Greetings, dear ones!
In the field of Hi-Fi and especially in its “division” Hi-End there are a lot of all sorts of tales, legends and superstitions. This is especially true for cables: if you take the Right Conductor with the Correct material and orientation (hussars, keep quiet!), then your system will sound simply divine, the neighbors will respectfully look after you, and Masha from the next front door will definitely agree to a date. But is there such a cable in reality and is it worth paying several tens of thousands of honestly earned rubles for it? Let’s try to figure it out today.
As a seed, use the Royal Triple Crown Interconnect cable from Siltech Cables, an interconnect pair one meter long. The price at the time of writing is $40,750. A two-meter solution will cost $73,750, and a three-meter solution will cost 106,000, that is, approximately 4, 7 and 10 million rubles, respectively. And now the theory!
As you know (or at least guess), a cable is needed to transmit a signal from a source to a receiver – be it from an amplifier to headphones or speakers, or between different units. Ideally, this signal should be transmitted without loss or distortion, but in reality this is unattainable, and therefore we are only talking about minimizing problems, which, in turn, is achieved in different ways. The first is the material from which this cable is made.
The requirements for the material are quite simple: it must be flexible (we constantly bend the cable back and forth, roll it up and unfold it), have the lowest possible resistance and capacitance-inductance, and also not cost as much as an airplane wing. Copper and silver best satisfy these requirements, with the first being used in the vast majority of cases, and the second being found only in the Hi-End segment (because it is expensive); there are also options on the market where copper cores are coated with silver. Of course, cheaper materials and alloys are also used, but usually such cables are included in the kit for the simplest “household” speakers and equipment, and are also sold for pennies on Aliexpress.
Most often you can find the designation OFC (oxygen-free copper) or “oxygen-free copper” – in such material the content of copper itself exceeds 99.95%, the remaining volume of up to 0.05% consists of impurities, of which oxygen accounts for up to 0.003%. This not only minimizes the appearance of oxides and destruction of the material, but also gives a slightly higher conductivity than conventional copper – from 0.5% to 2%, according to some studies. If such copper is coated with silver, it will be SP-OFC.
The next step towards audiophilia is OCC copper, also known as “monocrystalline”, “long-crystalline” or Ohno Continuous Casting (in honor of Atsumi Oino, who invented the production method). The percentage of pure copper content in such a material reaches 99.9999%, but the most important feature is the minimum number of transitions between copper grains.
Manufacturers of cables made from such copper often write about the CCD effect – Cross Crystal Distortion, distortion that occurs when the flow of electrons passes through grain boundaries and is perceived aurally as greater rigidity and worse transmission of the space of the virtual stage. And since one crystal (grain) can be almost several meters long, the cable is obtained without transitions, which should provide ideal sound. To make things even better, some manufacturers even mark the cables with the direction of the copper crystal (what is that anyway?), recommending that they only be connected in a certain way. Apparently, electrons are disgusted by flying in the opposite direction through the metal, they get nervous, resist and spoil the whole raspberry. By the way, the situation with silver is exactly the same – there are both high purification and monocrystalline options, only the price tag is noticeably higher.
The second thing that manufacturers are trying to combat is the skin effect. Sometimes it is also called the “surface effect”, and it consists in the uneven distribution of alternating current across the thickness of the conductor, depending on the frequency and properties of the conductor itself. That is, in other words, if you want a larger effective cable cross-section, you need to either make it a certain shape, or increase the number of independent wires so that the “outer surface” is maximum, or simply cover a simpler material with a higher quality one (all this silvering, gilding, or even copper plating). But the latter approach only works well for high-frequency signals, and not so much for audio.
In terms of shape, manufacturers always end up with something flat, plus or minus: from thin ribbon cables to complex flat-round assemblies and twisted flat conductors. Some try to lay thin round conductors close to each other, simulating “truly flat” options. In general, everyone perverts as best they can.
An alternative to “flat” in conductor design is litzentrait (in German, “litzen” means “braided cord” and “draht” means “wire”) – a cable with several small strands, each covered with its own insulation. This also helps combat the skin effect, especially if there is a lot of core or twists from several “strands” of Litz wire are used.
