry of the interconnects?Thanks in advace!
They were all 100% identical in cnstruction, only the conductor material listed was different.The differences were very slight and surprisingly (but maybe not) the tin plated copper and tin plated silvr and silver plated copper were better by a slight margin than the pure copper and silver. There is a theory that bimetal conductors with the "less better" material on the outside is a more natural sounding conductor.
...that turntables, tonearms and cartridges make the difference—not wires.What can I say? It’s just as I expected.
You can conclude from what I said above that silver does not necessarily sound better or different from some other material "all else being equal". This I also pointed out.HOW a given conductor material is applied DOES make a difference, especially in a tonearm. Is it too stiff, is is shielded or not, how is the shield grunded, is the shield and/or ground in the signal path of the cartridge, is/are the "wire(s)" connected to the cartridge in a symmetrical pattern? And there are other considerations.
A stranded wire regardless of conductor material will sound different (red worse) than a litz wire of the same gauge.
But you are right simply using "silver" something or other just because silver has 5-6% better conductivity than copper is meaningless and probably reveals noting about the results.
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