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Why Palladium in cables, wiring, etc. . .?

There seems to be a growing aura around Palladium. A perfectly good noble metal, Palladium came to popular fame during the now very dubious episode of cold fusion, proposed by Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Ponse. But the word Palladium itself has a much older and classical origin. A Palladium was originally a statue bearing the likeness of the goddes Pallas, and only much later it referred to buildings inspired by the neo-classical style of Andrea Palladio. Today the word bears both connotations of classical understated elegance as well as hinting at quasi esoteric neo-science and mysteries. Hence it is easy to understand why savvy marketing consultants may warmly recommend that products and brands aspiring to prestige may be named after the metal.

Yet, when it comes to discovering a physical reason why engineers may opt to actually employing this fine metallic element as a conductor in interconnects, chords, wires and electrical contacts, things become rather murky and unclear. For example, SilverSmith Audio now advertises some of its products as containing Palladium. And the newest iteration of the Dodson 218 DAC, by virtue of the company having been purchased by SilverSmith, now sports internal Palladium-alloy wiring.

What is it, besides its resistance to tarnish and corrosion, and the obvious aura in the name, that is causing such engineering choices? Palladium's disconcertingly high index of resistivity does not seem to justify its selection. Per the list below, Palladium is 6.65 times as resistive as
Silver, 6.28 times as resistive as copper, almost 4 times as resistive as Aluminum, and
approximately 10% more resistive than Iron. The good news is that Palladium appears
to be a little bit more conductive than Tin, and almost twice as conductive as Lead.

Resistivity:
Silver: (20 °C) 15.87 nO·m
Copper: (20 °C) 16.78 nO·m
Gold: (20 °C) 22.14 nO·m
Aluminum: (20 °C) 26.50 nO·m
Rhodium: (0 °C) 43.3 nO·m
Zinc: (20 °C) 59.0 nO·m
Nickel: (20 °C) 69.3 nO·m
Iron: (20 °C) 96.1 nO·m
Platinum: (20 °C) 105 nO·m
Palladium: (20 °C) 105.4 nO·m
Tin: (0 °C) 115 nO·m
Lead: (20 °C) 208 nO·m

Any ideas?
guidocorona

Showing 4 responses by zaikesman

zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
" Are you saying there is AC in the circuit beyond the rectifiers in the power supply?"
All audio electrical signals are alternating current, as described by their frequency (DC = 0 Hz).
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Tgb: I don't think that was Kevziek's argument, but regardless, since when is the expectation of agreement a prerequisite for posting one's opinion? Personally, I'm probably more likely to post my opinion if I think it it runs counter to the grain.

Anyway, though I know or have heard nothing about palladium's use in cables, I suspect DC resistance may not be a terribly important criteria in cable materials sound. I say this for three reasons:

1) Audio is AC, not DC. While I don't pretend to know the technicalities of all this, I do believe that AC resistance is determined by not just the conductor material but also by the geometry, and that it's usually higher than the DC resistance and is therefore more of a factor in determining a conductor's losses to heat. So when was the last time anybody noticed their system cables running too hot?

2) Even if we stipulate that conductor material resistance (AC or DC) is a factor for cable design, who's to say that lower resistance necessarily equals better sound? If the resistance is uniform with frequency in the audioband, then it seems to me other factors will be more important.

3) To point #2, all of my interconnects use carbon fiber as the conductor material, which is many times higher in DC resistance than the metals discussed here. I chose these cables because I think they sound better than any of the metal cables I've used, so it's clear to me that this out of context materials spec isn't a valid way to prejudge a cable's audio performance.
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Tbg: Yes, all-carbon cables can be more susceptible to hum (although it's of the induced environmental variety, not caused by a ground loop), and this is the result of the higher resistance of the shielding in combination with the run length and what gear it's connected to. For certain runs in my system I use carbon conductor cables with metal shielding instead of all-carbon.

Will: Resistance is less of a factor for interconnects (in normal length runs), more so for speaker cables and of course power cords.
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Tbg: Then I think the fact that the conductors happened to be carbon was probably incidental (assuming the metal shields were correctly grounded), maybe the overall design of the IC's you used in combination with your particular system configuration and/or gear was more the cause. For instance, I use vdH carbon interconnects, and The Second, which is a balanced twisted-pair design with metal shields, shows no hum problems in my system with any gear, and in fact is marketed as a studio microphone cable suitable for very long runs despite its carbon conductors. The First Ultimate on the other hand, a single-ended coaxial design with only carbon shielding, works well in certain situations (where it works better than anything else I've tried) but not others, and isn't offered in runs longer than 2m. So all I'm saying is that carbon conductors per se is probably not the reason for hum problems.
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