Pure silver wire: solid, stranded or Litz wire?

Guess that you are already checked for Audio Tekne Litz wires, which are in fact cooper cables and not silver. Despite material I can say that AT cables are natural sounding much more than a number of other well established cables. This fact forced me to replace 7 times more expensive cables for AT’s. Some not well designed electronic may have a problem with Litz wires due to their high capacity. So it is worth to pay attention to Litz wires extra high transparency, low-level resolution, and sheer of naturalness from top to bottom.

Regards

Aber23. Thanks for an honest report after a lot of searching and hard work. Many people would conclude (delude themselves?) that the cables were great based upon the level of effort and cost expended to do the experiment. Kudos and keep at it! - John

Hi Guma15,

No actually I haven't since I was keen on sticking to pure silver so that I can make a more consistent comparison. However, after reading your message I did a small research on the Audio Tekne that (other then the good reviews about them) gave me some further ideas regarding Litz construction and issues that result from it.
One of the most important things that has a direct sonic impact on the performance of a cable is the primary insulation. i.e. the one that is in direct contact with the bare wires. My favouite insulations are cotton and Teflon. However, due to lots of secondary disadvantages cotton has, I rarely use it. So typically, Teflon is what I want as a primary insulation in a good cable. (Here, obviously there may be many other alternatives one may prefer) When solid conductors are involved Teflon is a common feature. However, this is not the case with Litz.
Typically, a Litz wire consists of a bundle of Magnet wires. This means that each strand is coated with enamel or some other type of varnish. Then, all the strands together can be insulated with cotton, silk, or some plastic based insulation. Until now, it never crossed my mind that the “problem” with Litz wires may not be the “over-dampening” by using all this insulation on the strands, but the quality of this insulation. I would never use a solid silver cable insulated with enamel or any of those varnishes. In Litz wires, however, this seems to be the standard and no one really pays much attention to it. Often the manufactures don't even mention what the primary insulation on the strands is. I come across descriptions like silk covered Litz. But silk here means very little since it is only the secondary insulation that surrounds the already coated strands.
Apparently, the sonic benefit of using teflon coated strands is left aside for the following reasons. First, the very high cost of production. There are some. companies that manufacture Teflon magnet wire and its price compared to their enamelled wires is 10 times higher.
Second, in order for the Teflon to be extruded over the bare wire, extremely high temperatures are required. In most cases these temperatures can burn the surface of materials like copper (and hence they are silver plated for protection). However, even when silver is used some surface damage is inevitable. So the application is really problematic.
Third. Teflon is really hard to work with. Will not burn or remove easily without risking to damage the silver cores. And when we are talking about hair-like fine cores, terminating such cables is going to be almost impossible.

The best silver litz I tried was the ones by Audionote and having checked their specs they some one of the most acceptable types of insulation although still inferior to Teflon.

Also, could you explain what you meant by “high capacity on Litz wires”. Although it sounds like an interesting remark, I am not sure that fully I understand what you meant.

I have now ordered a “kind of Litz” phono cable which is likely to overcome the insulation issues described above. I am not really sure what to expect (or if my approach described above has in the end such a significant importance).

There is also the issue of the size of the strands to be taken into consideration. i.e. a solid 24AWG wire.. well it is solid so it is a transmission line on its own. A stranded 24AWG wire will pretty much act as as single transmission line (no matter how many or what size of strands it uses) since the strands are bare and in contact with each other. In the case of a 24AWG Litz wire however, each strand is a separate transmission line/path and in this case the size of the individual strands matters. I am not sure what the ideal size would be though. Other then the mechanical advantage of using many and very thin strands I don't see any benefit over using less and larger (I.e.34awg strands). Actually the second option sounds better.

Also, thank you John. I am not coming here as an expert but as someone who has some knowledge and experience but understands that there is a lot more to try and learn. Some failure to get the result you expect is certainly not very pleasant, but if one is honest to himself should be able to accept it and move a few steps further.

Hi Aber23,

I'm sorry for late response but better ever then newer. With “high capacity” I actually meant “high capacitance”. Technically, shielding add significant capacitance to the cable with minimal positive benefit. Litz cable is designed to have extremely low inductance i.e. ohmic losses are reduced due to skin and proximity effect eddy currents and therefore allowing it to pass high frequencies more easily. On other hand Litz wires are just the cables with high capacitance that can have a dramatic effect on sound quality. Most preamps will have no problem with small amounts of capacitance, however if both pre and power amps have high bandwidth and no filtering than may suffer. What is important here is also that high capacitive cables may cause RF instability in the output stages and therefore ruin the sound. In “right” combination between low inductance and high capacitance in the Litz speaker wires load may become tricky for the outputs of some amplifiers to become unstable and oscillate at high power to the level of tweeter damage. For all this warnings we may say that they more amplifier design issue than the Litz cables.

Litz cables are not for anyone but in cases when all system ‘limits’ are overcome than they are exceptional. I prefer Audio Tekne copper wires over any silver, are far more natural and balanced.

Audio Tekne Litz phono cable is equal or even on higher level than other AT cables. To improve environment for phono cable inside tone arm it is good to apply cotton insulation and overall also bride shield which to be grounded.

Regards

Hi Guma15. Although I agree that high capacitance will most probably have negative results, I am afraid that I have to disagree with you on your account of the relation between Litz wire and capacitance. Litz wires are nothing but stranded wires with individually insulated strands. So, if anything, two or more Litz conductors/wires are likely to give less capacitance than stranded wires (of the same thickness) because of the additional space which is created by the insulation. Obviously, this is a very theoretical argument since all these values can easily change by simply altering the distances, sizes and dielectrics; so it is up to the manufacturer to create the desired levels of capacitance no matter what type of wires he decides to use.

Also, the shield on a cable does not automatically raise its capacitance. It depends on how it is used. i.e. on my interconnect cables between the source and the pre-amp, the shields are only connected to an external ground lug and have little to do with the capacitance between the conductors. Also, I have to say that the need for a shield or not is very much system and environment dependent. Personally, there is no chance I could use an unshielded cable without picking noise. I have tried it with several unshielded cables and the result was unbearable. I know people, who never felt the need of using shielded cables on their system and rightfully so. Their unshielded cables performed perfectly fine on their system. Most of them were convinced that shielded cables are entirely unnecessary; until they tried their cables in my house :-)

Anyway, I am now the owner of a brilliant silver litz phono cable (which unfortunately I did not make myself). It is a cable made by the guy I referred to earlier. The improvement was such that I could not justify it simply on the change of a cable. Not only the added detail and the perfect balance but also a huge expansion of the soundstage that made me feel like I had made a major component upgrade and moved around my entire set up in the room. The capacitance of the cable is at 18pF/ft which may not be the lowest one can get but it is on the very low side and perfectly fit for my case.

This phono cable travelled around most of my friends' houses and every single one of them has now placed an order for one. So I am quite confident that what I heard was not simply what I wanted to hear. It is simply a radical cable. I now compare two pairs of interconnect cables made by the same guy and I just cannot understand how he has achieved such substantial difference between his cables and other high end alternatives of similar structure. My recently made AN-Vx will be for sale soon without a second thought.
The same time I keep trying to DIY a similar Litz wire. The result is good. However, I end up with much bulkier conductors (which is a bit of an issue when you want to make a flexible cable) and I still cannot go over 50-60cm. Despite this, I am very happy with how these short DIY interconnects perform and have replaced all my previous DIY solid silver braided cables of similar lengths.