Serious Question About Silver vs Copper Conductivity for Power

@deadhead1000 

If I am not mistaken, you're saying that copper and silver conduct at the same rate of speed, but silver's lowered resistance means it can carry more current than copper?  If that's true, then having an 8awg copper wire will deliver more current than a 14awg silver wire? Therefore the only advantage in power would be solely having more conductive material than another cable.

In regards to power path, I have more silver in the path than is common.  The house mains are copper, but the outlet is silver.  The mains plugs are silver and that cable has a primary silver core (and another conductor that is copper.) Albeit the power distributor is all copper. Then going out is copper all the way through.

I have heard performance increases changing power cables. Interestingly enough, those changes were upgrades to one of the following categories:

1. Gauge size (larger.)
2. Plug quality.  Gold plated bronze to gold plated copper.
3. Passive filters.

This will potentially be the first time I have attempted a change that was solely the core conductor.

@mitch2 

I have 45 bottles of different Bourbon, 12 different Rums, 4 Scotches, 5 Irish Wiskeys.  I don't need any more booze. ;)

Also, I am solving a power problem: Dynamic Transient Current Delivery.

As stated in my OP, the faster you can fill the capacitor for the amps to draw on, the better the performance.

The best example of this is when I was running Audioengine A2+.  Those are tiny and needed far less power. Those were also running on the Palladian. The power main was the Shunyata Research Delta. I felt the sound quality was incredible, except a bit thin because of the size of the drivers. I upgraded to the HD6 with the expectation that it would sound better than the A2+.  It was not. In fact, it was flat, non-engaging, and generally blah. All it did was add more bass that I didn't really want. That bass was overpowering all other sound.

I tried changing:
1. ) Main incoming sound cable.
2. ) Internal fuse.
3. ) Room treatment.
4. ) Vibration solutions.

These all made changes to the sound for the better, but not in the amazing way the A2+ was doing. Like an envelopment or bubble of sound that had both clarity and realism. This was still a wall of two dimensional sound.  It had better clarity now, and better sound stage, and the bass was becoming more tamed, allowing for more high frequency data to come through.  But it just wasn't there.  Until...

I upgraded the mains power cable from Shunyata's Delta to the Alpha. I went from 10awg to 8awg. That did it, for the most part. That created the envelopment and engagement I was after. Other tweaks followed and aided in more clarity, but nothing as drastic as changing the power cable.

So, if the other comments are correct, then all I did was add more conductive material to the power path. Which now begs the question if 20 cores of 28awg silver wire individually insulated in Teflon is equal to or better in terms of conductivity than 3 14awg copper bundles insulated in Teflon, but with a filter?
 

Other than component choice, my main improvement to my system came via the Shunyata Everest 8000 power conditioner and Alpha / Alpha NR PCs. I went with Venom NR for subs. I think the Noise Reduction coming out of the Everest was important and the Everest’s ability to momentarily provide 30 Amps x 6 circuits doesn’t hurt. So, clean power that can provide momentary power surges seems to really step things up. Next, I’m increasing the gauge of my speaker cable, but still staying copper.. will be using the AQ William Tell Zero full range.  I'm still on a 15 amp non dedicated circuit.

Yes, I realize that this topic is going to bring out the sharks, but if I get at least one serious response, it will all be worth it.

I understand that silver conducts 7% faster than copper.

Speed of conduction is not what is happening.
There is just slightly less resistance.

There is not some magic with silver that makes it “faster”, but silver and copper is make of neutrons, protons and electrons… and the # of protons is what defines silver as unique.

The electron movement is what carries the current in the wire.

 

I also understand that using a dielectric insulation like Teflon is best at keeping the wire from overheating,

The Teflon’s keeps the live and neutral from arcing.
The arcing would overheat the wire.

The teflon also keeps the ting from arcing into one’s hand when touching the wire.

 

stopping signals entering and stopping signals from leaving the conductor.

