Those were the good old days. Shiny, yes, but not ostentatious. Other Japanese brands like Yamaha and Luxman further softened the techno-silver. Sexy indeed.
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I wanted the Nakamichi Rack system. Black, as it should be.
But the Pioneer gear is better in silver.
Now that I see it again I can tell you for sure it wouldnāt be a bedroom system.
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Nice sideboard 
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Now thatās PORN!!!
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In my listening I have found silver cable to sound more lively and musical. Especially noticeable in acoustic instruments like the bass which to my ears sounds more rhythmic and ādancyā
Solid core at all connections. DIY. Twist multiple lengths to increase gauge. Shield with braided sleeving.
Cheap experiment: Silver connector treatment. You can hear it easily.
It is a shame that not yet is Iconoclast cable available in solid core silverā¦
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P
So the premise of this thread is that conductivity isnāt important. It is other properties of wire that matter when it come to sound. So why havenāt we tested all the other metals? Or have we?
Silver is 7% better conductor than copper. Brass is 30% the conductivity of copper. Steel 5%-15% depending on the alloy. Aluminum 60%.
But steel is still a very good conductor for random currents (such as an electric fence). we weld with high amperage current passed through steel.
I remember seeing some interconnects once using powdered graphite like a spark plug wire. Very poor conductor. Spark plug wires are 500 to 5000 ohms. yikes. I didnāt listen to them so canāt comment on their effectiveness.
So has anybody performed audio testing on all these poor conductors to see how they sound? Stainless steel interconnects may be the next hot thing. Titanium? Nickel?
Jerry
Well, yes, many āpoor conductorsā have certainly been utilized, sometimes in conjunction with other materials. Molybdenum for example, seems like an interesting candidate for interconnects because it has the attribute of being an isotropic lattice structure. To me intuitively, isotropy seems like an excellent property to research in signal transmission.
Looking around I find Moly and Tungsten available. Both are relatively good conductors for non-traditional conductors. neigher is cheap compared to steel but if either turned out to be a good interconnect, they would be quite cheap by audiophile standards.
I have a good supply of WBT RCA connectors I would donate to a test set of any of these wires.
Iām of the opinion that conductivity generally does matter but Iām open minded.
Jerry
Generally of course, but in the case of interconnects we have essentially only voltage. The resistance of an interconnect should be quite abysmally large in order for it to cause things like notable roll-off. Depending on how bad itād make the ācommunicationā between the driver stage and the receiving end. Attenuation for the whole band might not be so bad since thereās a volume control to compensate. Iād think something like a Van den Hul carbon interconnect with notable resistance would still be a more benign type of āresistorā (in terms of resistor noise, etc) than many (quality) resistors found in components. Might be wrong though.
We are probaby talking about less than an ohm here, depending on length and awg. So would you lump the interconnect in with the input impedence of the device and say that it is insignificant?
Letās pick the Van den Hul āThe Secondā interconnect", with its LSC carbon, itās 36 ohms per meter. Iād say thatās still insignificant though that high.
Arenith,
Havenāt I taught you to consider ALL the aspects before claiming something is superior based on one attributes? Silver DCR makes flattening the Vp curve difficult. Lower DCR isnāt better per say and a passive attribute like DCR isnāt an issue with sound quality.
Just sticking silver in there isnāt a DESIGN it is a MATERIAL. Until all the rest of the story is ironed out, you have an expensive glob of stuff that may not be optimized, or can be optimized, at all.
It is is easy to sell a MATERIAL and not DESIGNS. A design sale requires you to SHOW how the heck it works and why. A material? Itās just āmagicā based on DCR. Nope, it isnāt. Design trumps materials every time assuming you arenāt off in the weeds somewhere.
STOP falling for the material fallacy in cables. A Ferrari is made from the same materials as a lesser peforming car but the DESIGN is what makes it better. One without the other isnāt optimized and, a fully optimized lesser material eclipses a more expensive material option in a lesser design. Or why no just use a 10 AWG silver zip cord?
In God we trust all else bring the data. How is your conductor material optimized in the electromagnetic cable design past basic DCR and grains?
Galen
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