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Pure silver wire: solid, stranded or Litz wire?

I have quite a long experience in using pure solid silver wires in my DIY cables. Overall I am very happy with the results but I always enjoy trying out different things. After having tried a few types of solid silver I ended up with OCC. Not so much because of the claims about 6N-7N purity and mono crystal nature but because it simply sounds at least as good (but probably much better) than the standard 99.99% silver, it is much easier to work with and it is immune to corrosion. These are my observations and not claims by the various suppliers.
However, I am interested in trying out a stranded or Litz version of this silver (or any other type of silver that may be available at reasonable prices? Anyone with experience on it? Positives & negatives?

Regarding the stranded pure silver I do not see many benefits other than flexibility. I am also not impressed by the idea that many bare silver wires are in constant contact with each other. On the other hand Litz silver wires (individually insulated cores braided/twisted together forming a sigle conductors with an outer insulation)seem to be the ideal situation. However, they do not seem to be widely available?
I have come accross Litz type silver only in the case of internal tonearm wires (i.e. Audionote)but at very small sizes and very high prices.
Other than this some online research only came up with very limited sources about larger sizes (HGC and audionote). I have collected a few relevant direct links from different suppliers if anyone is interested but I am not sure if I am allowed to post them in the forums.

Anyway, in terms of Litz style wire, it appears that there is the usual Litz of very fine coated/enamelled cores or a simpler form with larger cores (but less in number)threaded in tiny teflon tubes of the same size before they are tightly twisted together. The second seemed quite an attractive option. It is much cheaper than the first Litz option, more flexible than solid wires, and the little Teflon tubes offer better insulation than a few coatings can do. It also offer improvements in terms of skin effect, ringing, while adds to the overall surcace area of the conductor without the need to use larger sizes.

Any ideas about known suppliers of such wires? Anyone has personal experience?
aber23

Showing 2 responses by guma15

guma15
45 posts
 
Guess that you are already checked for Audio Tekne Litz wires, which are in fact cooper cables and not silver. Despite material I can say that AT cables are natural sounding much more than a number of other well established cables. This fact forced me to replace 7 times more expensive cables for AT’s. Some not well designed electronic may have a problem with Litz wires due to their high capacity. So it is worth to pay attention to Litz wires extra high transparency, low-level resolution, and sheer of naturalness from top to bottom.

Regards
guma15
45 posts
 
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
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