And everything would be fine, only the skin effect creates a real problem at frequencies much higher than the conditionally maximum 20 kHz. For example, for copper, the thickness of the skin layer (the thickness of the metal, counting from the surface to the depth where the signal drops to 37% of the original level) at this frequency is 0.467 mm. Almost half a millimeter! And for 100 kHz – a frequency that no speaker system can reach in principle – the thickness will be 0.209 mm, which is quite comparable to the thickness of the conductor in the cable. The conclusion is simple: the skin effect in the case of audio can be neglected. But it’s worth striving to improve the values of active and reactive resistance, especially if the cable is long enough.
Some audio cables have screens – a special conductive material laid between the inner and outer insulation and which is either a mesh of wires, or a spiral tape, or simply a solid sheet of aluminum foil. The best option is considered to be a good dense braid made of thin metal threads. But speaker cables, for example, come without a screen, because with a speaker system resistance of 4-8 ohms, interference will be insignificant and not audible as a fact.
In addition to the cores and insulation themselves, the cable has connectors at the ends. These same connectors are also a good source of income for manufacturers: on the one hand, high-quality materials and a convenient and reliable design cannot be cheap, but on the other hand, there is often an overpayment for a special housing shape or some unique notches on the contact elements. Yes, this is a kind of “corporate style”, fashion, status, if you like. But it’s not a question of technical characteristics influencing the final sound in any way.
One of the strangest moments is the floor stand for the cable – a thing made of valuable wood, some unique polymer or a combination of steel and plastics that supports an expensive cable in the air. They write that it improves sound by relieving the cable from microvibrations (electrons dangle a lot back and forth, or what?) and overheating, and can even “eliminate electrostatic stress and excess heating by converting heat into infrared radiation” (quote from one of the sites ). Naturally, the cable doesn’t really care what kind of wood is used for the stand, the only potential benefit of which is to get rid of static charge that accidentally accumulated on your carpet, and prices for “audiophile stands” can reach several tens of thousands (!) of rubles apiece. By the way, a toilet paper roll is no less effective.
So what do you really need for good sound? Buy the most expensive fancy cable? No. You just need to buy a good one: technically well-thought-out, made of normal, but not necessarily the most expensive material, with reliable connectors of a conventional design and high-quality soldered/clamped connections inside. Design – optional. And yes, each cable will have its own parameters, which may not suit your system so well, so replacing cables with others has a right to life – the sound will indeed change, but not always for the better. Therefore, sometimes it’s worth purchasing/testing a product from another manufacturer in the same price category (or even lower) and listening to what comes out of it. This advice is quite applicable for headphones: bundled cables are not always bad, and super-expensive solutions do not always sound like their money – it is often a question of the build quality of the cable itself.
And lastly: if you want to improve the sound in the system, start with a network cable, more precisely, with a surge protector and stabilizer. The fact is that sockets, despite the 220 V and 50 Hz stated in the standard, very often give out other parameters – the voltage can jump as much as 240 volts or, on the contrary, drop to 210 at a random frequency. Yes, and other electrical devices in your and neighboring apartments can transmit their interference into the general network. So the stability of the power supply to your hardware, especially the amplifier and other elements of the system that are sensitive to interference, will have a beneficial effect on the result. Even replacing the power supply from a switching power supply to a normal linear (transformer) one will give a noticeable effect.
By the way, the same things are true for digital cables! I had personal experience comparing a regular Chinese USB cable with a more expensive Chinese USB “audio” cable. Both were plugged into a portable DAC at one end and into a regular smartphone at the other; nothing external, including mains power, was used. The difference is noticeable: more detail, more collected bass, cleaner mids and highs, more space. And the trick lies in correctly (normally, not a blunder) wired high-quality connectors and separating the power cores from the data cores. All! That is, just a normal and intelligently made “tail”. His price tag, by the way, is also quite reasonable, and not “ten thousand per centimeter.”
Good sound is always a search, but it is not always a search for the most precious thing. And no one has canceled the psychological aspects of perception, because a million-dollar cable cannot sound lousy in the eyes of a buyer. Or is it still possible? Here everyone decides for himself. The main thing is not to stop listening to music, replacing it with listening to another expensive component. After all, it is precisely because of this that the concept of “audiophile” is sometimes considered abusive. So it goes.
2023-09-20 21:03:00
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