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Riddle me this: how is carbon a conductor?

I'm confused....

M. Wolff has a powercords, and now interconnect cables, made with "carbon ribbon". But when I look up the conductivity of carbon, it's a thousandth of silver's. Almost the same delta for copper.

So why use this stuff in the signal path?

It makes no sense to me (other than he also uses silver) that this is a good design call. Is not what one hears with these designs the non-carbon conductor geometry rather than carbon ribbon?

Really, this is not a shot across your bow, Michael (or to any who is satisfied with the product), but an attempt to understand why use such a poor conductor in the signal path?

Curious, 'cause I'm in the market for IC's and power cords, and attempting to understand the product offerings.
mprime
michaelhwolff
112 posts
 
TBG: Not applicable with the Empress. One customer ordered a 4 meter pair of XLR's

Best,
Michael
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Your carbon has low resistence?
usblues
1,217 posts
 
Sorry Sean,no vacation for you,your too needed for guidance and QC in the forums.Keep up the good work,Bob
michaelhwolff
112 posts
 
Our IC's are not limited with regard to high resistance than what is normally expected from any IC cable manufacturer.
oxia
51 posts
 
Man, this thread has really taken off!

Tbg, from their website it's evident that the Wolff ICs uses carbon and silver. Presumably they don't use a pure carbon shield/return (for low shield resistance) and and therefore can get away with longer lengths.

I concur with your observations of the van den Hul First, which is particularly sensitive to ground current hum due to its high shield resistance (4.8 ohm per meter), especially if you have a "dirty" component with excessive voltage present in its chassis. However, when it works in your system, IMHO this cable can sound magical. In my experience, the vdH Second (which has carbon signal conductors and a metal shield) is quite unfussy about equipment matching or long cable runs. For these reasons I prefer it to the First.

To Herman and Sean, FWIW I don't see why you guys should leave this thread in frustration. You have both made valid and constructive points. I don't think anybody questions whether carbon is a poor conductor -- it is when compared to the metals commonly used, like copper or silver. However, I think the real question is whether resistance is of overriding importance in all applications. When it comes to ICs, since we are dealing with very low current, my opinion is that resistance doesn't matter that much. If your amplifier has an input impedance of 20K ohm, then to your preamp it will "look" like it's driving a 20K ohm resister. Given this situation, what difference will the extra few ohms of resistance in the interconnecting wire make? As Herman has noted, it is negligible. Other wire parameters can be of greater importance given your particular application, but rather than go on, I will cite a reference that tells the story much better than I can:

http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/intere.html
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