The teflon does nothing for isolating the conductor that way.
One would use a shield to shield the wire from external fields.

 

I understand that a certain amount of math is involved in selected gauge of wire depending largely on how much power the component is going to take, and how much the amperage is (20 or 15).

My question is regarding certain features applied to either silver or copper conductors that may or may not have an advantage over one or the other.

I have the Kimber Kable P14 Palladian. This uses 14awg copper conductors insulated in Teflon. Then it adds a massive filter that attempts to mitigate the standing wave ratio to as close to 1:1 as possible. I had Kimber’s Ascent power cable prior. It’s identical to the Palladian, except the filter. I have heard the difference between using those two cables. Apparently, mitigating the standing wave ratio lowers the noise floor significantly. However, any filter that chokes the signal and will slow the electrical current.

The US 60 Hz is already pulsing at 120 Hz through the rectifier. So one is not able to do any “filling up of the capacitors” for some amount of time, which happens at 120 Hz.

 

As I understand it, the amplifier works by opening the rectifier to allow the capacitors to fill with energy that the system will draw from. Being able to keep the rectifier open and fill the capacitors as fast as possible, reducing lag time, has the effect of creating more realistic and detailed sound.

If one were to show that the output power was higher with one cable versus the other, then we could be onto something. I did not see anything on the Kimber site explains the cable… no standing wave ratio or anything else.

 

With that said, changing to a power cable that uses pure silver insulated in Teflon, will ensure that power is delivered potentially faster.

Not in reality it won’t be any faster.
If the electronics on the cabe are filters, then you could get less noise out the end of the cable. But we do not know what is happening in that “fat part” of the cable.

 

Although, the silver power cable will NOT have a filter. Therefore the standing wave ratio will not be mitigated and the electrical signal will not be choked either.

So, would the amplifier benefit from faster electrical current or slower, but cleaner electric current? Since this signal isn’t directly applied to sound, the concepts of “colder” or “warmer” sound should not apply.

Since there is unlikely to be any “Faster” happening, then cleaner would be potentially better. But that assumes that the amp is not filtering out any noise.

and we do not know what the “fat part” of the cable is, nor what it is doing. It looks good though.

 

Can someone help me out without poking fun at the question? Additionally, I am not interested in having a cable-theory debate. If you don’t believe cables make any difference, I will not debate or have discourse on that topic.

At some point, understanding how cables work from a theory perspective is worthwhile. If we are only going to go by belief in cables, then it is only a place where we can have testimony and debate.

Personally I would prefer to stick to facts.

Your perspectives on how electrical current flows, and the speed of the flow is contrary to electrical theory. That coupled with not knowing what the ”filter” is, nor its parameters makes it a crap shoot as to what is happening.

I suppose one could use an oscilloscope and maybe 119 Hz and 1kHz and look for some low frequency IMD happening to the 1 kHz tone? Or clipping on the 119 Hz, as it is sliding past the incoming 120 Hz? But without that, it is sort of more along the lines of a story, which is heading towards fiction. If there was a shield over the cable, it may not do anything, but it would have a basis in fact. Also if the “fat part” of the cable was some capacitor shutting high freq noise, then that would be factual and could reduce noise coming out of the amp… but that gets smaller and small on high quality amps that are fingering out noise.

 

Additionally, I am not interested in having a cable-theory debate.

One cannot chuck out erroneous statements on how cables work as the premise for changing a cable, and expect that some discussion on theory would be out of place.

If the 8 awg Shunyata Alpha power cable sounds so good, why not just stay with that cable?  I wouldn’t have thought larger conductors should make a difference for the size amp in those speakers but if the larger gauge cord sounds better then use it.  I also wouldn’t expect using silver wire should make a tangible sonic improvement over using copper wire, but you can certainly listen and choose what sounds best to you.

I use 7 awg copper cables (similar to these) feeding 650 watt power amplifiers because to me those large gauge power cables sound better with the big amps than the other PCs I have tried.