five 9 silver for internal speaker wiring

beat · « **on:** 16 Aug 2003, 03:55 pm »

Hello all,
silver for internal cabinet wiring??Would this be a good idea? or would it be better to just use high quality copper? If so, what about braiding or twisting on straight runs. My application is not for super high power BTW.
thanks for the input

rcrump · « **Reply #1 on:** 16 Aug 2003, 08:58 pm »

Silver does not want to break in easily so suggest copper or ear protection for a couple months....

andyr · « **Reply #2 on:** 18 Aug 2003, 10:12 am »

Bob,

C'mon - what's a coupla weeks of aural discomfort if the end result is a decade (or more?) aural bliss from the silver??

The question surely is ... does silver sound better than Cu in speaker cables?

Regards,

Andy

rcrump · « **Reply #3 on:** 18 Aug 2003, 01:52 pm »

Yep, I think silver speaker wire is the way to go as that is what I sell, but I also break it in here for a month at levels well beyond what it will ever see in use.....Copper is sweeter and much more forgiving.....Problem is that you will want to solder the silver in place in the speaker which would destroy any break-in you have given the wire.....

gary · « **Reply #4 on:** 18 Aug 2003, 09:09 pm »

i recently made some speaker cables with pure silver, and when i first fired the system up i thought 'man, these just sound awful'. however, after about 6 hours the excessive brightness was gone and they were sounding fine. i haven't noticed much change since the first couple of days either.

basically, i bought dead soft silver, 99.9% pure (i've heard that it's actually more than 99.9% silver, although they don't test it beyond that level and therefore that's what it's labelled). it can be bought by the ounce from most jewelry supply companies, i got mine from myron tobak (sp?) in nyc and it cost around $10/oz. that translates to ~200 ft. for 30 ga. and 30 ft. for 22ga. you can make a lot of interconnects with 200 ft. of silver... as for internal wiring, you might want to go with something slightly thicker though.

for insulation i used teflon tubing from action-electronics.com, it was fairly inexpensive (although, ironically still more expensive than the silver).

-gary

andyr · « **Reply #5 on:** 18 Aug 2003, 09:24 pm »

Quote from: rcrump

Yep, I think silver speaker wire is the way to go as that is what I sell, but I also break it in here for a month at levels well beyond what it will ever see in use.....Copper is sweeter and much more forgiving.....Problem is that you will want to solder the silver in place in the speaker which would destroy any break-in you have given the wire.....

Bob, I certainly don't want you divulge any proprietary information but I would be grateful for 2 answers on the above:
1. Are you saying Ag has a 'problem' which Cu doesn't ... ie. you can solder Cu and it doesn't ruin your break-in but with Ag it does?
2. Why would soldering irredeemably destroy the previous break-in which has been done to the Ag wires? I could understand it might mess it up some, so that you have to wait for 'X' hours before you've 'over-written' the trauma to the cable - or you need to use Wally M's cable break-in box - but I can't understand why it should be permanent.

Given that an audio system is choc-full of solder, this kind-of says to me that break-in - of wires and/or PCB tracks, component leads etc etc - is something that you can only do at the very end of a build process and the best way to do this is with a break-in box of some kind (to flood the cable/component with a much higher level of signal thatn it will ever get in normal service).

Regards,

Andy

rcrump · « **Reply #6 on:** 18 Aug 2003, 11:52 pm »

Seven years ago I received some samples of silver, made up some speaker wires and spent about 10K on wire, printed shrinks, connectors ect and when the prototype speaker wires got to about 45 days they started to take the wallpaper off the walls in the upper midrange....Taking a lesson from the MOBIE which runs interconnects at a substantially higher voltage into about the same load the wires will see in service I bought a cheap 100wpc receiver and a couple of 8 ohm 225w load resistors and ran the speaker wire at about 4vac out average for a few days and lo and behold the brightness on peaks in the upper midrange went away.....

When you solder anything it anneals the connections and yes it will have to break back in.....I just play music through the amps, but use a signal generator to do 15v, 1K square wave into our preamp and wires......

randytsuch · « **Reply #7 on:** 19 Aug 2003, 12:04 am »

Quote from: rcrump

When you solder anything it anneals the connections and yes it will have to break back in.....

Would the break be less after you solder something that was already broken in, versus something that saw no break in?

Randy

rcrump · « **Reply #8 on:** 19 Aug 2003, 12:40 am »

Gosh Randy I can only recall a very few instances when I put something back in and didn't go with a new part.....I changed amps and input impedance and wanted to roll off the lows of my main amps so I used a very well used teflon/tin cap at the input and it sounded good from the get go, but took a month to really come to life......

I have offered updates on the TG power cords which involved new connectors and they break in prettier than a new cords so I would have to say that sure a broken in part or wire can be pretreated and break-in won't have the violent mood swings, but still take as long......a month for signal or AC and 45 days for DC for things to stabilize.....

Ears · « **Reply #9 on:** 30 Aug 2003, 01:55 pm »

Does anyone have any experience with the Audio Consulting wire available at www.referenceaudiomods.com ?

I was thinking of re-wiring my monitors with 3-4 individual strands on the mids and two strands on the revelators, twisted every three inches.

I have talked to a pro modder about this wire and he said it was the best he had ever heard.
I would love to get another opinion as 60 ft of this is going to cost around 200.00.

gary · « **Reply #10 on:** 30 Aug 2003, 02:22 pm »

you can get 100 ft. of teflon tubing for $30 from action-electronics.com and 3 30 ft. spools of 24 ga. 99.9% pure dead soft silver from myrontoback.com for $10 each. from what i've heard, it's even more pure than that, probably at the 99.99% level of that obscenely expensive stuff, it's just not tested so they don't make the claim on the purity. this is less than 1/5 the price of what you posted a link to (and i can't imagine you would hear a difference between the two).

