Unexpected result

Cable Asylum

Interconnects, speaker wire, power cords. Ask the Cable Guys.

I like to use bare pure silver wire in interconnect designs, but a lot of inmates have voiced concerns about oxidation on bare wires. Someone indicated that one manufacturer plates gold over the silver primarily to eliminate the oxidation. I am not convinced that there is any problem here because I have very old silver IC's that still sound good, but I decided to do an experiment anyway. I built-up a set of interconnects with silver and another identical pair with gold-plated silver wire. After a couple of days of break-in for both cables, we did some listening tests. Here are the results:
To my surprise, there were two obvious differences: first, the gold-plated set somehow smeared the piano and second, it made traingle and other HF percussion "piercing". My wife actually noticed this immediately. Some pieces that were formerly very listenable became rather drab sounding. Piano that was previously very focused became "fuzzy" and difficult to locate. This would indicate some sort of phase-shift or dispersion is happening. It was almost as if the benefits of bare conductors were partially eliminated. Don't get me wrong, the gold-plated IC still sounded good, but it had definitely taken a step backward.
Physically, the only real change was the surface finish. The surface layer gold could be measured in microns, so at this thickness I can't imagine any change in inductance, however I have not measured this yet. I suspect that the problem is actually that the surface finish and conductivity changed. This further reinforces a conclusion of my earlier cryogenic immersion test, which really wrecked the sound of the IC. The conclusion was that the surface finish of the wire is critical and any defects can affect the sound at virtually all audio frequencies.

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Topic - Unexpected result - audioengr 10:33:26 12/18/01 (13)

Re: Unexpected result - ggraff 21:51:47 12/22/01 (0)

Cryo results... - Paul in Sterling 20:05:08 12/18/01 (3)

Re: Cryo results... - audioengr 09:13:03 12/19/01 (2)

Re: Cryo results... - Gregory Bartlett 22:06:02 12/19/01 (1)

Dunking (nt) - audioengr 11:24:06 12/22/01 (0)

Re: Unexpected result - rcrump 16:27:17 12/18/01 (7)

Re: Unexpected result - mvenske 22:17:38 12/18/01 (2)

Nice to see your posts becoming more frequent. nt - theob 04:50:55 12/19/01 (0)

Re: Unexpected result - rcrump 02:51:46 12/19/01 (0)

Interesting... (nt) - audioengr 19:18:52 12/18/01 (0)

Re: Unexpected result - BobF 19:16:45 12/18/01 (2)

Re: Unexpected result - audioengr 09:15:27 12/19/01 (0)

Re: Unexpected result - Peter 22:28:04 12/18/01 (0)

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