Colin Posted April 30, 2003 Share Posted April 30, 2003 What would you recommend for low cost silver loudspeaker cable with or without spade connectors? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbflash Posted April 30, 2003 Share Posted April 30, 2003 pure silver or silver plated? silver plated dh silver labs t14. $3.00 per foot. danny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jtice Posted April 30, 2003 Share Posted April 30, 2003 Colin, Not sure if this meets your inexpensive quotent, but you should be aware of these guys if you aren't already. They seem to be targeting this niche. I ordered some solder and DIY supplies. They're real easy to deal with and talk to and have a 30 day money back policy. They're located close to me, otherwise no affiliation. John Homegrown Audio Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted April 30, 2003 Share Posted April 30, 2003 $400 of 6 feet. Uhg. Colin, you have Klipschorns right? I'm at work right now -- when I get home I'll find you the link so you can buy it in bulk from a distributor. You can terminate it yourself. Do your Klipschorns have binding posts or screw terminals? $400 -- give me a break. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jt1stcav Posted April 30, 2003 Share Posted April 30, 2003 Check out "Modern Audio Design" or MAD. I have a pair of MAD Pearl I silver plated flat interconnects (used from my now sold tube preamp to my CD player). An excellent speaker cable is their Utopia Silver, at $275 for a 10' length. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted April 30, 2003 Share Posted April 30, 2003 http://www.a-msystems.com/physiology/products/wire/coatedsilverwire.asp $352 gets you 100 feet of the real thing, and it's already teflon coated. With tubes and horns, you can get by with very little -- you don't need the thickness of jumper cables. This basically gets you eight, 22 AWG, solid core, 12 foot lengths. Pair them off and twist them together. Done. Actually, I was wrong earlier about the Homegrown cables. I wasn't aware they put so much into them. Conisidering they use 300 feet to make an 8 foot cable pair -- it's really an outstanding value. I wonder where in the hell they're getting their silver? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Colin Posted May 9, 2003 Author Share Posted May 9, 2003 Thanks, Dean, have you compared how this sound to other cables I might recognize? How do they compare to what you have tried? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted May 9, 2003 Share Posted May 9, 2003 I changed the name to gold leaf plating & put solid gold strings on my Bosendofer. That got rid of all harshness on the high end. Nice mellow, warmer high end. The bass is now really heavy. Now it sounds better than any Bosendofer in the world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 LOL. Well, if it were an electric piano I would tell you how gold rates 3rd as far as conductors go. You might really want to consider using some Deflex on the inside of that wood to tame those resonances. Colin, I have never tried the Homegrown cables. I do have a set of 6 foot Music Metre Silvers which are very nice. There are four separate cables, each having 6 solid core strands of 22 gauge .9999 silver. It's a very silky smooth smooth sound in the treble, but it tends to warm the bass up too much, and the midrange sounds a little repressed. Overall, I just thought it didn't sound 'natural'. I will eventually break these cables down to use for the internal wiring of my RF-7's (between x-over and drivers). Between amp and speaker -- I feel copper sounds the best. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 I listen to music, not to cables & connectors. I'm finished wasting my time & money on voodoopoopoo Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 Most of it, 99% of it in fact -- is voodoopoopoo. Let me ask you this though. Two capacitors: One film and foil, the other mylar -- both measure electrically the same in uF and almost the same in ESR. Why do they sound different once placed in the circuit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redwood forest Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 Artto, I couldn't agree more about overspending on cable. I've talked to a lot of experts on this topic and they all agree on one thing. 99.99% pure, oxygen free copper (as in Alpha-Core cables)is good enough and anything else is a waste. 99.999999% copper wire with Nordost cables is going way overboard. The actual sonic difference is just not worth the cost. It's better to put your money into something that will make a more cost efficient difference. Silver cables will transmit signals around 10% better than copper...for more than double the cost. It's just not worth it. some Nordost cables cost $3,000/meter. Give me a break. Just think of what else you could get for the cost of three meters of this top of the line Nordost cable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redwood forest Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 I know what you are going to say. I have Virtual Dynamics Black Knights, Nordost SPM interconnects, and Nordost Red Dawn cables. I got these for less than half price, and BEFORE I learned my lesson. From now on I'm getting Alpha-Core. