Shiva Posted January 13, 2005 Share Posted January 13, 2005 I was reading the latest little catalog from mapleshade audio and they mentioned that if you wish your speakers to preform at their best you should get rid of the brass jumpers between the binding posts. As they say they degrade the sound and replace with some good wire instead. Has anyone here found any truth to that idea. Shiva Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynnm Posted January 13, 2005 Share Posted January 13, 2005 Hardly! If anything the connecting straps would have better conductivity than wire. Klipsch speakers uses gold plated straps and gold has a lower resistance than copper. In addition given that the distance between the connection points in question is less than 1/2" any difference in resistance would be unmeasurable without laboratory grade instrumentation. Edit: See my post further down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Champagne taste beer budget Posted January 13, 2005 Share Posted January 13, 2005 Others may disagree, but yeah, for the inch you are traveling, it MAY make a difference that could be measured by some very sensitive equipment, going from brass to a different conductor, but in the real world, you'd never be able to tell the change. Of course, if you really feel the need to comply with the manual, check with Monster Cable; I bet they sell a 1 inch quadricoiled, hypersonically transparent cable for $19.95. Of course, you'll need two. If they don't offer one at the moment, your inquiry may just provoke them into a new market, Ultra High End Jumper Wires!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfyr Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Gold has a HIGHER resistance than silver or copper. It's desireable in connectors because it does not combine well with other materials so it remains relatively pure (unoxidized) at the surface. It also has the capability to 'adhere to itself' (touch pure gold to pure gold and it sticks together) which makes for reliable connections. I will not even comment on the bi-wiring debate! Just remember, accessories are the LEADING source of profits in the A/V industry! There are SO many other variables that make such a GREATER difference, that when you have accomplished all the others, call me! But if you are going to pay $150-1500 for an interconect, I guess it is a foregone conclusion that you ARE going to hear a difference! Funny, they still use plain old copper circuitboards on space mission and on world class supercomputers, where timeing issues and bit error rates are critical. Maybe they haven't heard of gold or bi-wiring! I mean, let's face it - too many of us are still lost wandering around in the frequency domain and trying to align the system with an RTA and an equalizer! After you master the time domain and basic resistance, then we can worry about the inability to correct time domain issues in the frequency domain with an EQ and the snake oil of 'conditioning' cables and the directionality of interconnects (aside from the ground being lifted on the none-common/ 'star' ground end!)!! I bet I have made alot of friends with this!!!! ;-) My suggestion: Read Don Keele!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And check out Syn-Aud-Con (Synergetic Audio Concepts)! And with luck you can discuss your issues with him (or other amazing individuals!) personally at one of their seminars! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 ---------------- On 1/14/2005 1:57:38 PM dragonfyr wrote: Gold has a HIGHER resistance than silver or copper. It's desireable in connectors because it does not combine well with other materials so it remains relatively pure (unoxidized) at the surface. It also has the capability to 'adhere to itself' (touch pure gold to pure gold and it sticks together) which makes for reliable connections. I will not even comment on the bi-wiring debate! Just remember, accessories are the LEADING source of profits in the A/V industry! There are SO many other variables that make such a GREATER difference, that when you have accomplished all the others, call me! But if you are going to pay $150-1500 for an interconect, I guess it is a foregone conclusion that you ARE going to hear a difference! Funny, they still use plain old copper circuitboards on space mission and on world class supercomputers, where timeing issues and bit error rates are critical. Maybe they haven't heard of gold or bi-wiring! I mean, let's face it - too many of us are still lost wandering around in the frequency domain and trying to align the system with an RTA and an equalizer! After you master the time domain and basic resistance, then we can worry about the inability to correct time domain issues in the frequency domain with an EQ and the snake oil of 'conditioning' cables and the directionality of interconnects (aside from the ground being lifted on the none-common/ 'star' ground end!)!! I bet I have made alot of friends with this!!!! ;-) My suggestion: Read Don Keele!