Power Forum: Re: HCA-2 taken to a new level. by Fiddler

Paul,

You certainly know more about wire than I do, but I am confused as to why you don't like silver (it is more expensive for sure). There is not one trace of brightness in my system and I have a lot of exposed hardwood floor. In fact, after more break-in, my amp sounds much smoother, fuller and a bit warmer than it did with the Monster copper-stranded. Much clearer and cleaner with the last bit of grain removed, as well.

My system sounded so much better today (maybe the planets were just aligned) that I missed a business meeting. I was sitting there listening and couldn't tear myself away to leave on time. I couldn't believe how good everything sounded. And I don't mean by a little bit either. For the first time, I sat there and said to myself, "I'm done. No more changes, I don't need it any better than this." (Maybe for a week anyway !) But the point is, I was completely satisfied with what I heard in my system today. Can't say I have ever felt that way before.

I know some people have complained about silver being bright and having a sound of its own, I personally don't believe that. (Maybe sterling or cheap silver might be bright, but I don't think fine silver is bright at all). I believe silver is just more revealing. If there are problems anywhere up-stream of the silver, I believe it just allows the problems to be heard more clearly than copper. But I do agree that solid core is far superior to stranded in most applications.

Numerous high-end manufacturers use silver "exclusively" in their "highest-end" producuts. If silver was the problem, I can't imagine they would compromise the sound of $20k-$50K components just to say they used silver. (Sure I know it is chic to say components are made with silver, but if it truly was problematic, they wouldn't use it simply for the sake of hype.)

Oh well, I will be curious to hear about your experiments, as well as those of others here who might try different alternatives.