At least in terms of interconnects, the relatively “poor” conductivity of gold has no role in determining performance, considering input impedances. Right?
Well, all reviews I’ve read of interconnects with pure gold conductors have been positive, and distinct in their descriptions - gold apparently has a very unique effect on the resulting sound. Spatiality, smoothness, mellowness, relaxed, forgiving but not subduing detail are the commonly described attributes. Surely a LOT of people with sibilance issues would love gold!
There’s just a handful of manufacturers selling pure gold cabling…
Teresonic
Dual-Connect
Stealth
Ummmm… A few more.
They’re not especially expensive, generally.
Dual-Connect’s “theory” on why gold imparts the sound it does, is that the outermost free electron is farther from the nucleus than silver or copper. (1 orbital farther from silver, 2 from copper)… Thus it displaces with relative ease in comparison. Doesn’t translate to lower resistivity, it’d be something else.
If you have experience with any cables with gold conductors, please tell us about your experience and do comparisons.
Speculation on gold’s attributes in terms of signal conduction is encouraged!
I wonder if perfect-surface gold conductor would make a notable improvement, seeing that gold in general is very rough on the lattice surface.
In fact perfect-surface gold has only relatively recently been developed for research. Today the cost might be quite enormous for manufacturing such a conductor. It might need very robust hermetic sealing too, to keep its surface under handling.
A possibility of the future. Siltech might do it!
"During the 1990s, cable designer Graham Nalty tested of many different metals for their sound quality. The tests were carried out by assembling a 1 metre stereo interconnect cable to connect between a CD player and an amplifier. The test cables were simply assembled from a 1 metre length of the metal under test. The test wire was used for live signal connection and the same standard wire (PTFE insulated silver plated copper) from the same reel was used for the return conductor. In order to test metals that could not be soldered, an RCA plug with a screw connection for the centre pin was used.
By comparing all metals on a like-for-like basis, it was possible to derive a rating for each metal on a rough qualitative scale.
Almost all cables tested were superior to copper, which nevertheless is the most common metal used in audio. A rough order of performance, starting with copper would be:
I suspect after this specific journey you’re quite poorer in terms of money but not much richer in terms of sound quality (also related to the Audio Physic thread).
The best money spent would be a truly good consulting on location imo.
I’m not obsessed, I’m interested.
Well okay, obsessively interested.
I don’t think I’ll be poor after the journey, considering “journey” as the majority of the rest of my life, seeing that my obsessive interests will hopefully land me in a job of creating something new that hopefully will interest a consumer base.
