Silver v Copper wire phono cable
Getting ready to order new tonearm, have option for either copper or silver continuous phono cable from cartridge to preamp. without the opportunity to compare personally, I would like to hear how others would chose....my system is shown on this site...thank you
J
I make cables for my own pleasure and to make money. I have been working with exotic and precious materials since 1981. I use silver cabling throughout my personal system. You can see my system at Audio Union. The cables are worth more than the rest of my system. Silver will always out perform copper given all other things are equal. |
@pindac , interesting. I have not analyzed that from a mechanical perspective. Both metals are very ductile and malleable. Wires of similar gauge will be just as flexible. Both will strain harden but not to a degree that would cause failure in this application. Both would break just as easily. I would think strength and flexibility would depend more on the material used for insulation. As an example Etymotic ear phones have Kevlar strands in the insulation. You can hang yourself with them before they will break. I managed to do it anyway, a long story. Silver is a slightly better conductor but in reality this means very little. Both will tarnish. In Short, the best tonearm wire should be strong and very flexible. This depends more on gauge and the mechanical properties of the insulation. The highest gauge you can get away with maintaining reasonable strength is the way to go. As for which conductor to use? I would be willing to bet $1000 that if I did blind AB testing on a group of audiophiles none of them would be reliably able to identify the conductor. It is a shame that a group of us do not get together to perform tests like these. They do not get done because the media does not want to piss of 90% of it's advertisers and a wealthy audiophile has not come along to underwrite a group such as this. As if it means anything, I had a choice of wire with Schroder tonearm. I chose copper. I thought the silver was a waste of money. @bpoletti , if any of us can hear a 3mB difference in volume I am a monkey's uncle. There is absolutely no frequency response change between silver and copper wire in the audio band. So, I am going to have to agree with lewm on this one. |
Dont forget that the 3 cables you compared AN, Cardas & Discovery are vastly different constructions - AN is a 3 wires litz per conductor, Cardas is a multistrand variable size litz, Discovery multistrand uniform size ( not sure if true litz ).And of course the insulation is different on all three cables. FYI - a few years ago I put some Furutech La Source 101 headshell leads onto my FR64S. This was one of the biggest surprises I’ve had in many years. I have been in top end audio for 30 years sold multitudes of top arms and rewired plenty. I note that their cartridge pins are rhodium on phosphor bronze - they are exceedingly tight and I would check out if you can source some of those pins. I agree if you are using the AN wire the AN pins look very good. I like the crimped construction.
So what - I have a Dynavector Karat Nova 13D and Ikeda Kiwame both of which have copper coils and piss all over the Koetsu Rosewood Signature Platinum for transparency and speed.
Nonsense - copper is far less maleable and harder than silver given the same size etc. |
@dover, what I said is exactly true. I did not say which one was more or less ductile and malleable and in the context of wire the distinction is close to being meaningless. It is extremely easy to draw both metals into wire. In actuality either metal can be more or less ductile depending on the alloy. As pure metals silver is more ductile than copper but if you look at a chart of metals both are near the top. The only one better than silver is gold. I think copper is fourth on the list. Try making wire out of titanium. |
