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Why Palladium in cables, wiring, etc. . .?

There seems to be a growing aura around Palladium. A perfectly good noble metal, Palladium came to popular fame during the now very dubious episode of cold fusion, proposed by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Ponse. But the word Palladium itself has a much older and classical origin. A Palladium was originally a statue bearing the likeness of the goddes Pallas, and only much later it referred to buildings inspired by the neo-classical style of Andrea Palladio. Today the word bears both connotations of classical understated elegance as well as hinting at quasi esoteric neo-science and mysteries. Hence it is easy to understand why savvy marketing consultants may warmly recommend that products and brands aspiring to prestige may be named after the metal.

Yet, when it comes to discovering a physical reason why engineers may opt to actually employing this fine metallic element as a conductor in interconnects, chords, wires and electrical contacts, things become rather murky and unclear. For example, SilverSmith Audio now advertises some of its products as containing Palladium. And the newest iteration of the Dodson 218 DAC, by virtue of the company having been purchased by SilverSmith, now sports internal Palladium-alloy wiring.

What is it, besides its resistance to tarnish and corrosion, and the obvious aura in the name, that is causing such engineering choices? Palladium's disconcertingly high index of resistivity does not seem to justify its selection. Per the list below, Palladium is 6.65 times as resistive as
Silver, 6.28 times as resistive as copper, almost 4 times as resistive as Aluminum, and
approximately 10% more resistive than Iron. The good news is that Palladium appears
to be a little bit more conductive than Tin, and almost twice as conductive as Lead.

Resistivity:
Silver: (20 °C) 15.87 nO·m
Copper: (20 °C) 16.78 nO·m
Gold: (20 °C) 22.14 nO·m
Aluminum: (20 °C) 26.50 nO·m
Rhodium: (0 °C) 43.3 nO·m
Zinc: (20 °C) 59.0 nO·m
Nickel: (20 °C) 69.3 nO·m
Iron: (20 °C) 96.1 nO·m
Platinum: (20 °C) 105 nO·m
Palladium: (20 °C) 105.4 nO·m
Tin: (0 °C) 115 nO·m
Lead: (20 °C) 208 nO·m

Any ideas?
guidocorona
kevziek
323 posts
 
Tbg, I never made the argument that wire is wire. I question using a resistive metal. I should be free to post my thoughts just as you are yours, so your challenging why I posted this is out of line. Zaikesman, it is true that carbon fiber is highly resistive, but one needs to remember that it is not a metal; it is a totally different material and has its own particular sonic qualities that some like and other don't. As far as whether it is necessary to transmit signal with the lowest possible resistance, many designers would say yes, whether they are right or wrong, I can't say.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Kevziek and Zaikesman, sorry I misinterpreted what Kewziek was saying. I guess I spend too much time reading on Prop Head on AA.

I once had the carbon First Wire and now use the non-metal Cerious Technologies interconnects. I had to abandon the First Wire because its high resistance was causing me ground loop problems. The Cerious does not have such high resistance.

My initial posting was merely to suggest one reason why some designers are using palladium wire and to mention my impressions of the "sound" of palladium.

I heard of a guy who was achieving quite low resistance by using liquid nitrogen poured into the channel between his amp and speakers that was filled with mercury. I never really understood why he used mercury as copper would have also approached absolute zero and no resistance. Too bad that the superconductivity at more normal temperatures proved impossible.
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Tbg: Yes, all-carbon cables can be more susceptible to hum (although it's of the induced environmental variety, not caused by a ground loop), and this is the result of the higher resistance of the shielding in combination with the run length and what gear it's connected to. For certain runs in my system I use carbon conductor cables with metal shielding instead of all-carbon.

Will: Resistance is less of a factor for interconnects (in normal length runs), more so for speaker cables and of course power cords.
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Zaikesman, I this is caused by ground loops through the grounding of interconnects. I tried metal shielding with no benefits.
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Tbg: Then I think the fact that the conductors happened to be carbon was probably incidental (assuming the metal shields were correctly grounded), maybe the overall design of the IC's you used in combination with your particular system configuration and/or gear was more the cause. For instance, I use vdH carbon interconnects, and The Second, which is a balanced twisted-pair design with metal shields, shows no hum problems in my system with any gear, and in fact is marketed as a studio microphone cable suitable for very long runs despite its carbon conductors. The First Ultimate on the other hand, a single-ended coaxial design with only carbon shielding, works well in certain situations (where it works better than anything else I've tried) but not others, and isn't offered in runs longer than 2m. So all I'm saying is that carbon conductors per se is probably not the reason for hum problems.
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