Riddle me this: how is carbon a conductor?

On the other hand, why do you feel that lower resistance would be better?

An 18 gauge copper wire has .0209 ohms of resistance per meter. That means carbon at 867 times more is 18 ohms. Using a larger cross section of carbon would reduce this even further. A 10 guage carbon fiber would be 2.6 ohms/m. I don't know what the diameter of the fibers in this cable is, but is 18 ohms detrimental to the sound? A better question may be would the advantages outweigh whatever disadvantages there may be? I don't know, but 18 ohms is certainly much, much lower than the 25K to 100K input impedance of a typical component. It is about .2% of even an unusually low 10K input impedance.

The source wouldn't see a greater load. Actually the opposite. The resistance would be in series with the output so you would have to turn up the volume a bit (a fraction of a percent) to get the same voltage level delivered to the load, but it would still draw the same current.

Sean, you make the claim that it is a big waste with no benefits. If you go to his website he claims that there are significant benefits, and unless my math is wrong there is very little waste.

The bottom line is: does it sound better? I really don't know the answer to this since I've never heard the Wolff cables. I am simply challenging the assumption that a few ohms of resistance is a bad thing. Of course if it gets too high then that could be an issue, but what is too high?

Here is a quote from the Audience website with a their take on cable resistance. I am presently using Audience cables and think they are very good, especially for the money.

"There is a common misconception that loudspeaker cable must be large in diameter and have a low DC resistance in order to provide good bass response. DC resistance is relatively unimportant. What really matters is the characteristic impedance (AC resistance) of the cable. Music is an AC signal after all. Most of these large diameter/low DC resistance cables have excessively high characteristic impedance anywhere from 100 to 600 ohms with some measuring in the 1000’s of ohms. The Au24 Loudspeaker Cable is only 4mm or 1/8" in diameter. Although the DC resistance may be slightly higher than the garden hose variety speaker cables the characteristic impedance is only 16 ohms. Musical signals from the bass to the overtones pass through this cable with less actual impedance than a cable with a lower DC resistance."

mPrime, your math is flawed to say that you get 20dB or 30dB less signal passed through a carbon conductor. The ratio of carbon's conductivity to that of copper is not the proper way to look at it.

What we are concerned with is the amount of voltage that is delivered to the next stage. If a perfect voltage source has a 1 volt output, and I use a cable with 1 ohm of impedance hooked up to a 50K ohm input impedance, I will get 99.998% of that 1 volt delivered to the load. If I use a cable with as much as 1000 ohms of impedance I will still get 98% of it, which is -.18 dB.

As far as characterizing carbon as a "poor conductor," it has more resistance than copper but in the grand scheme of things it's really not that much. I looked at the Van Den Hull website and they state a 38 ohm/meter spec for their metal free, carbon fiber interconnects. This would result in -.006 dB/meter in the example above.

Sean, lighten up :>) You sometimes seem to grab a mantra, such as lower resistance is better, and defend it to the death without even considering another perspective.

The issue is much more complex than how much resistance a cable has. That is but a tiny part of the complete picture, which I maintain there is much we don't understand. If we did we wouldn't have these debates ad-nauseum on topics such as is balanced better than single ended, is copper better than silver, are tubes better than transistors, is cable A better than cable B, CD vs. vinyl vs. DVD-A vs. SACD vs. my personal favorite, 8 track tapes ..........................

Open up your mind a bit and consider something besides that which you have convinced yourself is the truth and the only truth. When Monster started pushing cables in the early eighties we all laughed that a piece of wire could affect the signal at audio frequencies. Now we know better.

I don't know if these carbon cables are any good as I haven't heard them. Others say they are pretty swell. To condemm them on the basis that the resistance is a bit higher reminds me of all these people who won't eat rice because it is a carbohydrate, and they've read a bunch of sound scientific reasons why they are bad for you. I just got back from Japan and some of the longest living people in the world are a bunch of rice eating Okinawans

You defended the magnet guy in another thread and he offered nothing but the word of God to back him up. Hmmm, that sounded a little blasphemous. I think you should give the carbon guys a chance too.

I just re-read my last post and I apologize because it looks like a personal attack on Sean. Maybe it is. I don't think that has any place here so I must apologize.

I'm afraid I've lost my patience with those who take dogmatic positions based on an incomplete understanding of the topics under discussion. I include myself and everybody here in that category because I believe that nobody fully understands what is going on with these systems. So for someone to take a position that the only acceptable spindle bearing design is one with the lowest friction, or that the only good cable designs are those with the lowest resistance, or a certain method of vibration control is the only one that will work, or any other such topic just seems totally absurd to me given the vast amount that remains a mystery in this hobby.

I think I need a vacation too so I'll be away for a while. Thanks for putting up with me.