Would silver cables beat UP-OCC copper?

@nonoise,

Yes, you sure are in a SC quandary, LOL. I mean how can you go wrong with 10 gauge OCC stranded silver for the bass?

My Neotech speaker cables are the 9 gauge NES 1002 series which I just found a pair online for 5800, what? I have two pairs of these. I bought them just before Neotech became a true marketing brand instead of being an OEM for several other mainstream cable manufacturers. 
People who look at them think I have welding cables or pythons behind the amps, LOL.  The Tempo Electric cables, which are significantly smaller in diameter compared to the Neotechs, has me wondering how they would sound, hmmm.

 Also, Neotech has plenty of pure silver variants with PTFE options all over the marketplace. Lots of experimentation opportunities for sure. 

In their upper-end ICs, Inakustik go to heroic lengths (with small discs with tiny holes in them) to ensure the wires remain in an air dielectric with minimal contact with anything.  Black Cat's "wavy" flattened wire takes a less expensive path to achieving something close to 100% air dielectric.  Other manufacturers claim an air dielectric but don't post detailed diagrams of how they manage this inside their interconnects.

Also, anyone know the Dielectric Constant (Dk) of the enamel coating on magnet wire?

@koestner ,


There are any number of varnish types but polyurethane and polyimide and polyester are most common.  For speakers, there are some epoxies and polyvinyls too.

Well, I just went into the rabbit hole and this is one large warren.  Going through my SC pile I dug out a set of Supra Ply with tinned ends and replaced the Tempo Electrics with them. I haven't tried them since I got my power conditioner, fuses, footers, etc. so it's been a good many years. 

By themselves and with proper jumpers, they injected too much smoke into the mix and were weak in the bass. Now, when being used in a bi wire set, they inject just enough smoke so as to take away the sharp outlines that the silver cables provide. Just enough to take away that you are there in the recording studio feeling to now being out in the audience. Every single thing I hear in with the silver cables is present, but not as prominent in the leading edge.

There's a kind of burnishing of the sound with small doses of honey that fleshes out voices, instruments and the like and is really captivating. Hearing that, I went and swapped out the Cabledyne Virtuosos with a pair of Zu Events and it was kind of a let down with regards to bass. Kind of hard to tell so I ran my CD burn in disc and will keep them in for a week or so to see how they fare.

What I intend to do is see if I can go with an all copper route with a nice bi wire set. This will be interesting since my JBLs are truly meant to be bi wired and this is just the start of things. All previous conceptions seem to be going out the proverbial window. It seems like Vandersteen was right when he said one must remove the bass cabling from the rest of the spectrum as it interferes too much with it.

All the best,
Nonoise

Talk about a 180. Listening to the cooper set up I was noting the pluses and minuses. It was when I put on a solo cello was when I heard the grossest event. The cello was playing dead center and as it played, some of it went about 1/3 of the way to the left when it always stayed nice and centered. 

I chalked that up to the stranded wire. There was also some sibilance in the upper mids where it never existed before. Enough of this.

When putting the Cabledyne Virtuosos back it (and not looking forward to using the Tempo Electric) I remembered the lower line of Cabledyne SCs that I had and put them in. It's their entry line of silver cables that also uses OCC stranded silver but in a lower tech jacket, sheathed in copper with BFA bananas. 

The last time I tried them in a bi wire set up was before I got my power conditioner, footers and before I switched the filter setting on my SACD player. It had an etched sound to it. Wondering how I was going to use two banana connectors on one input, I just unloosened the plastic cover on the speaker output as far as it would go and saw my opening: the bare wire insert was large enough to accommodate the banana so I put it in, tightened it down, and use the regular input for the other banana.

It's game over for me now. With OCC stranded silver in both cables of the same make and length, my speakers now sing with one unified voice, the likes of which I've never experienced. 

As Alex said, in A Clockwork Orange, "it's clear as a sky of azure blue: clear as an unmuddied lake." 

Now I know what coherence is. There's no sign of aggressiveness, glare, bite, etch, or forwardness. No leading edge to speak of. Just music that's full, detailed, balanced and natural. There's real silence when the music pauses.

I don't know why Cabledyne went out of business but that former Belden engineer who designed these cables knew what he was doing.

All the best,
Nonoise