Pure silver wire: solid, stranded or Litz wire?

Hi Aber23,

I'm sorry for late response but better ever then newer. With “high capacity” I actually meant “high capacitance”. Technically, shielding add significant capacitance to the cable with minimal positive benefit. Litz cable is designed to have extremely low inductance i.e. ohmic losses are reduced due to skin and proximity effect eddy currents and therefore allowing it to pass high frequencies more easily. On other hand Litz wires are just the cables with high capacitance that can have a dramatic effect on sound quality. Most preamps will have no problem with small amounts of capacitance, however if both pre and power amps have high bandwidth and no filtering than may suffer. What is important here is also that high capacitive cables may cause RF instability in the output stages and therefore ruin the sound. In “right” combination between low inductance and high capacitance in the Litz speaker wires load may become tricky for the outputs of some amplifiers to become unstable and oscillate at high power to the level of tweeter damage. For all this warnings we may say that they more amplifier design issue than the Litz cables.

Litz cables are not for anyone but in cases when all system ‘limits’ are overcome than they are exceptional. I prefer Audio Tekne copper wires over any silver, are far more natural and balanced.

Audio Tekne Litz phono cable is equal or even on higher level than other AT cables. To improve environment for phono cable inside tone arm it is good to apply cotton insulation and overall also bride shield which to be grounded.

Regards

Hi Guma15. Although I agree that high capacitance will most probably have negative results, I am afraid that I have to disagree with you on your account of the relation between Litz wire and capacitance. Litz wires are nothing but stranded wires with individually insulated strands. So, if anything, two or more Litz conductors/wires are likely to give less capacitance than stranded wires (of the same thickness) because of the additional space which is created by the insulation. Obviously, this is a very theoretical argument since all these values can easily change by simply altering the distances, sizes and dielectrics; so it is up to the manufacturer to create the desired levels of capacitance no matter what type of wires he decides to use.

Also, the shield on a cable does not automatically raise its capacitance. It depends on how it is used. i.e. on my interconnect cables between the source and the pre-amp, the shields are only connected to an external ground lug and have little to do with the capacitance between the conductors. Also, I have to say that the need for a shield or not is very much system and environment dependent. Personally, there is no chance I could use an unshielded cable without picking noise. I have tried it with several unshielded cables and the result was unbearable. I know people, who never felt the need of using shielded cables on their system and rightfully so. Their unshielded cables performed perfectly fine on their system. Most of them were convinced that shielded cables are entirely unnecessary; until they tried their cables in my house :-)

Anyway, I am now the owner of a brilliant silver litz phono cable (which unfortunately I did not make myself). It is a cable made by the guy I referred to earlier. The improvement was such that I could not justify it simply on the change of a cable. Not only the added detail and the perfect balance but also a huge expansion of the soundstage that made me feel like I had made a major component upgrade and moved around my entire set up in the room. The capacitance of the cable is at 18pF/ft which may not be the lowest one can get but it is on the very low side and perfectly fit for my case.

This phono cable travelled around most of my friends' houses and every single one of them has now placed an order for one. So I am quite confident that what I heard was not simply what I wanted to hear. It is simply a radical cable. I now compare two pairs of interconnect cables made by the same guy and I just cannot understand how he has achieved such substantial difference between his cables and other high end alternatives of similar structure. My recently made AN-Vx will be for sale soon without a second thought.
The same time I keep trying to DIY a similar Litz wire. The result is good. However, I end up with much bulkier conductors (which is a bit of an issue when you want to make a flexible cable) and I still cannot go over 50-60cm. Despite this, I am very happy with how these short DIY interconnects perform and have replaced all my previous DIY solid silver braided cables of similar lengths.

"the wire is stranded"

The OCC Silver wire is actually solid core.

I am not an expert in metallurgy and I could not argue against someone else’s findings regarding OCC silver. However, one silver can be very different in many aspects from another silver. My experience with OCC silver has been very satisfying but I cannot say if it was the fact that the silver was continuous casting or if the characteristics were a result of the purity and annealing of the metal. However, to my understanding the absence of crystals in the structure of OCC can only have a positive sonic impact. Also, the resistance of OCC silver to corrosion as well as its flexibility are two things that I have clearly noticed in comparison to some 99.99% silver I have tried in the past from various sources.

To my knowledge OCC silver wires (just like any other silver wires) are available in both solid and stranded form. It is up to the manufacturer how he prefers to use them. i.e. if one buys thin OCC strands can make any type of wire he wishes. Neotech wires will typically be solid while some sellers like Toxic cables order their occ wires in a stranded form. The occ wires I am currently using in my cables are actually Litz (i.e. neither stranded nor solid)

By the way, lately I buy the occ silver I use for DIY from partsconnextion. It is one of the very few reliable sources I am aware of that sells it as bare wires and at relatively reasonable prices.