will
|
I agree with HK that UP-OCC copper is really nice wire and can sound warm, especially solid core, but to me UP-OCC silver is quite smooth and warm also. UP-OCC = Ultra-Pure Ohno Continuous Cast = super pure metal with an ultra long crystal structure. Seems to me very pure metal, with very uniform and consolidated structure, makes UP-OCC in general about as good as we can easily get in home audio for purity of transmission. Generally, I find UP-OCC is fundamentally smooth, warm and resolving. And this advanced wire compared to those that contribute to the sense that "silver" is bright, illustrates to me that many things can contribute to "brightness" beyond "silver" or "copper."
I think "bright silver" has lots to do with the actual silver used and how it is drawn and annealed. In my experiments, even 4N (99.99%) purity silver, if soft annealed, can sound quite resolving, smooth and warmish. Whereas harder silver can get hard and sizzly.
I have used Neotech and VHAudio UP-OCC silver, the Neotech with teflon, and VHAudio with cotton covering. Both have quality silver's clarity with great resolution, but are also quite smooth and warm to me, warmer and smoother than 4 or 5N silver that is not OCC. Comparing Jupiter 5N silver in cotton, it is notably less smooth and resolving of very fine information to me. And of the OCC wires, theoretically the cotton cover should be better, having less dielectric interaction, but I tend to prefer Neotech with teflon over VHAudio with cotton...the Neotech a nice little shade "livelier" to me. Don't know how much of this is from subtle differences in wire, or dielectric, or both.
Also I have explored Neotech UP-OCC copper that is basically litz wire intensely woven around a flat, rectangular base. I would call it exceptionally clear and clean in general, quite articulate and detailed without being hard. It has a good shimmer of good copper, and is a little "warm," with a fine detail clarity that is notable. Where UP-OCC copper solid core in teflon, from the same company, is less weighted toward bright/clean, feeling clear and still having that copper shimmer, but smoother, less up-front detailed. The thought being that the same copper made differently can be quite different in the end.
Personally I usually prefer UP-OCC silver for ultimate resolution with smooth warmth. I like UP-OCC copper too, it is just that the silver is warm with very smooth and complex resolution, so more complete to me without being hard. I use copper and silver, often together, as they can nicely bring the best out of each other. But on balance, in my setup, I use more UP-OCC silver for mods and ICs. The downside, if there is one in the ways that I use them, is that a lot of UP-OCC in different uses can potentially tend toward slightly over smooth and warm if the system is weighted toward smooth/warm with other parts.
To me, silver plate on copper presents loads of wild cards, both metal's purity, hardness and structural evenness effecting the sound. And how thick the plate is, the sound depending in part on the net proportion of copper core versus silver plate.... the same plate thickness can have more influence if the copper wire is smaller than if it is a bigger wire. Also how twisted, braided, or woven the wire is, aspects of which having already been looked at in this thread.... geometry and/or, many wires versus one or two to accomplish the net gauge, each effects everything else.
Aside from plating, stranded versus solid of a given wire sounds pretty different a lot of times to me. If using bigger strands in particular, stranded wire can sound brighter/more sizzly comparing it to solid core of the same gauge, maker, metal, and dielectric.
And very fine strands versus bigger strands tend to show less obvious stranded effects to me. Sometimes bigger/looser stranding can result in "edginess," particularly with lesser quality wires. Whereas, especially with good wire, it seems tightly packed finer strands tend more toward smoother and less zippy, "good" stranding sometimes increasing the sense of complexity rather than tending toward edginess.
Silver plate like ZSTYX, with loads of fine and tightly packed strands, though it has been a long time, as I recall the sound reflected the two metals blending pretty well, presumably due to this particular wire and construction, the characters of the metals melding better than many silver plated wires. I recall clarity from the silver, but with warmth and nice fine detail. And especially being quite large 8 gauge wire, in my setups they weighed toward big/deep bass, and that effects the whole of the spectral balance, contributing to warmth and some smoothing mids up.
To me gauge is a big factor in wire sound. I suspect an 11 gauge STYX wire, half the wire of an 8 gauge, and the same other than gauge, would be notably less bassy, and therefore balanced more toward tighter/less full bass, and more weighted toward mids and highs.
Similarly, thinking about your experience with the woven cables from China Steve, I am wondering if gauge might be a contributor to why the woven silver on copper cables sounded so mid forward and bass shy in your initial tests. Though I agree, heavy wire crossing makes a lot of difference, but whether hookup wires, power cables, ICs, or speaker cables, here I find that gauge is a major determinant of bass, and how much of the spectral balance bass fills in up into the mids.
Granted, mine is a system with a Torii that stock, weighs toward bassy/warm to me, HR-1s, that also weigh toward warm toned with deep bass to me, and a room with some remaining bass challenges. But I have worked all these over to get more of a single ended lucidity than the Torii was already good at. And with lots of room work, serious modifications to amps and speakers to make them faster, tighter, and more spacious and musically resolving, still, wire gauge is big time here.
