[castleofargh]

it does for how high a frequency can go through without being rolled off too much. but of course for the audio band that wasn't really an issue in the first place. it would be more relevant and significant to look for roll off from the headphone itself and pick another, or check the response on the DAC and amp at high frequencies. I consider that irrelevant because everything else will tend to have much more impact on sound, but his points are not false.

the thing is, for IEMs we could argue that silver is not always better. be it objectively or subjectively. and when someone always finds his gears to sound better with silver, my personal interpretation is that placebo is making the real judgement, not sound. first because there is no way changes would be clearly audible on all devices just from going to the same length and gauge but silver. and second because if it was audible, often the result wouldn't be preferred as for one IEM it will boost an area, for another it will decrease it, and the magnitude of impact has no reason to be the same with various sources and IEMs. plus on a few occasions cables are part of the final tuning of the IEM and weren't picked by chance but because many people thought it made an improvement over basic low impedance random cable(which a standard silver cable also is).
of course my first guess would be that whatever change occurs, it probably isn't audible when going from a fine copper cable to the same length and gauge of silver cable. but it could probably happen on extreme circumstances so I don't reject the possibility. I only reject the idea that it always makes things better. only placebo has that power, not silver.

 

[Speedskater]

Well it's a good thing that the conductivity of metals do read forums then
Because they have a measurement for types of metals & silver OCC has the fastest rating on the International Annealed Copper Standard system (IACS).

The fastest rating? Is that a typo?

But remember that those measurements apply to conductors with the exact cross-section area. A few years ago a magazine measured several copper speaker cables listed as 12AWG. The resistance measurements were all over the place. It's not likely that copper, OCC and silver conductors will have the same cross-section area, even if they has the same stated AWG.

But for a interconnect signal conductor, it doesn't matter if it's 18AWG or 26AWG or made of copper, OCC or silver. The interconnect end-to-end resistance of any of the conductors is about 1 Ohm or less. So the differences might be 1/10 Ohm. The load is 10,000 Ohms. The 1/10 Ohm difference is a very small part of 10,000 Ohms.

 

[Thenewguy007]

There is a reason why Gold plated often sounds slow & smooth, while silver sound fast & analytical over general copper.

The numbers aren't drastic from each other, but they DO make a difference. That's why a lot of the ultra high-fi gear use silver UP-OCC & low-fi use the standard copper they get from their local hardware store.

 

[castleofargh]

There is a reason why Gold plated often sounds slow & smooth, while silver sound fast & analytical over general copper.

sorry but that's utter nonsense. how did you come up with a direct relation between conductivity and perceived slow & smooth? just silly.

 

[Speedskater]

There is a reason why Gold plated often sounds slow & smooth, while silver sound fast & analytical over general copper.
The numbers aren't drastic from each other, but they DO make a difference. That's why a lot of the ultra high-fi gear use silver UP-OCC & low-fi use the standard copper they get from their local hardware store.

Nope, for an analog interconnect they don't make any difference.

* * * * * * * * *
For an AC cord or speaker cable, what matters most is total end-to-end resistance and that depends more on length and cross-section area than on material.

 

[Speedskater]

Lets explain this conductivity thing a little. Say you had a silver wire with a 1 mm sq. cross-section area (about 17AWG) and an aluminum wire with a 1.7 mm sq cross-section area (about 14.5AWG), both wire would have the same conductivity.

 

[colonelkernel8]

There is a reason why Gold plated often sounds slow & smooth, while silver sound fast & analytical over general copper.

The numbers aren't drastic from each other, but they DO make a difference. That's why a lot of the ultra high-fi gear use silver UP-OCC & low-fi use the standard copper they get from their local hardware store.

This is some anti science bull dude. "Slow and smooth"? What does that even mean?

I think there's a cable forum for you, it's not in Sound Science. I would go into the science of why you're wrong. I could EVISCERATE your nonsense claims. But the problem is you're either trolling, or so far gone down the positive feedback loop of subjectivity you won't believe the cold hard physics I'd be laying out. So at the end of the day it's a waste of my time.

Futhermore, it's a waste of your time to come in here and make nonsensical claims with no basis in science other than numbers on a chart that you *clearly* don't understand.

 

[colonelkernel8]

Lets explain this conductivity thing a little. Say you had a silver wire with a 1 mm sq. cross-section area (about 17AWG) and an aluminum wire with a 1.7 mm sq cross-section area (about 14.5AWG), both wire would have the same conductivity.

