Cardas Cold Forging


Has anyone tried the new Cardas option to have their speaker cable and connectors cold forged, making for a solid connection with no "connective" points with solder, etc. Sounds good in theory for line transmission, but can you hear any difference? If so what? I'm using Cardas Golden Reference.
pubul57
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
The engineers I used to work with said that the purposes of both solder and crimping are :

1)Mechanical connection

2)Exclusion of Oxygen, to prevent corrosion

They preferred crimping over soldering as more consistent and reliable.

Ken
Cardas on soldering verus crimping:

"When we look at crimping connectors onto cable vs soldering them, I would have say that most crimped connections are better than most soldered connections. However, the best connections are soldered connections. The problem is there is only one type of solder connection that is truly a joint, most are as the word states, a connection. Most solders, such as the popular 60/40, are a slurried mixture of tin and lead. In making the joint the tin/lead mixture melts, but as it solidifies it does so one metal at a time. It goes into a slurry state and one metal is liquid and the other is very small solid particles, sort of like wet cement. Next, the other metal solidifies and creates a million little connections. This type of connection is not particularly good and not permanent. When the phone company used this type of solder on their main frames, every joint had to be reheated once a year to insure reliability. Even then, the "cold joint" was a common occurrence. Bad and noisy joints were the main cause of failure in early printed circuit boards and electronic equipment until some time in the mid sixties or early seventies. Then they learned that eutectic joints were perfectly reliable and I do mean perfectly. By the mid seventies or early eighties most electronic equipment was being soldered with eutectic solder (63/37). The reliability of printed circuit boards went up about 1000% and solid state audio gear began to sound almost tolerable. Today, all printed circuit boards use 63/37 eutectic solder. Eutectic solder is a special mixture. The melting point of a eutectic solder is lower than any of its component parts, so there is no slurry state in these solders. They solidify as one piece and make a true solder joint, not a connection. Now, provided that the parts being soldered are made of the metal incorporated in the solder (tin plate in the example of printed circuit boards and component leads, with 63/37 tin/lead eutectic solder in the solder baths), you will have a perfect joint." Ok, so I have a perfect joint. Now I need to cold forge? Hmmm.
Ultrasonic welding.
http://www.ktu.lt/lt/mokslas/zurnalai/mechanika/mechtu_65/Kuprys365.pdf

The linked article deals with mainly mechanical properties, but you get the idea.