Jump to content

Silver-plated Copper Cables


Guest gmdb

Recommended Posts

Heres a spanner.
For interconnects, magnet wire with only a thin layer of enamel for insulation and cardas quad eutectic solder (has silver content) can sound quite nice.  Might be abit bright though.
No roll off, next to no dielectric effect.  If you dont want to spend huge sums of money, this can be surprisingly good.
You can try the different wire gauges (30 - 20 is commonly available) and solder to voice your interconnect to suit.  Depending on the gauge, they can take awhile to settle.

back in 2004 i went through a magnet wire phase. i used Cardas enameled wire as used in their litz cables. 18ga. solid core for speaker cables & 31ga and 35ga. for interconnects. I had issued with bass roll off for interconnects. Long cables were too delicate to handle.

maybe i’ll try it again as i still have some wire.

the 31ga. cardas wire was recommended by Dave Slagle (intact audio/autoformer passive volume attenuators) as he uses it to wind the autoformers.
Link to comment
Share on other sites



Guest PlanetExpress
10 hours ago, misternavi said:

back in 2004 i went through a magnet wire phase. i used Cardas enameled wire as used in their litz cables. 18ga. solid core for speaker cables & 31ga and 35ga. for interconnects. I had issued with bass roll off for interconnects. Long cables were too delicate to handle.

maybe i’ll try it again as i still have some wire.

the 31ga. cardas wire was recommended by Dave Slagle (intact audio/autoformer passive volume attenuators) as he uses it to wind the autoformers.

 

Hi misternavi,

 

Try something much thicker (for an interconnect).  Abit of inductance (from the thicker wire) adds abit of tone to things and doesnt roll of the bass.

24awg as a ball park ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 
Hi misternavi,
 
Try something much thicker (for an interconnect).  Abit of inductance (from the thicker wire) adds abit of tone to things and doesnt roll of the bass.
24awg as a ball park ?

i’ll try, hate soldering multistrand litz wire. i have a audio research litz cable all up it’s about 14ga. of wires per conductor i had a hard time soldering to rcas but it does sound glorious.

Ivan.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 1/1/2018 at 8:02 PM, gmdb said:

... there has been something of a reaction against them and largely they are considered an inferior product. But I notice that many audio companies like Chord and Nordost are still producing products that use silver plated copper...

I've not had the opportunity to compare silver/silver plated copper/copper interconnects.  But even if the silver-copper were inferior, the manufactures would continue to produce them so long as there was profitable demand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

In the last month I bought a set of Chord Anthem Reference silver plated copper cables to replace a set of Ortofon Reference 7 9s copper that go between pre and power amps. I've been stunned at the difference. Massive increase in soundstage depth and width, far, far more detail and perceptibly louder but that could be imagined due to the other differences. Over the years I've tried many tonearm cables of copper on my SME IV and V arms and have kept on coming back to the stock SME cable which is VdH 501silver plated copper so I would say I'm now sold on that configuration. I can't fault it and when funds allow I'm now looking at going down that route with all my cabling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



Guest Muon N'

I have experienced silver plated copper that i liked and others i disliked.  I can only guess that the differences included one or more of the following, metals quality an the manufacturing processes including the plate thickness, use and construction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I’ve recently tried sliver-plated RCA cables (streamer to amp) which resulted in more detail (positive for me), however also resulted in more brightness (negative for me) at high volumes . . . So much so that after a few days of trying to live with them, they were replaced with another new pair of copper cables costing a quarter of the price . . .

Loss of some detail, but for me, no longer fatiguing.

Keeping the silver-plated cables for when I go separates rather than integrated (aspirational), as this may be where they perform better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.




×
×
  • Create New...
To Top