To owners of both silver and copper speaker cables


Wire the silver cable on the positive leads on the speaker and amp, and wire the copper cable on the negative leads respectively.

Recently, I've wired a pair of AQ Argents on the two positive binding posts on both the high and low frequency connections on both my speakers. And I wired a pair of AQ Midnights on both the negative binding posts on both my speakers. On the amp side, I connected the Argents to the positive leads and the Midnights to the negative leads. I feel the sound quality has improved immensely. But I am not sure if I am just fooling myself, so why don't you guys who own both copper and silver cables try this and see how it works on your system and tell us your results.

Theory:

The Argents are obviously better than the Midnights. The Argents are smoother with higher resolution while offering much more musicality/rhythm while shedding some of the bloated bass that the Midnights have. So, I wished to buy another pair of Argents to wire the low frequency on my speaker.

Before spending the big bucks, I thought to experiment how my system would sound with the Argents connected to both the highs and lows at the same time. But the only way I can do that is to connect them to either the positve or negative leads, only.

I only tried connecting the Argents to the positve high and low leads and wired the Midnight to the negative leads (wiring this up was a pain since AQ are not very maleable).

What I hear from this set up:

All the positive attributes of both cables are inherent in the sound being produced with this set up. I have all the resolution in the highs and lows with a great sense of pace of the Argents while having the deep and extended bass of the Midnights. The bloated bass seems to be masked by the higher resolution I get from the mid bass region.
viggen
I use Audioquest Dragon and Sterling in my sytem. Two pairs of Dragons are used for biwiring and the Sterling is used for the center speaker in my HT. One of the improvements that I heard was tighter bass over the Tara Lab copper speaker cables that were replaced. The resolution and sound stage also improved without any harshness that is though to be common with silver wires. I have also tried the Argent and it has the same charteristic as the Sterling except Argent sounded slightly more forward.
Viggen, what do you think is happening differently on the "negative" run from what is happening on the "positive" run?
Paul, I can only give it my best guess. I think, on the speaker side, the positive is like the fuel intake on a car and the negative is the exhaust. You want the cleanest signal possible going into the positive and you want to dump the negative back to the amp. So, you want the purest cable on the positive and the highest guage cable on the negative. This should give you the best attributes of using high and low guage and silver and copper cables. This is, again, just my guess.
Viggen, the car analogy is interesting, but speaker cables are not like a fuel system, or even a car battery.

I'm not an ee, so I'm going to quote from part of a response I got to a question I asked over at AudioAsylum. I was curious about supposedly directional cables used in a system where the preamp inverts phase and the speaker cables have to be reversed to compensate.

Jon Risch, answering my question at AA:

"these are AC signals, and vary back and forth in terms of which way the signal is actually travelling, neither the hot wire or the ground wire carry the signal more one way than the other (in so far as we know). The signal is alternating back and forth inside BOTH the hot and the ground, without either of which it would not transfer at all.

Both wires are equally important to the signal, and both need to be of the same high quality. You can not just focus on the "hot" wire, and ignore the ground wire."

I'm not sure why you hear a difference in sound, but I doubt it's because you have the "better" wire on the "positive" run. Have you tried just biwiring with the Argents on the bottom and the Midnights on top?
Paul, I have wired the Argent on bottom and Midnights on top. Ofcourse, the lows improved in terms of rhythm and smoothness but the highs lost resolution and musicality.

I can't really explain to you or any one else why wiring the positives with silver, the "cleaner", cable while using a higher gauge cable on the negative will benefit your system. That's why I am asking people to try it out and share the results.

As for your quote, its call and good, but try it first.