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And check out Syn-Aud-Con (Synergetic Audio Concepts)! And with luck you can discuss your issues with him (or other amazing individuals!) personally at one of their seminars! ---------------- wrong about gold resistance being higher than copper it goes as follows 1. plat -- to expensive to do aythign with 2. silver -- oxidizes very fast and people say it provides a very cool cool coloration of sound 3. gold -- most common on higher end stuff 4. copper -- most commn wire conducter 5. tin -- used for rca inputs on old equipment, and cheap recievers Also your comments are asking to set off the great cable debate which happens weekly around here.... you are treading on a very touchy subject here... most of us here can agree that good cables make a huge difference, but its the cost benifit of those cables that seem to draw contraversy to this subject as far as your printed circuit boards in computers its a completly different world because low voltage transmissions do not need heavy gauge wiring and are have a less tolerance for resistance and copper in a printed circuit board is reliable and cheap. if you have ever made a printed circuit board your self you will find that the copper on the board is very sensitive to the acid in yourr fingers until it has been photgraphed and dipped into acid to create the baord you speak of in the world of high end audio most tube amps pre-amps etc do not even use printed circuit boards because they are not needed and people will aregue to the death that they are horrible for analog audio, in the world of ss you have to use a printed circuit board because of the incredible number of parts that are there.. therefore you can't even begin to compare the world of audio to printed circuit boards in computers because the purpose of the 2 is so different Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynnm Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Gramas is correct regarding the electrical conductivity of gold vs. copper. I stand by the rest of my earlier comment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfyr Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Gee, I guess the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics is wrong! Resistance of B&S 10 guage copper: .0000328 ohms/cm. Resistance of B&S 10 guage gold: .0000464 ohms/cm. Perhaps the silly physicists should have read a Monster marketing brochure! I stand by my statement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfyr Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 >Also your comments are asking to set off the great cable >debate which happens weekly around here.... you are treading >on a very touchy subject here... most of us here can agree >that good cables make a huge difference, but its the cost >benifit of those cables that seem to draw contraversy to this >subject Let them debate if they choose! That was NOT my desire nor my concern! My comment was originally aimed at the gold vs copper resistance/conductivity issue! I will spend my time worrying about other things! But I do find it humorous that so many will spend so much time playing with the few things they have a choice in rather than worrying as to the basic design tradeoffs! It would be a much more interesting debate if they chose to address topics such as why this 'supposed' high end consumer gear does not utilize balanced circuitry, or why the RCA connector was chosen to be used in consumer grade video equipment rather then the standard BNC connector used in professional grade video equipment connections (especially as the RCA connector is not easily used for 75 ohm connectivity and is the least reliable of almost all the connectors!!), or the now commonly used multi-channel amp (often 7 channels!) all run off a flimsy current limited COMMON power supply featuring minimal capacitive storage! Or why so many are enamored with MP3 libraries which constitute a new (at best) mid-fi solution! Gee, I guess I could dupe all of my high quality Polydor LPs and high quality digital sources to cassette and fit right in! (And no, all analog or digital sources are NOT high quality! But an MP3 transfer of ANY of them is still worse than the original!) Or why so many of these same folks think that they can simply RTA and equalize a room in the frequency domain and resolve those issues that originate in the time domain. I wonder how many even follow what I am referring to. I say this not to sound arrogant! I say this seriously, as the manufacturers persist in selling snake oil cures to manufactured problems. How many have bought into the latest high-end marketing where receivers or speakers offer a microphone (FLAT of course! As the rest of us are stupidly spending a minimum of ~$500+ for the cheap Earthworks M30 or GoldLine T04 mics to compliment TEF/MLSSA/EASE/SMAART etc. measurement systems!!) and a calibration system for their system, which effectively RTAs a sample of the swept signal, complete with the room interaction induced polar and time domain comb filtering anomalies, inverts it and feeds it back and says wella! Problem solved via magical equalization! Equalization cannot resolve time domain induced issues! Just as subwoofer placement by the crawling method does not. It simply places the speaker in a position so that the sweet spot does not happen to fall in a superposition null in the room! Ofter with an additional HUGE phase error relative to the satellites! So you think we have really solved the problem? It can be SO much better! But the answer comes from real physics! Not that of marketing brochures! >as far as your printed circuit boards in computers its a >completely different world because low voltage transmissions >do not need