Do Cables Wear Out?

Spl: I use vdH carbon cables and am pretty familiar with the claims they make for them. FWIW, the info you quote from their site isn't about what you asked, i.e., that cables might somehow "wear out" due to conduction of electricity over time. (Personally, I give about as much credence to that theory as the LOLlers above.)

The passage you quoted is about the physical properties of metal cables as manufactured, not associated with aging. There are also metal cables made from wire drawn in a different process that don't exhibit the internal "cystalline boundary" characteristics vdH is referring to, known as Ohno continuous-casting (OCC, not to be confused with Orange County Choppers). In any event, the vdH carbon cables don't have these boundaries, which is the point they're trying to illustrate by way of comparison. VdH also asserts that their so-called Linear Structured Carbon (LSC) can neither oxidize over time nor be microscopically stressed or damaged by being sharply bent or repeatedly flexed.

How much any of this really means for home audio is highly debatable, but I do think The First Ultimate non-metal interconnect is an extremely high-fidelity set of wires when used in appropriate applications (it won't work in every system, for reasons we needn't go into here). VdH also makes cables where the metal wires are coated with a protective layer of conductive LSC (construction they label Hybrid), which is claimed to help mitigate the scenario noted by Greeni from the Audience website.

BTW, I've experienced the deterioration in both sound and flexibility correlated with copper oxidation in cheap clear-jacket cord used as speaker cable, but it took over 15 years to become objectionable under the prevalent conditions, and I wouldn't expect this to be a serious problem for typical audiophile-grade cables in most environments.

Pabelson, If someone (in this thread) said 15% over 3 years does that make a meaningful difference in your life? Would that be in a high humidity reqion or a low humidity region? Would that be lengths over 3 meters or shorter than 3 meters? Would that be solid core copper or stranded? Quantification of how much sonic deterioration in un-coated copper cables due to oxidation is something that I am certain THIS government would grant the funds required for the research necessary to give you a precise figure- you would dispute anyway. Enought... arggggggg

Spl: Oops, I also forgot to mention -- as long as we're mentioning at all, we might as well be comprehensive about it -- that vdH (and possibly only one or two other brands) offers wires made from amorphous metals, another manufacturing process (different from OCC) that is said to avoid microstructural crystalline boundaries. (VdH calls this technology "Fusion" because it uses an alloy, and combines it with their LSC carbon coating. I haven't heard these cables, though I've heard good things about them.) BTW, I should hasten to add that I'm no more technically qualified than most audiophiles to really know anything about this whole supposed 'crystal' business or what effect it may or may not truly have on wire sound, which of course hasn't stopped me from using LSC and OCC wires in my own system...

JPW: In other words, you have no idea how much "corrosion" a speaker cable would typically suffer over X years, and whether that corrosion would reduce conductivity enough to be audible. So your earlier statements were based on . . . what exactly? Nothing that I can see.

I and others have noted that even decades-old wire can have very little visible tarnish, let alone corrosion. Seems to me you're trying to invent a problem that isn't there.

Does anyone know if capsaicin extract treatment can restore original conductivity in tarnished silver cables? Or in other words, will capsaicin bind to Silver sulphide and dissolve it?