I had gotten some raw woven cable from a Chinese seller to hopefully upgrade my headphone cables. It looks quite similar to those you linked Steve in your small radial thread, and that were a reference for this thread. The one I chose was supposed to be 5N silver wires, 16 wires woven into a tube like those you linked. I had remembered stumbling across one seller calling them 8 gauge with an allusion to a smaller gauge elsewhere in the writeup....Not having assembled my cable yet, I stripped the ends and measured. They are 20 gauge stranded wires, 16 wires making up the weave, and this does calculate to 8 gauge total. Then splitting them to make a + and -, 8 wires for each comes to 11 gauge. Anyway, if yours are like this, I imagine that if you were to try two speaker cable pairs, so that each of the - and + were a full 8 gauge, these cables would likely be pretty clean from the geometry, but I would imagine doubling the wire would seriously shift them toward bass and increased punch.
In my systems anyway, with all cables I have made and tried, even a gauge or two can make a big difference. For example, quite a while ago now, I needed a very transparent power cable to mitigate what to me was masking built into the PSAudio P5 regenerator I got. Trying for a configuration I thought would be quite clear, I used 20-16 gauge military silver plated copper wires in teflon, creating a conglomerate gauge of 9. I mildly twisted the neutral and hot groups into a sort of helix twist, twisted in opposite directions for hot and neutral. As I recall it, each group was then "wrapped" with ground wires spaced ±1.5-2" apart in a helix pattern, the ground wrap direction opposing the base wire twists. I built in some passive filters on one end, and the hot and neutral groups were finally damped separately with cotton cloth before wrapping the whole with cotton. For ends I ended up liking "Furutech NCF Rhodium" ends from a seller in China over several others.
But before finishing them, initially this particular 9 gauge conglomerate was better for transparency than others I had tried, including a PSAudio AC12, but it was too balanced toward bass for me. It sounded cleaner and faster as hoped, but bassy enough to be a little thick and full. Removing some wire, now 10 gauge, it was still a little thick on heavy recordings. So I ended up with 11 gauge sounding pretty neutral and more spacious, and at the beginning of my power chain, notably increasing clarity with really nice spectral balance, solving a lot of the regenerator's warmish veils for me.
Same with speaker cables. For my systems and tastes, it as been a long time, but I recall ZSTYX with affection, a big sound throughout, clear and articulate, but weighted toward bass/warmth in the balance with my speakers and amp (for my tastes), I had compensate some. Twist them, maybe 7-8 twists over 10 feet, the bass tightened and mids opened. I recall I liked the tighter/faster/cleaner sound, especially the tighter bass, but the way I had everything else set, to me the mids ended up a little hard on recordings prone that way. So I went back to having them separated by 5-6 inches, lifted off the floor a bit, and worked around bass/warmth in other ways.
With my amp, my speakers, and my room all leaning toward bass for my tastes, and having heard the possibility of cables adjusting the system just with twisting the ZSTYX a little, while having noticed how a lower gauge cable could adjust the sound also, looking at different cables became a more articulate process for me. This is when I discovered just how much gauge mattered. Still unsatisfied after trying several pretty respected cables, STYX, Morrow SP6, Synergistic Research Copper Elements with UEF and active shielding (and others), having played around with many cable designs (commercial and home-made), I had some feel for the effects from wires and geometry. So I decided to see if I could beat all those I had tried, with an advantage of mine also being tunable since I was making them.
I liked the musical liveliness of 16 gauge NOS WE stranded-tinned-copper, but it was way too lean for me on its own. And doubling and tripling the strands to increase bass worked, but it made the seductive upper mid textures of a single strand hard. Wanting to use a single WE wire, I blended it with a solid, pure, soft annealed copper wire in oversized teflon, also one of pure soft annealed silver in oversized teflon, and a small wire, titanium plated copper also in oversized teflon. Together coming to ±12 gauge, this mostly raw wire cable was nearly as clear, complex, and spacious as the Synergistic Research Copper Element with UEF bullets I was using for my resolution standard, but to me mine were more lively, a bit more solid, and had notably better bass resolution and weight. Then I started playing with twists, and if I remember correctly, I liked ±12 over 10 feet, not a braid, but sort of, loosely twisting each wire around the group separately. With this particular wire grouping, in this system, about 12 twists clarified things just enough, where more twists got a little too pristine and tight, and less, a little soft and undefined. That was quite a long time ago, and though I have materials for a pair I think will be better, I love these only 12 gauge cables so much, the parts for new ones have been sitting around for years.
Same with the ICs I have been developing, once close to a musical neutrality, changing one of the wires from 26 to a 28 gauge, or 26 to 24, "adjusts" the cable sound notably to me. They stay in a usable range with these relatively subtle changes, but for the really ideal spectral and spacial balance, a little bit can shift it toward better or worse with magic somewhere in the middle.
I could go on and on (even more) about wires...... I find it a lot of fun. And it is not that any of these experiences imply absolutes, but they are tendencies I have noticed, indicating as usual, that it all matters... Right now I am deliberating over two Neotech wires, both the same silver/gold alloy, used in otherwise pretty close to the same IC, same geometry, damping, wire blend, ends.... One wire is stranded in a PE covering, and the other is solid core in teflon. When I listen to one cable, where these wires are a part of the whole, I like it better....put in the other, and I like it better. The stranded is a little midrange livelier, and the solid smoother, but still very musically clear. I can't say in this case if stranded or solid is better, both good choices, but they are different!
|