heavy gauge wiring and are have a less tolerance >for resistance and copper in a printed circuit board is >reliable and cheap. if you have ever made a printed circuit >board your self you will find that the copper on the board is >very sensitive to the acid in yourr fingers until it has been >photgraphed and dipped into acid to create the baord you >speak of >in the world of high end audio most tube amps pre-amps etc do >not even use printed circuit boards because they are not >needed and people will aregue to the death that they are >horrible for analog audio, in the world of ss you have to use >a printed circuit board because of the incredible number of >parts that are there.. therefore you can't even begin to >compare the world of audio to printed circuit boards in >computers because the purpose of the 2 is so different My comment was not about PCBs per se! My comment about the use of copper and the mention of PCBs was with regards to the one such use in highly regulated low tolerance systems where the QUALITY of the transmitted signal is paramount. And this is measured in the digital domain as the BER bit error rateand in general as the transfer function! The TF is a measure to determine whether the signal that enters is the same as what exits! And the variables that comprise complex impedance resistance, capacitance and inductance for a start! You know, those troubling physics variables Do play a bit of a role here! The point was, if gold resulted in a lower bit error rate or more accurate transfer function than copper, it would be employed! Heck, if they found platinum to have advantages they would employ it! The cost of an interconnect is not an issue in these environments! But I find your issue regarding PCBs a fascinating one! And I am smiling over the reasons given, as I have spent too many years earning those silly physics degrees and working in the computer and audio/acoustic design fields. And I HAVE made a few(sic) PCBs! I prefer to live within the realm of physics and will leave the religious debates to a time when someone buys the beer! And an etching on a printed circuit board is nothing more than a wire on a substrate! You can make it as large or small as you like within the constraints of your manufacturing process! And voltage has little to do with it! (except for spacing to reduce arcing!) But CURRENT considerations are important! (But to really confuse things, dont you find it interesting and most confusing that all high frequency video processing is done in a unit employing PCBs and ICs that fly in the face of the arguments given for the need for discrete stranded frequency balanced time corrected wire!!!! After all, the marketing brochures say that this should be bad, as the skin effect is definitely in play at these frequencies used to process those darned signals not to mention the internals of the ICs!!!! Quick, some one warn Burr-Brown that they should be using stranded frequency balanced- time aligned wire instead of their A-D & D-A IC converters mounted on PCBs! And if this stomps on the ant hill, fine, as something that results in the LF signals following one path, the MF signal following another, and the HF signal following another is properly called crossover! I wonder why those silly crossover designers bother with so many extra components?! I didnt realize that all I have to do is to connect the proper cable to the full range output of my preamp and feed the appropriate transducer, provided I used the right brand interconnect, and that I could eliminate the crossover! Those Monster, et. al. folks are geniuses! Someone please call Marchand and save them a lot of hassle! And I find it interesting to hear that high quality analog gear doesnt use PCBs! Really!? Perhaps that was because a lot of OLD analog gear was built prior to the PCB period when they only had discrete wired circuit boards that were hand soldered as opposed to automated machine packed wave soldered circuit boards! But then these magical old analog units also didnt have highly regulated solid state power supplies either! And I am surprised that my (evidently low-end) Audio Research amps seem to have PCB motherboards! Hmmm. A more important reason has nothing to do with the emotional or religious position you mentioned, but rather that while you can make a PCB with any size etching to handle any current load, there is a point where the size, economics, component count, and a thing called practicality simply makes using a discrete wire more practical! If you have access to the back issues of Audio Amateur you can read Nelson Pass measurements of various wire, and he can choose any cable he likes for his then Threshold or current Pass Labs designs! Or, write to him at www.passdiy.com! Or talk to the venerable Don Keele and many other contributors to Syn-Aud-Con at a seminar!! You can argue all day long over the subtle effects of the interconnects. I will use large gauge low resistance OFHC copper, and if the connection is inaccessible and critical, I will solder it with a high quality silver solder rendering the issue of gold connectors moot. Otherwise I will treat it with one of Caigs treatments. You can argue interconnects all day, but I will maintain that the interaction of the various transducers of a speaker in the time domain, and the interaction of the speakers in the small or large acoustical environment