Highly Polished wire????


Here's one for all those Mat Science gurus..
OK we have all read this... "polished to a mirror finish to further reduced surface impurities.... Polished with what?

Seems like the cure worse than the disease? Wouldn't you introduce more impurities by polishing with a foreign substance. What's the secret formula to remove "impurities" without introducing new ones???

Is it just marketing hype?

- Dan
dan2112
I recently purchased some "special" silver wire for some crazy DIY project I dreamt up. Anyhow this wire does in fact sound great! - the manufacturer of the wire said, "The wire supplied to you is burr-free and polished to a mirror-like finish, this feature is requested by us because, even though audio frequencies do not travel to the outside surface of the wire, we have heard a smoother top end resulting from this finish."
Bwhite comes through again! The information this fella knows is unbelievable! :o)
Tim you're too kind. Heck, I don't know if the manufacturer was throwing me marketing hype or not. He could be full of it... but the explaination sounds valid.

One thing I noticed having done multiple DIY projects with wire is that every change made to the conductor, alters the sound somehow - sometimes the change is ever so slight.

With interconnects, it is the complete package, the sum of all the parts (no matter how small) that creates listening enjoyment.
Another thing I forgot to mention. Dan2112 mentions above the use of Jewelers Rouge for polishing the wire.

Looking at a table of dielectric constants I found the following: *Note - Teflon is usually considered the best dielectric next to air for audio applications.

AIR 1.0
AIR (DRY) 1.000536
ROUGE (JEWELERS) 1.5 - 1.6
TEFLON 2.0
TEFLON, PTFE 2.0
TEFLON (4F) 2.0
TEFLON, PCTFE 2.3-2.8

Perhaps the Jewelers Rouge (residue) is the hidden secret in making great sounding interconnects since its dielectric constant is even lower than teflon!! :)
Bwhite, goes to show that manufacturers don't need to be rocket scientists. First I heard that electrons don't move on the surface of a wire -- though I guess they could move on the "inside" surface ;-). What matters is that it works well. Would you mind sharing the manufacturer of the wire and whether a bulk purchase is required? Thanks.