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Do Silver Cables Hurt Bass?

Hi, I don't have any silver cables in my system, but I seem to remember reading silver cables do a great job in the highs and mids but fall short in the bass. In practice is this the case? Do silver speaker cables or interconnects hurt the bass? The only thing I can attribute to this is that siver cables tend to be a thinner gauge wire and thus do a worse job of transmitting bass information. What are other people experience?
dan2112
trelja
3,223 posts
 
I think better RCA's are definitely worth pursuing. The RCA's at HomeGrown are gold plated brass(like almost all others). They claim to hear no difference between these, and more expensive ones. However, I would like to try. I have found RCA's(and spades/bananas) from Axon, which are solid COPPER, not brass, and very cheap(maybe $4). Perhaps solid copper will sound much better, but I've yet to try. Kimon Bellas is the US rep, and is a wonderful person to have representing them. They are a French company, and also bring Focal drivers(JMlab), Solen/SCR caps/inductors, etc. to the US. Their products are used in some of the finest, most expensive speakers, and all are very cheap. I think we should try. Would also be interested in silver RCA's also(I bleieve AudioQuest uses them), but that is further down the road. Let's keep this issue alive!
brianmgrarcom
1,317 posts
 
Years back I bought some bannana's to make life easier in hooking up my amp, I was bi-wiring and the two sets of spades would not easily fit on the post of the amp. I could not believe how much these degraded the sound!! I did not keep them.
trelja
3,223 posts
 
Nedlabs_stereo, could you please give me your impressions of Van den Hull cables. I have no experience with them. What are the pluses/minuses. How do they compare to other cables. I've wondered about them since I heard they were graphite. Also wonder about the JPS Superconductors, with their unique metal use. Thanks!
brianmgrarcom
1,317 posts
 
Trelja, I use JPS cables and have been happy with them. The only negative I can say of *mine* is that they are the orginals, before they had flexible ends. JPS cables are very stiff and w/o the ends being flexible, it makes things very difficult!
carl_eber
1,425 posts
 
Not all silver cables are the same gauge, or use the same conductors, geometry, or purity of silver. As a general rule, no, they don't hurt the bass. IMO, as a general rule, they hurt the MIDRANGE. I'm trying Wireworld, Siltech, Purenote, Silversmith, Stealth, Sonic Horizon, and Vantage interconnects right now (comparing them to my AudioTruth Diamond, and MIT EVO). Not all of these borrowed ones are all silver, some are part silver/copper, silver/gold, or all gold. I may post a review of all of them, but it is likely that Audiogon will be blighting this forum from existence in the next few days, so I guess it'll be somewhere else.
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