in the time domain make a Much larger contribution to the intelligibility and imaging of a signal then the difference between any two low resistance OFHC interconnects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 what youu need to learn is that just because it looks good on paper doesn't mean that it is going to sound good, you need to let your ears be the judge of everything, and as a matter of fact your "book" is wrong thanks though, i guess that college of degree os mine really paid off now Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbflash Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Welcome to the BB It's easy to try it. Use some of the spare speaker wire you are using for your speakers and cut of (2) 3 inch strips. Turn off your amp. Disconnect your wire and the straps. Take one of your new pair jumpers and attach them to the top posts. Tighten them down. Take the other end of the strip and put it in the bottom binding post. Insert your speaker wire and tighten down. Make sure all the POS go to POS and all the NEG go to Neg. Do the other speaker. Power your amp back up, listen to a CD. Then you can decide if it made a difference. It will not sound any worse and it may sound better. Take the straps and put them in a box or a drawer. In the next couple months someone will post saying they just bought a used pair of XXX. You will read the post and reply that you have a spare pair if they want them but you can tell them exactly what you did and you can tell them that you used the straps, but replaced them with the speaker wire. I would use the same brand of speaker wire that you are using from your amp to your speakers. When I first removed my straps I mixed wire and I could tell a difference (system sounded flatter). I then used the same brand wire and I was back in business. Again welcome and post your thoughts. Someone else is thinking about the same thing but are kind of afraid to post. Don't let all the different theorys scare you off. Once you buy your stuff, tweaking is half the fun. Good Luck and ask questions. Danny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dragonfyr Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 ---------------- On 1/14/2005 6:13:57 PM Gramas701 wrote: what youu need to learn is that just because it looks good on paper doesn't mean that it is going to sound good, you need to let your ears be the judge of everything, and as a matter of fact your "book" is wrong thanks though, i guess that college of degree os mine really paid off now ---------------- Let's see, to quote from another 'wrong' source, "Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics" by Serway: Resistivity at 20 degC: Silver: 1.59 x 10^ -8 ohms per meter Copper: 1.7 x 10^ -8 ohms per meter Gold: 2.44 x 10^ -8 ohms per meter Platinum: 11. x 10^ -8 ohms per meter And you say the "Handbook of Chemistry and Physics" published by the Chemical Rubber Company - THE handbook for reference values - is "wrong"!? WHERE did you take physics? And WHERE do you get your non-sensical information? Monster or Bose? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Champagne taste beer budget Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Well Mr. dragonfyr, you sure have taken a stand on your first day here. I have no idea if you just stumbled across this board today or what, but I do have some observations... I don't think you've been a lurker. If you had been here for any amount of time, you'd realize that many, if not most, of the people here DO have some idea of what you're talking about, it's not some revelation that should be on the 6 o'clock news. The condecending manner in which you write will garner you more enemies than friends in a quick hurry. As hard as you may find it to believe, there may be people on this board with not only more education than you in the topics frequently discussed here, but also a better grasp of some of the theories to which you speak than you yourself have. Possibly not; you could be some electrical/accoustical engineer for NASA as far as I know, but the general attitude you convey through your words makes me doubt it. Unfortunatly, I don't have any physics or chemistry journals lying around the office. In a quick search on the web, I did find several sources for resistivity measurements, though they can't seem to agree on either the result of the measurement or the standards they want to use for the measurement. Your most recent post had some numbers that were close to what I found though. It all looks good on paper when you write it in notation, but really... Gold .0000000244 ohm/meter Silver .0000000170 ohm/meter For the sake of argument, lets say we have our speakers each set 10' away from the amp. Tripling the numbers leaves us with Gold .0000000732 Silver .0000000510 ohms for each speaker wire. Double it to make up for the double run of wire, to the speaker and back. Gold .0000001462 Silver .0000001020 And what are we running this wire to? A speaker with a nominal impedance of 8 ohms, heck, I'll even give you the benefit of the doubt and call em 4 ohm speakers, and assume a worse case scenario of a dip to .5 ohm at some frequencies. So, we end up with a difference of, ummm... my calculator doesn't go that low, but say a dang small percentage of total resistance. Somewhere on the order of 1/1000th percent. My numbers may be all screwy, I've