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnellis Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 I'm using 99.999% pure silver 20 guage wire for everything. The jewelry suppliers sell it by the ounce. And, as you probably know, the price changes daily. As of yesterday, the current going rate was $10.05 per ounce. 1 ounce of 20 guage wire will be approximately 19.5 feet. Obviously it will be shorter if you go with 18, 16 or 14 guage. Once again, this is pure silver wire (without Teflon coating) therefore it should be handled with cotton gloves. The PTFE (Teflon) spaghetti tubing is $11.00 per 100 feet. You can easily make a pair of $1000.00 cables for pennies on the dollar!! And yes, this stuff does in fact sound wonderful!!! It's not voodoo. At least not to my ears. Anyone who is paying more than a few hundred dollars for wiring and cable is getting ripped!!!! Anyway, here is the link for the wire... http://www.hooverandstrong.com And for the Teflon tubing... http://www.mcmaster.com P.S. Use bare wires for your connections whenever possible. Otherwise go with Cardas, Kimber or WBT connectors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 Thanks for the links John. Sweet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 Yeah, I agree Red. And with the size of my room, I need runs of over 40 feet (times 3). I figured that some of these high end cables would cost me over $120,000. I'm not interested in making some jack*** smile all the way to the bank on my account. I also subscribe to the "chain is only as strong as the weakest link" theory. Whats the point in silver wire when the electronics themselves doesn't have it. The speaker voice coils are usually aluminum. And if you've got things like fuses (another little itty bitty piece of subgrade wire to push the electrons thru) in the path...........you know what I'm saying. Silver oxidizes rapidly too. Thats why I prefer gold connectors. And maintain them properly with conductivity enhancers like Caig ProGold. Tweeking is one thing, overkill is another. Its like, just because you've got a bigger engine doesn't mean you're going to go around the track faster. At some point the 'overkill' can actually become a detriment (case-in-point: many of the large high powered SS amplifiers with Khorns). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 Dean, hell if I know why they sound different. And what kind of differences (if any) are heard really depends on the circut/application they are used in. And then of course, there's the question (you guys are questioning this, aren't you?) of does 'different' translate to 'better'. I remember many years ago I bought some rather expensive Mark Levinson interconnect cable. And while I like the sound of some of Levinson's early gear (haven't listened to any of the newer stuff), the cables just destroyed the sound. Muddy, constricted dynamics, loss of high end, dark, dull, etc. etc. To this day those cables are my last choice. Even standard cheapo grey Radio Shack interconnects sound better. There are far more differences in the sound of the recordings themselves. And as I've said before, if you don't have your room's acoustics tuned & noise isolated, you ain't heard anything yet! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deang Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 I agree with most of that. I do like the change quality caps exhibit on the signature in crossovers. Since I do near-field listening, the changes definitely were for the better. As far as cables go -- I like cables with simple geometries, good shielding, dielectic, single ended inputs -- and relatively cheap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnellis Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 DeanG- You're very welcome. This is really good stuff. Try it. It's not expensive either. Oh, and I wouldn't worry some much about oxidation either. Case in point..... Prof. Alan J. Ardell of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA writes, "silver doesn't oxidize at room temperature. The culprit is sulfur, which reacts with silver to form a tarnish that silver polish removes. Yes, there will be air between the teflon tubing and silver wire, but to cause serious problems a fresh and ready air supply of air is needed. Otherwise sulfidation will cease as soon as the local supply is used up. How much air flow is there likely to be between the wire and and tubing? Problems might arise from extra contact resistance of sulfidized silver in regions of contact with other conductors in the chain, but a thin layer of sulfide on the surface of silver wire will NOT cause any harm, at least to the conductivity and performance of the wire." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Cornell Posted May 10, 2003 Share Posted May 10, 2003 See John we do need you here, drop in more often, buddy! Regards Jim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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