Cardas Cold Forging

03-31-11: Paulsax
... Question is if forged materials exhibit different electrical properties than the native materials did before forging? If they get enough pressures here I could see different material properties as a result but electrical properties are out of my league.

IMO the differences in electrical properties are out of everyone's league, Paul, in the sense that any differences in electrical properties that may be claimed cannot be established in a QUANTITATIVE manner to be audibly significant, based on generally recognized electrical principles.

Keep in mind that differences in resistance, inductance, capacitance, skin effect, parasitic diode rectification effects, eddy currents, etc., will only have audible consequences if they are significant in relation to load impedance and to the current drawn by the load (or in the case of capacitance, in relation to possible effects on the amplifier).

All of which is not to say that differences don't exist that may be audibly significant while being unexplainable. But which is to say that there is grounds for skepticism, and for suspicion that reported differences may have been the result of either an unrecognized variable or mistaken perception.

Best regards,
-- Al

Al, well said. Hard to know what to do since I'm skeptical I could hear the difference, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't and to the better. Like I said before, I do wonder why this approach wasn't done long before, since the ability to do this has been available for years.

Should have said "without" any gaps

Lenny, I had looked at all of that before posting. And the question would be HOW MUCH is the capacitance you are referring to? I doubt that it is much more than 1 or 2 pf. Compare that to the overall capacitance of the speaker cable itself, which is probably hundreds of pf's for typical lengths and typical cables, and then consider that even those hundreds of pf's represent a completely negligible and unimportant impedance at audible frequencies, in relation to both amplifier output impedance and speaker input impedance.

If the forging process makes an audible difference, it is not because of the capacitance you are referring to.

With all due respect, IMO qualitative theories that are not put into meaningful quantitative perspective are a pervasive problem in audio.

Regards,
-- Al