-gary

Ears · « **Reply #11 on:** 30 Aug 2003, 03:00 pm »

Thanks Gary, I was aware that I could get a better price on silver wire but I am in no hurry and was curious if the enamel coating could be the percieved or actual difference in sound quality over teflon that others report.

If there is any sonic difference between solid silver with teflon and twisted enamel coated AC brand.....my monitors have some of the best internals to take advantage of the possible difference with Hovaland caps and Goetz inducters ect.

I may end up going with your suggestion when I get around to re-wing the monitors, but the AC wire does have me curious.

Greg

gary · « **Reply #12 on:** 31 Aug 2003, 12:45 pm »

there might be a difference, but air is a better dielectric than whatever enamel they're using to coat the wire so i'd assume their wire wouldn't sound any better. it might be worth making some chrisvh interconnects with both and a/b'ing them to see if there's any difference.

-gary

Ears · « **Reply #13 on:** 1 Sep 2003, 06:12 pm »

Great suggestion Gary, making ic's and comparing seems resonable.
Do you have any suggestions on how to pre-burn in silver wiring before installing in the monitors?

Greg

gary · « **Reply #14 on:** 3 Sep 2003, 02:36 am »

no real idea on the burn in, as it would really need to happen after the soldering. personally, i don't think it's a big deal. the silver cables i've made sounded harsh for a couple of hours, but after that they sounded fine. and i haven't heard much of a change over time once that brief initial period was over.

as for more pure silver, i just found this site

http://www.ccsilver.com/silver/superfines.html#four

they sell 22ga. for $1.75/ft., which is still less than half what the other place charged (granted, it's not insulated). unfortunately they don't list any finer gages on their site.

-gary

audioengr · « **Reply #15 on:** 19 Sep 2003, 04:15 pm »

99.99% pure silver wire is a good choice. It will sound better than the 99.95% pure "Fine-Silver" wire. I personally would avoid the thin non-Teflon insulation on this wire, but for a hobbyist this is perfect. It is a bit of overkill for speaker cables. Definitely a must for IC's.

Hantra · « **Reply #16 on:** 19 Sep 2003, 06:59 pm »

99.999% silver wire can be great, and it can suck too. Same with copper though. Much more significant than the number of nines is the remainder of the metal.

If you have 99.99% silver, then what's the .0199999? If it's something like aluminum, or copper, or bronze, you're probably okay. But if it's LEAD, iron, or something that is a horrible conductor, then I'd rather have 90% silver and 10% aluminum. It's natural to doubt what the audible effects would be of such a relatively insignificant amount of bad metal, but it's very easy to hear the effects.

Also, lots of wire is made using lubricants, and inferior dies. All dies for metal smaller than about 26 ga. have imperfections that will cause the surface to be very irregular. Even larger gauges are pulled at such high temperatures that there is a lubricant used, which is most always embedded in the surface. There are no devices made small enough to polish a 30 ga. die well enough to make a perfect surface wire.

I know I'm rambling again. I just think to sum it up, too many people make too big a deal out of the number of "nines" in a particular wire.

One of these days in the not-too-distant future, we'll be able to get a nanomachine or something to get perfect 50 ga. dies. Won't that be cool!

L8z,

B

ABEX · « **Reply #17 on:** 20 Sep 2003, 10:30 am »

If I am not mistaken the only reason why dealers cannot say it is 99.999% SIlver is because they cannot verify without a doubt that it is.Somehtning I read like that.
Cannot remember the exact phrasing or who wrote the comment I am refering to.

"Air is a better dielectric than whatever enamel they're using to coat the wire so i'd assume their wire wouldn't sound any better."

I would not hold the fact that an Air Dielectric would sound better no matter what is proven by Dielectric constants. It is better to experiment with different designs to see what might be better in a particular system. I have tried several designs and the best in my system seems to be a Spiral with a coated insulator. I will be trying it in speaker cables next. The IC's seem to be great.

No one seems to look to see or even know how electrons interact with a given Insulator so to myself it proves nothing to look at constants.I use my own version of 47Labs OTA which is suppose to be a poor insulator,yet it seems to perform best to my limited hearing which leads me to believe there is something going on that others are not looking at.

I have braided IC's which are working in now also to try. I have not had much luck with straight designs and twisted are just marginaly better.

I do not know weather I want to try Silver for internal speaker cable. I think Copper is fine.

The only Silver I had tried in speaker cable thus far is straight and that was not the greatest,but I shall try it again with a long burnin to see weather I missed something.

Silver is not to expensive and like everything else EXPERIMENT!EXPERIMENT!EXPERIMENT! See what sounds best for your system and taste.

JMO,I own it! Sorry if I offended anyones outlook,well almost sorry!

beat · « **Reply #18 on:** 20 Sep 2003, 03:30 pm »

Yeah,
Im definitely going to play around with it and experiment. I spent too much on all the drivers and xover components to just put em together and be done with it. What awg would be best for starters for internal wiring? The tweeter is planar a 4 inch mid and a 10 inch woofer. I'm biamping btw if that makes a difference.
thanks all, beat

ABEX · « **Reply #19 on:** 20 Sep 2003, 05:00 pm »

I like small gauge wire .Seems like 26AWG has worked best for me for internal wiring. I have not played with Silver for internal wiring I could give you the suggestion of using my wire. I am not trying to sell it to you ,but to me it has doone what I have asked of it.

I internal wired my speakers with 47Labs OTA ,but I just had some processed that is better. Now I want to rewire using mine because it is better .Seems the soundstageing opened up more with more detail.

I also have 2 types of Silver with a special insulator.

Use 24-26 gauge to be safe is my suggestion.

Good luck!