had a rough day at work and my head isn't working just right, but I'm sure you'll correct me where I'm wrong. If you claim to be able to hear a difference with that minute of a change, I suggest you get a job with Bose. They could use some help. Oh yeah, bty, I don't believe that the physics of what goes into your speaker terminals account for all of the sound that comes out of it. Do I even want to get you started on room acoustics? p.s. It's too bad you didn't start this off in a topic that would probably get more views than this one, the thread topic doesn't do justice to what's contained within it. p.p.s. Welcome to the forum!! Good to have someone new to shake things up a little. (Like they don't get shook up enough already) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lynnm Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Who in the end really gives a scheize about the relative conductivity of gold/copper/silver/zinc/unobtainium when speaking of a 1/2 inch run ? If Mapletree suggests replacing the jumpers and it seems to make sense then by all means do so! If that doesn't make sense to you ...........Don't Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tpg Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Just for another note, check out this electrical conductivity chart. It shows gold being less conductive than copper and silver being more conductive. I think that lower conductivity translates into higher resistance, yes? Anyway, something I've been wondering. I would have to say that the gold straps *would* cause some kind of change in the sound of the speaker, though maybe normal people cannot hear it. So, my thought was this... If you are not going to bi-wire and are just going to use a single cable with the straps, would it be better to connect the wire to the HF or LF posts? What is the approximate gauge of those straps anyway? My thought is that if the gauge is high enough, it would probably be best to connect the wires to the HF posts so that the straps then connect to the LF... since the critical midrange will be played off the HF posts, this would give a more direct connection and make for better sounding midrange. But, all speculation, yes. But then again... isn't bi-wiring pretty much all speculation anyway? EDIT: I agree with Lynn's above statement. lol Blunt, but makes perfect sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Champagne taste beer budget Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Ahhhhh grasshopper, you open new worm can with response. Now we get into the semantics, or possibly preferred definition, of some words. Conductivity and resistivity. Sounds like they'd mean the same thing, no? Going to have to do a little search on this one. I do like the chart though! p.s. You hear anything from my sister? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tpg Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Champagne- (Or perhaps CTBB? heh) Yes... she sent an email to me earlier this afternoon. I just got back home, though, and had dinner... So I'll send a response here in the next few minutes. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Champagne taste beer budget Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 No Problem. That's 3/4 of what this place is about, helping out others. The bike thing, she'll have good info. The diet thing you aren't gonna like. She's all into specific foods for specific functions, needs to have X carbs for this, Y calories for that, etc. At least that's the feel I get for it, she lives in Dallas, I'm in Minnesota, so we only see each other once or twice a year. I do feel that her diet info will be spot on, between her, her trainer, and the circle of friends she has that are into this triathalon/diet/excercise thing, I get the feeling she knows what she's talking about. At least what works for her/them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 Boy, what a confligtation! In my belief, the brass strips are just fine. There is no reason to go messing with what you have. The science/phsics/ee above is probably correct but I'm not going to waste my time looking up conductivity. The real way to do it is consider the total loss in the loop. That includes output impedance of the amp, the resistance of the feed wire, the connections, the jumpers, and the effective impedance of the internals of the speaker. The latter includes the voice coils, internal wiring and crossovers. In my analysis, if you put it all together, you can replace the brass strips with a couple of paper clips and get no change what so ever. (Edit) And making the best connection in theory is not going to change it either. The speaker impedance is so large that small changes elsewhere can not change the situation. Smile, but serious smile, Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ooteedee Posted January 14, 2005 Share Posted January 14, 2005 What is the resistance of 1.3 grams of earwax lurking within most of our ears? If each of us had few extra milligrams in there.....that would probably negate most of the debate about gold versus brass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted January 15, 2005 Share Posted January 15, 2005 hahaha this is probably some of the funniest posts i have read in a long time! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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