Silver v Copper wire phono cable

The Intention to use a Tonearm Internal Wand Wire that is a continuous length from the Cartridge Lead Out Pins through to the Phonostage RCA Connectors will offer the best method that assures that the Signal being delivered, is with the least interfaces on the signal route.

There are other considerations worth looking into as well which are outlined below.

As an additional thought on this AN do a high purity Silver Female Tag Connector and Zavfino supply a Pure Copper, I did not discover a OCC as a Standalone Part that can be purchased, even though there are XLR connectors that have OCC as Male/Female Inserts.

I have not been able to carry out a A/B Comparison on Internal Wand Wires, additionally I have not met anybody who has carried out such a practice either.

In my conversations with friends who are recognised as adept Tonearm Builder and Modifiers, some of these individuals are only focused on one thing of importance when it comes to an Internal Wand Wire. Which is what I will assume is where their experiences are quite important on how they assess the wire in use.                        The Ideal described to myself, is that a Wire inclusive of Insulation is best, if it has a Outside Diameter of 0.3mm and the Wire ’must’ be extremely soft and supple. Building Up Wires within a Wand of more than 0.3mm, especially a Wire that has an increase in stiffness will impact on the Tonearm Performance as the freedom of movement will be interfered with, and in certain cases with certain wires, this can be very noticeable for the worsening of the Tonearms performance.                          If a wire of a particular design philosophy can be found to meet these parameters this is a Wire that will have been trialled.                                                                    Interestingly Copper is the preferred arm wire, even when used with Silver Cartridge Coil Wire, and there are commonly seen offered Branded Tonearm Wires that has been deselected as Wand Wire due to the impact discovered on the Tonearm Performance. 

With the above in mind about Wand Wire, my own endeavours, attempting to achieve a DIY version of a Internal Wire as previously described, is to be met with assessment from friends with an experienced background on such materials and the application of the material.  To get the ideal finish on the Wire will be quite a bit of R&D and failures.

When it comes to Copper vs Silver I can offer this as a description based on personal experiences.                                                                                                  I used OCC Silver Wire in 5 Pin DIN Interconnect for about two years as replacement for OCC Copper.                                                                                       A PC Triple C Copper 5 Pin DIN Interconnect has now replaced the OCC Silver for approx’ 1 year and I do a A/B comparisons every few months and will not return to the Silver OCC Cable.                                                                                                  I have also loaned out the PC Triple C and to date those that have heard it in their Systems have bought Cables with the same Wires.                                                    As said SAEC are looking like the only company offering this Wire as a Internal Wand Wire, but it can be purchased as Tag Wire. 

I attended in the not too distant past a 5 PIN DIN Cable Bake Off, a selection of Cable with a Gross of approx’ Value of £3500 was in the Line Up, all attendees did not select Silver Wire Cables, Copper was placed over these Cables and the organiser of the Cable Bake Off chose a Copper Cable for their system.

With the same group of attendees at a Speaker Cable Bake Off, where approx’ £5000 of Copper and Silver Cables were in a Line Up, the Group were much more mixed in their assessments and two attendees Home Auditioned Silver Cables and purchased these quite expensive Silver Cables as a result of the influence the Bake Off had on them. I have heard these Cable selections in each system and agree with the choices made.

Systems develop and that brings Interface changes, a Cable is a umbilical at a Interface and one great cable choice from the past, might prove to need changing as the items attached to the umbilical are changed, and that could quite simply be a swap out of a Cartridge.     

This whole conversation of silver versus copper is nebulous.

Far more important is the actual phono loom construction - for example, is the cable twisted pair plus shield ( my  preferred construct ), coaxial, balanced, etc

The electrical parameters which are determined by the loom construct and volume of wire will factor in to the performance - and will be dependent on the phono cartridge and phono stage.

For that reason any comparision between silver and copper are irrelevant unless the cable loom construction is identical in the comparision. 

