[439598]

I notice that you sometimes see manufacturers using silver plated copper for positive wire and plain copper for the return,
thinking about building a pure silver cable and wondering how much using lower gauge good quality copper for return would limit performance, would it be better to use silver for the return aswell or is it largely a waste of money?

 

[MindsMirror]

For a balanced cable they are both equally important. The same current must go through the negative wire as the positive, and for AC signals such as audio, it travels both directions equally. It's only by convention that you might call one of them positive and the other return. For a single ended cable, the ground wire gets twice as much current because it's shared between two channels, so actually it's more important.

 

[439598]

For a balanced cable they are both equally important. The same current must go through the negative wire as the positive, and for AC signals such as audio, it travels both directions equally. It's only by convention that you might call one of them positive and the other return. For a single ended cable, the ground wire gets twice as much current because it's shared between two channels, so actually it's more important.

ah of course its AC, seems so obvious now. So these cables are really half silver plated copper ,half plain copper, a fair compromise but for a pure silver cable it wouldnt be right to use any copper.

thanks for the help!

 

[Speedskater]

I'm not aware of any cord that uses two different types of wire.