You're wasting your time on this guy.

 

[bigshot]

Perfect example of someone looking at numbers without understanding what they represent and interpreting them in a way that justifies an incorrect subjective assumption.

 

[Speedskater]

You're wasting your time on this guy.

So true!
But other innocent readers get confused, it seems reasonable to them.

 

[tjy00]

There's just so much more that impacts the sound of cable other than the conductor material such as braiding, shielding and guage.

 

[bigshot]

you mean expectation bias?

 

[castleofargh]

There's just so much more that impacts the sound of cable other than the conductor material such as braiding, shielding and guage.

there are things you measure, then you have a magnitude for the changes, and you know what is going on for your cables used on your gears in your house. which could be relevant if something is bad or if you didn't care much about general electrical rules of thumb like damping ratio. practical tests tend to show that if we mind what we're doing and don't go purchasing random exotic gears with weirdo designs, a cheap cable can do as well as a fancy cable with all the bells and whistles to the point that people wouldn't be able to tell them apart in a blind a test.
but sure enough there are occasions where a simple cable does make a night and day difference. I experienced such situations a few times with defective cables, and once with a super weird IEM cable costing 1000$, when using it with an IEM that had a nightmare for impedance graph. the difference in total loudness and in frequency response was so massive, nobody would need a blind test to admit it was there. so sure enough cables can make a significant difference sometimes.

now the other approach is not measuring anything, so we have no magnitude and we can go turn a pebble into a mountain in our mind if we so please. we can also use the first anecdotal experience we encounter and conceptualize that this will happen for all cables under all conditions. which is silly because in practice it probably comes down to an occurrence as rare as purchasing a defective device. and it would be weird to make plans all the time for such rare "crap happens" situations.
yes shielding can be of use, just like in some applications, like with IEMs, it will be more relevant to keep the impedance as low as possible and the cable as flexible as possible, instead of shielding it like crazy. most of the time just twisting the cable will act as local cancellation points for RFI/EMI. and most of the time even if those noises are picked up, they will reach a headphone with a sensitivity so low the the noise will be lower than the quantization noise of your DAC.
nobody here is saying that one cable is good for everything. what we're saying is that there is one proper standard for a specific use, and that the default cable has just as much chance if not more of being it compared to fancy audiophile cable with everything extra.
but then again a blind listening test to decide what sounds best(if different at all), or some measurements to get the magnitude of the changes and see if one if better or just different in loudness or impedance. those should be the tools used by people before they come up with claims about what is going on. that would for starters show how obvious it is that one metal or one sort of braid or shielding, will not provide constant improvements for all situations. when a cable is short and already measures 0.2ohm, who gives a crap about replacing it by the same with silver? but again you can only realize that if you do measure something and understand the magnitudes involved. if you only look at the conductivity coefficients, of course it looks like silver will always offer that extra 6% and while we don't have a fracking clue about what that does, it's a number that looks significant enough. when you measure the signal coming out of your playback gear and the only noticeable change is +0.08dB at 20khz, all of a sudden it puts things in perspective. even more so if you measure again with the headphone just slightly moved on the head and you notice that the slight move altered the signal by 3dB at 20KhZ and by up to 5 at 12khz. magnitudes, they're relevant! and concrete measurements are really a good way to know if we're doing things for sound or because it makes us feel special.
don't get me wrong, I do things because they make me feel special all the time. I just don't come telling everybody that I did it for the better trebles of silver. or maybe I will to impress the cable ladies, but I'd know better

 

[colonelkernel8]

There's just so much more that impacts the sound of cable other than the conductor material such as braiding, shielding and guage.

lol.

Shielding? I mean, maybe over 100ft+ runs of line level cable and shorter runs of digital interconnects, sure. Gauge? Speaker wire, sure. Braiding? Unless we're talking twisted pairs of differential signals, then this is a huge myth.

 

[ev13wt]

There's just so much more that impacts the sound of cable other than the conductor material such as braiding, shielding and guage.

Ok, I'll agree with you that some applications need specially designed wires. For instance: Thunderbolt (pci-e over copper) Things like the "skin effect" are actually real.

Changing a cable in home audio WILL change the sound. Ok. But how much? It is orders of magnitude less than lets say: moving your head half an inch in the room from the ideal listening position, or putting on the headphones 1/32th different from the previous position. Or a fly farting. Or earthworms crawling.

Are you pissed at those farting flys everywhere? Then maybe, MAYBE I'll talk about cable sound.