For example for MC cartridges  I use MIT, but the cable is too capacitive for MM & MI cartridges. So for MM/MI cartridges I use an Audioplan silver cable ( that was never released due to cost ).

As far as internal arm wire anything with teflon insulation is too stiff. My preferences are Audio Note silver, Kondo silver, based on sound quality ( coherency & transparency ) and flexibility. There are other solutions not commonly used - for example the Naim Aro internal wire is shotgunned ( doubled up ) within the arm tube but retaining single wire format through the critical unipivot bearing. This is an example of a manufacturer wanting to achieve both flexibility through the critical bearings as well as an electrical model that is optimised.

The mechanical and electrical properties of the tonearm wire loom in toto are in the ways outlined above arguably more important than whether it is copper silver etc.

In fact nobody has talked about platinum, gold or bronze or ribbon vs round vs rectangular cross sections all of which are available as options.

the choices, for me, will be FINEWIRE C37+cryo, OFC copper or Ag4N, in the Reed 2G

Thank you to all interested members

J

Silver ADDS a 5khz to 8khz rise, even though slight, that creates a hardness / harshness to the signal.

I’ll side with Lew here and until I see verifiable documentation of this I call BS.

Recall that it is possible in an A / B test to detect as little as 3mB difference is signals as demonstrated in blind tests.

I do not ever recall seeing this and until documentation is provided of the pedigree of the A/B test I’ll again call BS. This quote from the Britannica.com sheds some light on the absurdity of the claim.

The unit decibel is used because a one-decibel difference in loudness between two sounds is the smallest difference detectable by human hearing.

I believe this refers to overall level change for an untrained listener and I do believe that an experienced listener can detect smaller changes and also believe that changing a small range of frequencies will allow smaller than 1dB changes to be heard by a larger segment of the population. For any change 333 times smaller, I’d be surprised if there were one person on the planet that could do this.

dave

Dover makes a great point re cable loom construction.

I mentioned in my previous post that I have rewired my ET2 three times. With the exception of the VDH silver plated litz, which the tonearm was internally wired with in stock form, the construction of all three subsequent wire looms (Cardas, Discovery, AudioNote) is absolutely identical. Unlike the VDH, these three wire looms were run externally and in one continuous run (no break) from cartridge clips to the phono preamp (RCA); unshielded until just beyond the point where the free movement of the tangential air bearing would be impeded. Except for the different wire, the length and construction of the three looms are absolutely identical. As I mentioned in my previous post, for me, the AudioNote silver is clearly superior to the two copper wires.

It is true that the two copper wires, Discovery in particular, are less flexible than the AN and this fact alone does undoubtedly affect performance. Out of curiosity, as a rough experiment and certainly not definitive, I experimented DECREASING the amount of flexibility of the AN loom so as to try and mimic the reduced amount of freedom of movement that the bearing “sees” with the Cardas and Discovery looms. This can be achieved easily with very small changes to the way one dresses the wire. I hoped to then be able to get a better sense of what were the characteristics of the conducting materials (silver/copper) without the added influence of more or less freedom of movement of the wire. There were clearly some subtle negative audible effects of reducing the wire’s flexibility. Interestingly, the most obvious was a perceived reduction in soundstage width and depth; akin to what is heard with the Cardas. However, the spectral balance remained essentially the same as well as the general superiority of the AudioNote silver in the areas of clarity and overall refinement.

It has been claimed that the “distortions” of silver (the material) may be erroneously perceived as superiority in the context of a “deficient” system. However, this argument can easily be turned on its head. It is entirely possible and probable to my way of thinking that the superior inherent clarity of a silver wire (well, at least the AudioNote), perhaps due to its provable superior conductivity and lessened resistivity, lays bare problems with the “components” that preceded it in the chain. In this case, with the cartridge and possibly its setup.

For kicks, or when I need an audio “fix” (boredom? 😊), I will occasionally reinstall the Cardas or Discovery wire looms. The results are always the same. After having lived with the AN, I could not go back to either on a long term basis.