My personal experience with silver speaker cable and interconnects is that they are faster, more detailed, and more transparent than their copper counterparts. They also tend to lack the weight and body of copper as well. Therefore, component matching and break-in are very important. If your system is already generous in the bottom-end, silver may be just the ticket. Without proper break-in, silver can definitely sound annoyingly etched. |
And it won't be, with just a 15 gauge speaker cable. Going from 10 gauge to 13 gauge makes a huge difference, so going from 13 to 15 would be noticeable also. The higher series DC resistance of a smaller cable will always have this effect, unless it's a network terminated cable. However, if your amp has a low damping factor, it is limited in the degree to which it can reproduce dynamics and bass extension/slam in the first place. My Krell amp has high current capability, but a lowish damping factor (like 50), and I've found that I can only go so big with speaker cable gauge, before the entire frequency range loses focus. I ATTRIBUTE THIS to the higher capacitance that always accompanies higher cross sectional conductor area. However, not all cables of the same gauge sound the same, or arrange their conductors the same, so I still experiment with it. You have to find a balance between the speed you want with a low capaciatance/high resistance cable, and a low resistance/high capacitance cable.......................I've seen some cable advertisements that claim you can have both, but you can't. All you need to do is look at their own published specs, and you discover that they certainly have not circumvented physics with some kind of "magic".............Personally, I'm to the point where I'm liking chaep MIT speaker cables over my expensive silver ones...and it's NOT because my Krell amp is "cold and analytical", either. |
I am using a silver balanced digital interconect. My other interconects are Distech Platinum and Cardas Hexlink 5. My Speaker cables are three separate pairs of pure silver wire equaling 15 AWG individually wrapped in PTFE. My amp and preamp are tube and the DAC is a PS Audio Ultrlink II. I am pretty sure it is not the electronics. The system is sounding smoother each day, but the bass is not a strong as I had hoped. |
Stranded silver sounds more etched in my system, yet extremely detailed. Solid silver seems smooth sweet & more accurate in timbre. It depends on the brightness of the rest of your system and the listening room. I sometimes switch from stranded to solid silver to change the systems character,but always migrate back to the solid silver. Silver is a better conductor for interconnects but you have to be careful with its implementation. I tried changing a 2 inch long internal wire on my DAC from the stock common stranded copper to solid and stranded silver and it changed the sound of the unit for the worse- bright, etched, harsh, made only certain program material sound correct. Many times the designers try all types of internal wires in development and design a units "characteristic sound" around their choice of wire. |
forgot to mention I have a pair of AUDIOQUEST .5m LAPIS x3 w/rcas for sale here. Asking $200 shpped |
I didn't realize you had bi-wire connections. Yes, by all means, try doing that. |
I am willing to wait for the sound to get better. Just to clairify, these cables are 99.999% pure silver, not copper, 15 AWG with no lug termination. I agree with Carl that the cable should be a larger AWG. I was not aware of the cable he mentioned and could not afford anything more. Maybe I could mate the cable with a reasonable cost copper one, and biwire using the silver for the tweeter and copper for the mid-bass. Any thoughts? |
1.Silver cables do sound bright, lean and harsh fresh out of the box. 2.Silver cables do need at least 2 weeks of continuous break-in. 3.Silver cables, once broken-in, will definitely sound smoother, more transparent, more detailed and neutral compared to any copper cable of the same design. 4.Silver cables will tend to have a lighter but more defined bass. 5.The advantage of silver is that it is a lot more audible in speaker cables than interconnects. 6.Audioquest silver cables are the least colored and mate well with most varieties of electronics and speakers. They are excellent with Thiel, B&W, Snell, Martin Logan and Apogee speakers, just to name a few of the big brands. These unanimous conclusions are based on extensive listening and blind test between myself, my brothers and friends. In fact, we all modified our speakers with silver wirings. If you know how to solder, I would strongly recommend it, but be very careful. Keep playing with your cables and they will sound great. |
Some break in time silver cables does reduce the brightness. I noticed it more when I added Goertz Micro Purl silver interconnects than when I added a set of Light Star Audio silver speaker cables. After about 200 hours they sound wonderful together. The silver does give better detail and soundstaging in my system compaired to copper. Good luck. |
Definitely go all silver. The miscnception of silver sounding bright is because most so called silver cables are only silver plated on the outside. These cables definitely sound bright. However pure silver cables are more relaxed and liquid sounding than all copper cables. Not all copper cables are bad. I have also used some copper cables that sound very remarkable. The only difference is that pure silver is really liquid sounding. Try the kimber KCAG and also Audio Note Stuff |
After using AQ LAPIS and DIAMOND - I'll never use copper again- it's a no brainer here. Clearly better (no Pun) Silver sounds so much better in my system especially with tubes.... |
IMHO, you would have been better off just buying Music Metre Silver. It's 13 AWG, and I got mine for only $175 (a six foot pair). It's not manufactured anymore, but with a little searching, it's not that hard to find..............Anyway, I feel that any speaker cable whose gauge totals less than around 13 is going to have a tendancy toward brightness, except with single ended triode tube amps. |
Hi, I had the same problem initially. However, after reading about it on stereophile that one of the reviewers uses RF stopper to improve the situation. I tried it on mine and it solved my problem. RF stopper is not that expensive, you may want to give it a try. Regards, Simon |
Thank you all for the info. The speaker wire was a kit and I heard that silver was the best, so for the price I went for it. It is 15 awg cable consisting of a 22 awg, 20 awg and a 18 awg 5N silver wire. For the 6 foot pair, the cost was $229.00 and 2.5 hours of labor. I listened last night for about an hour and it did not seem quite as bad as before. Only time will tell. |
All the silver interconnects and speaker cable I've had in my system have sounded different, just like all the copper ones. Break in is a factor, but I will admit that it's easier to have a bright silver cable than a bright copper one. There are other more important factors though, like AWG (for DC resistance), impedance, capacitance, etc..............I'm beginning to think that the little cheap MIT Terminator 3 speaker cable is better overall than my AudioTruth Dragon Plus, so the conductor material isn't always pivotal. Some guys swear by the carbon fibre conductors in Van den Hul cables, but I've never heard them. |
Again I agree with the first comment. Silver wire can be bright and hard initially but if you can let it mellow it will "soften up" in time. I have waited close to two hundred hours for silver interconnects and speaker cable to fully mature. The wait is worth it. Good luck. |
In a word ..sometimes. My experience with silver is that the low end can be a little bit "light" causing it to seem bright. A copper and silver blend can give you back some warmth and balance, but you might lose some of the detail. Many times it takes WAY longer than expected for break in. Often from 100 - 200 hrs of both pink noise and music with a big dynamic range. Wait and see what happens and if after a while it still sounds bright ..try, try, try again. Good luck. |
