It is. My slight concern with lampcord is it can pick up 60 Hz hum from any nearby powerfeeds (even in wall). So it should be kept away from power, cross at right angles or be lazy-twisted.
It does. Do not use Cat5 for low-ohm speakers if you want decent volume.
-- Robert
The silver might be cheaper, or better for high currents. I don't see silver often.
Yes. Why are RJ IDC teeth and contacts gold? Why are CPU pins gold? Why are RAM module and PCI/AGP sockets gold? Because they don't tarnish (form non-conductive oxides) and form reliable connections.
Once upon a time, all of these internal PC connectors were tin. Specially designed to penetrate the oxide layers. Gold is cheaper, particularly considering reliability.
-- Robert
Yes, it is the best conductor on a volumetric basis. Copper is close, and aluminum is best on a weight basis. But Copper, Silver and Aluminum easily form oxides which may outweigh their conductivity advantage, particularly in thin layers. Gold has only 40% more vol.resist than silver. But silver is much more solderable.
Well, "noise" is hardly a precise term. Impedence discontinuities affect all circuits, particularly high frequencies. I would think audio requires good current capabilities, while computer circuitry needs clean transmission of extremely high frequencies.
-- Robert
You can put down a gold plating about 4 molecules thick. I'm guessing connectors do it a bit thicker but that uses very little gold. I wonder if silver can be done that thin.
This could all change. Here's what I was told by someone who should know. I recently learned that Kodak plans to stop making B&W film. And that accounts for about 1/2 of the world's use of silver. And silver prices have been dropping. A LOT. Plus a non trivial amount of the world's gold comes as a by product of silver mining. Some think the price of gold will rise. Who knows?
I just looked and silver is under $7. Do the Hunt brothers still own a lot?
A large proportion of the silver used to make photo film and paper is captured during development and recycled. It can even be done at home and prolific amateur darkroon operators used to do it.
I *think* Kodak has made a long-term commitemnt to B&W film when the retooled an plant that makes color film to also make B&W. Kodal is getting out of the photo *paper* business.
As I recall, Kodak is a major supplier of films for medical & industrial X-rays etc.
You are right on this.
You shoud no concern much on this. Even a normal lamp cord used as speaker cord is very resistant to nearby powerfeed interference. The reason for this is that the speaker circuit is very low impedance circuit (amplifier sub ohm impedance, speaker 4-8 ohms). This kind of low impedance circuit is very resitant to outside interference pickup when wired with cable where the wires are quite near to each other (does not need to be twisted pair, just wire pair). The noise picked up by this kind of wire from external sources (electric and magnetic fields) becomes mainly common mode noise, which gets canceled by the floatign speaker load (speaker reacts only to differential signal between speaker wires). And the last thing is quite lof efficiencly of speakers quarantee that even if some microwatts gets coupled to the wire, those low power cannot generate audible amount of noise. This is the normal case.
Generally unless you put the speaker wires to the same bundle with the high current carrying power wires, you don't have to worry about interference problems, at least on 60 Hz interference. And generally even if you have the amplifier power and speaker wires as one wire bundle, you generally do not get any problems.
If you have something to worry with speaker wire noise pickup, that problem is most often RFI. The speaker wires can pick up RF interferences. It is very rare that the amoput of RF picked up by the speaker wire itself could make much noise to the speakers. The bigger problem is that the RFI can get through the speaker wires to inside amplifier, near noise sensitive parts. There the RFI can cause all kinds of cross modulation products, can get demodulated and amplified etc.. The results of those problems when amplified by the amplifier electronics can sometimes be heard. The problem can be seen when you are near radio transitter and the amplifier you use is not well shielded against interference. Typical problems that canbe heard are noise humming/buzzing noise when using GMS cellular phone near speaker wiring or "click" noise when pressing "talk" button on walkie-talkie radio near stereo equipment.
You are right on this.
significant
They're not known as idiots in the indusrty, they're known as 'audiophools' which is a takeoff on audiophile. They're phoolish enough to pay 10x or more for "OFC" oxygen-free copper wire and other such bric-a-brac.
I've always thought of buying the "extension cords" sold where contractor's power tools are sold. They are 12Ga made of fine stranded wire and nicely flexible and come in fluorescent colors so you don't cut one with your sawzall. The cost about $40 in 100 ft length. With terminations I'd charge $5/ft, cut to length.
One might call them junk if you think of them as being advertised with junk science.
OTOH, many Monster Cable imitators are junk in comparison, even tho they _look_ like Monster Cable.
Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.