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Materials of Interconnects

post #1 of 25
8/31/05 at 10:16pm
Thread Starter 
This is an honest post and not a joke and I am just expressing my findings based on actual tests.

If silver is bright and copper is warm, then what is zinc or whatever paper clips are made from?

I just made a pair of interconnects out of 16 jumbo paperclips, scotch tape and 4 RCA connectors and could hear no difference between the 2 materials. Since paper clips are not the most conductive material, one would think that they would sound muddy or veiled. This was not the case. They sounded just as good as my copper ones. Absolutely no difference what so ever. I compared various CDs and tried like hell to hear a difference. So much so that I found myself straining to hear a difference, rather than enjoying the music.

If there is no difference in paper clip material and copper let alone a huge difference (to my ears) I am wondering how silver can make a huge difference from copper? This is why I don't believe there is a difference in sound between different material properties of cables and conductivity does not play a role in sound quality. If it did, then the connectors would would play a part in the sound, since they make up a larger surface area for the electrons to travel than the paper clips do.

Of course the comment I always hear when people can not tell the difference in cables is that the equipment is not good enough to correctly reproduce the differences. I was using an Onix XCD-88 with OPA-627 opamps, which is basically a Music Hall CD-25 which got plenty of favorable reviews. I have this plugged into an M^3 amp with a TREAD power supply. I am also using Sennheiser HD580 headphones. I am pretty sure the equipment is up to snuff. Not high end by most people's standards here, but not junk either.

The other comments you hear are that your ears are just not trained well enough to hear the details. I think I can hear enough details and if I tried to listen any harder, I would not be having fun. I want to enjoy the music, not analyze it. I have heard that cable X blows cable Y out of the water, I have heard that silver and copper is like a night and day difference, yet I heard NO difference, let alone a huge difference.

Are paper clip interconnects the best thing? No. They are very brittle due to weak solder joints and they are not flexible. The scotch tape insulation also sticks to everything and I have to say they do not look attractive at all. They did not sound bad at all though and there was no hint of any degradation in the signal.

Those are my findings and I thought I would share why I believe cables make no difference in sound quality. If everyone can review their favorite cables and claim there are huge differences, I don't see any reason why I can't review my crappy ass beautiful sounding paper clip interconnects.


edit: The paper clips were straightened and then soldered end to end.
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post #2 of 25
8/31/05 at 10:43pm
Thanks for an entertaining read! I believe most paper clips are made out of steel.

This link

http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele026.html

mentions that paper clips are made out of steel, which is an alloy of iron and carbon.


Quote:
Originally Posted by meat01
This is an honest post and not a joke and I am just expressing my findings based on actual tests...

If silver is bright and copper is warm, then what is zinc or whatever paper clips are made from?

Those are my findings and I thought I would share why I believe cables make no difference in sound quality. If everyone can review their favorite cables and claim there are huge differences, I don't see any reason why I can't review my crappy ass beautiful sounding paper clip interconnects.
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post #3 of 25
8/31/05 at 11:38pm
Also, most likely the paperclips have a nickel plating on the surface to prevent corrosion if they sit in your desk a long time.

I'm not surprised by your results at all.

The fact that copper is said to be 'warm' and silver to be 'bright' is a strong arguement for the fact that our own percieved differences between cables is placebo effect.

The color of a metal has nothing to do with it's electrical properties. Ok, at a deep level, it's color does have something to do with it's band gap, and electron structure, but most metals develop a surface oxide coating that hides the REAL color of the metal anyway! (almost all are silvery except copper, gold, and a few others).

The differences between how metal 'sound' in the electrical path probably are easier to measure than to hear. Most changes are going to occur in the high frequency region. There is skin effect, dielectric constants, and many other factors that influence how an interconnect sounds.

I think which actual metal in the core of the wire is carrying the signal is probably a secondary effect.
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post #4 of 25
9/1/05 at 12:21am
For almost 3 years, cables made next to no difference in my system. Stranded copper, solid copper, thin, thick, it was all the same. Silver had a very slight difference which I couldn't quite place and for all I know it might've been placebo. Figured that cables were probably the last couple percent of a system and that my system wasn't anywhere close to being good enough to reveal those differences.

Then I changed the power cord on my amp about 3-4 weeks ago while keeping the IC the same, no real difference, very small improvement. On a whim I changed the IC's, and this time there was a small but clear difference between my DIY cable designs.

I thought this was really screwy since my DIY tube amp has more power supply filtering than anything I can think of so power cords shouldn't have any effect on it. But it did. And now IC changes affect it too.

Which annoys me greatly because I can neither explain nor understand it.

In theory my system before the power cord swap was more than good enough to spot cable changes. But I didn't really notice anything. And now I do and I'm having a love/hate relationship with that fact.
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post #5 of 25
9/1/05 at 1:42am
Well you can save money since you don't hear the difference. Now change the power cord on you music hall to something of higher guage and tell me the change wasn't just as big as the opamp change (that was my experience).

Biggie.
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post #6 of 25
9/1/05 at 6:06am
sounds like you had fun meat, you should post pics and a DIY in the diy forum

how much resistance did it hit? submerge it in liquid nitrogen and turn it into a super conductor

the placebic effect can go both ways, you can be so bent on hearing no difference that youve already made a decision of the outcome before even giving it a fair shot with an open mind.

to say steel spliced in multiple segments compared to a higher conductive copper in one continuous run would yield no difference in performance sounds sounds a bit extreme.
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post #7 of 25
9/1/05 at 6:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by RnB180
the placebic effect can go both ways, you can be so bent on hearing no difference that youve already made a decision of the outcome before even giving it a fair shot with an open mind.
A lot of people tend to forget this. There are some people who are ready to shout placebo when someone says they heard a difference in upgrading their cables but they don't seem to realize that the placebo effect works both ways.
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post #8 of 25
9/1/05 at 11:25am
Thread Starter 
Before I buillt my cable and tested it, I would have thought that the volume on this cable would be lower than copper due to the resistance. If there was any slight difference, I would have posted it here. I think it is extreme to claim that a cable improves soundstage. That is in the recording and the headphones, how do electrons passing though cables change the soundstage?

There are just too many factors involved for materials to affect the signal. I truly believe it doesn't depend on how conductive the material is. If it did, then the connector would have an affect. there are so many different connectors out there with so many different surface areas, yet all you have to do is stick 3 feet of silver in between and everything improves and makes a huge difference in the signal. Or at least that is the opinion on this forum. If silver altered the signal, wouldn't the brass, gold, nickel, copper, steel connectors change the signal? You never hear about that.

I could probably make an interconnect out of solder and test that. I believe as long as it is conductive the signal gets passed from the source to the amp unaltered.

I will measure the resistance tonight and I may post a picture.

I am getting a Quail Power Cable in the group buy and I plan on giving that a listen and posting my results. I have never heard other power cables.
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post #9 of 25
9/1/05 at 11:39am
Quote:
Originally Posted by meat01
This is an honest post and not a joke and I am just expressing
I was going to post/ask about materials also. Just materials though, not about sonic differences real or perceived (bit of a dead end that is for debate). I'd like to know how many different materials are used in high-end interconnects. I'm aware of copper, silver, palladium and mono-filament (nordost).
What other materials are being used.
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post #10 of 25
9/1/05 at 11:46am
Thread Starter 
Some manufacturer out there may be using gold.

gold interconnects
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post #11 of 25
9/1/05 at 12:09pm
FWIW, I'm satisfied (to myself) I've head enough cables now to know that there is no stereotypical "copper" or "silver" sound. How a particular cable sounds depends on the design and the implementation as much as conductor materials used.
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post #12 of 25
9/1/05 at 1:19pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
How a particular cable sounds depends on the design and the implementation as much as conductor materials used.

So if the conductor is solid or braided and what dialetrics are used depends on how the signal sounds? What designs have more of an effect and what do they do to the signal eg: more treble, more bass, more detail?

In your experience, do different connectors alter the signal?
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post #13 of 25
9/1/05 at 1:25pm
Scroll down the page here:

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~www_pa/...io/Analog.html

There is in-depth discussion on cables with theory and all.
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post #14 of 25
9/1/05 at 1:48pm
I think it was insightful to mention materials in IC´s, since not all IC´s are made of metal or an alloy of several

I have had years of pleasure from the Van den Hul`s carbon fibre cables, especially the First Ultimate (mk1, the mkII is quite different). Their signature is a huge airy soundstage with a feeling there is no effort what so ever to reproduce the music. The flat frequency response is also exemplary. The better source you use them with, the better the result.

However, they might be a required taste for some: The sound could be described as somewhat distant or at least absolutely not upfront. Having, IMO, an absolute flat frequency response neither the bass nor the treble are accentuated. That interprets usually to that one thinks that the bass is too deep(!) and that there is no treble definition. There might also be an certain amount of grain in the first generation of the First Ultimate, but I am happy to trade that for the fantastic natural reproduction this cable offers to, especially, classical musical.
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post #15 of 25
9/1/05 at 3:15pm
Quote:
So if the conductor is solid or braided and what dialetrics are used depends on how the signal sounds? What designs have more of an effect and what do they do to the signal eg: more treble, more bass, more detail?

In your experience, do different connectors alter the signal?
I think the sound is overall gestalt of all design factors and material factors. I think in order to figure how different geometries effect the sound, you'd have to have a dozen of the identical cables with the only difference that each is using a different geometry. But that really would only tell you how each geometry affects the signal *in that particular cable design*. Change any of the other factors (cable guage, copper/silver purity, dielectric, connectors, etc.) and you have to start all over again.

To me, it's like asking if a piece of tube gear automatically has a certain sound. Well it all depends on what tubes you are using, what configuration, the accompanying circuitry, power supply, is a transformerless design, SET or OTL and on and on.

It just gets really complicated, if not impossible to generalize.
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