There are many things I try to put off.  These include going to the dentist, paying taxes, visiting some relatives and talking about cables.  I believe that no subject has done more damage to the "high-end" market than cables.

I have discussed in other pages that high quality sound has been available for many years.  Tube amplifiers provided outstanding audio performance since the 1930s.  Certainly there have been many advances in audio. However, all one has to do is to watch a Laser Disk copy of Walt Disney's classic Fantasia to see that nearly sixty years ago, many of the elements of modern audio were already available.

I believe that many of the modern advances are advances in convenience and miniaturization rather than an actual improvement in sound.  Certainly the LP was capable of high quality sound. Reel-to-reel recorders provided better sound than today's cassette decks.  Many amplifiers from the 1950s are considered classics today.  Marantz, Dynaco and MacIntosh have reissued some of their classic designs.

Some people claim that some loudspeakers, such as Quad ESL, the original AR3s and some of the classic Allison models are equal or better than anything built today.  What distinguishes the products built years ago from what is available today is that most of the earlier equipment was far more affordable than much of the modern audio equipment.

One of the things that was not available in the days of "classic" audio were "high-end" cables.  Once high-end cables were introduced, the market expanded and the prices continued to search new highs.  I believe that no other area in high-fidelity has done more to discredit "high-end" more than some of the claims and prices attached to high quality cables.

Do cables make a difference?   The answer is yes. Different cables do sound different. The problem is trying to determine which cables sound better.

The best conductors are silver, copper and gold (in that order).  While copper is a better conductor than gold, oxidized copper is a poor conductor. Silver is still a very good conductor even when oxidized.  For this reason, connectors are often made from materials that are poorer conductors than copper. Often gold plating is used because gold plating does not oxidize.

There is a lot of marketing hype about cables. The basic thing you should remember is that copper is a relatively inexpensive material. After all, the penny is made of copper. Silver on the other hand is a fairly expensive material. I have noticed how few high end cables are actually silver. Most of these cables are copper cables with the manufacturer hyping something special about their copper. Some manufacturers claim better crystal patterns. Some claim less oxygen. I most cases, these copper wires sell for more money than buying pure silver.

Some cables are mixed copper and silver. It is often difficult to determine how much silver and how much copper are in the wires.

Stereophile acknowledged that bulk Radio Shack wire sounded good.  Therefore when we spend money on high quality wire, it should sound better than good.

When Monster Cable first introduced its wire, I bought some thinking that while it was expensive, it was something I would not have to buy very often and that if it improved the sound that would be great. If it didn't it looked cool.  I bought some very expensive Kimber cable a few years later. I had just bought some $8,000 USD per pair speakers and I felt that a few hundred dollars on wire was worthwhile.   Ten years later, I am still using the Kimber cable and I don't miss the money.   When I bought my amplifier, I bought Siltech cable to connect my amplifier and preamplifier.  It was astonishingly expensive but since my amplifier cost $8000 USD and the preamplifier cost another $4000 USD, buying expensive wire didn't seem like a problem.  I paid $800 for two balanced cables for my amplifier and preamplifier.

Our power cord using cable from Germany

Now I am building loudspeakers and advising people what to do.  I have done a lot of testing. My goal is to offer the best sound for the least amount of money.  Today, my favorite speaker cable is cable that we make from insulated silver wire from Germany.  We have Thais braid the wire by hand.  It takes nine meters of wire to make one meter of cable.  We have braided these cables up to five meters.  I don't know how much longer than can make it as they have to stretch out the wire for 30 meters to braid five.

The detail from this wire is quite good.  I don't know if it is easy or not to find silver wire at electrical supply houses or not. If so, you might want to try making your own.  We can make this cable up for you for $25 USD per meter.  This is astonishingly inexpensive and demonstrates the type of markup some of the loudspeaker companies make. We can provide a variety of connectors.

One of the questions we asked was "what good does it use to use expensive wire to connect to a device if the device itself uses cheap wires"?  You would be surprised at what low quality cables are used in amplifiers.  Here in Thailand, I have had many of my audio components completely rewired.  I have them use shielded cable for all signal paths.  I had one of my old Bedini amplifiers rewired and the sound improved substantially.

I now make all my own cables.  I use shielded OFC (oxygen free cable) cable for my long runs and for video.  There is no proof that OFC cables sound better but since I am making my own cables, I can splurge. It costs me about $3.00 USD per meter for the best cable I can find.  I like to use the gold plated lock-down connectors that some of the most expensive cables use.  I have found these connectors for about $8.00 USD each. I use silver solder which is really not too expensive.  The cost to make my own cable is about $25.00 for two meters.  This is not cheap but I believe that these cables will compare to cables costing many times more.  I suggest that you consider making your own cables.  It doesn't take much skill and you can save a lot of money.

I have also used my braided silver wire cable with great success.  I only use it for short runs because it isn't shielded.  I believe that cables do make a difference:

• Silver wire sounds more detailed and brighter than copper
• Thick copper wire improves the sound of bass 
• Shielded cable improves video
• Lockdown connectors are less troublesome than other RCA style connectors

Banana connectors are my favorite because they are easy to connect and they provide very good surface contact

We introduced our cables and they became very popular. Unfortunately our supply of insulated silver wire dried up. We tried to get this wire from Germany, Taiwan and even here in Thailand. We were unable to source pure insulated silver wire. This surprised me because I would have thought that given the amount of money people were spending on wire, they should be getting silver.

I tried pricing buying silver strands and making our own wire. We found that if we imported the wire, the costs would be horribly expensive. We had to pay taxes and the markup on silver can be very high.

We decided to try to source silver locally. There is a big market for 92.5% pure silver jewelry here in Thailand. We didn't believe 92.5% was pure enough for our needs. We were able to source 99.99% silver here. We asked to have one kilogram of silver drawn into a thin wire. When we got the wire, it was much thicker than we wanted. We were told that this was as thin as we could get the wire drawn here in Thailand.

We took our one kilogram of silver wire and decided to braid three strands together and then insulate the able ourselves. The result was a silver weave that was approximately as thick as 18 gauge wire but made from pure silver.

We braided our pure silver wire and made them into one meter interconnects. The results was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, this is a very expensive way to make cable. Our staff was so excited with the results that they wanted to sell our new cable. We are now offering our 99.99% pure silver braided cable for $100 per meter. This is not inexpensive but if you are going to buy high priced cable, it might as well be made from silver.

A very good FAQ on wire can be found at

http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet-faqs/html/AudioFAQ/part8/faq.html

Here is a picture of Wanni, displaying our insulated silver cable. We have not been able to source this wire anymore and are now braiding pure 99.99% pure silver.

Banana Jack and braided silver cable

nOrh Braided 99.99% Silver Cables: $100 per meter - up to five meters.

You can use one length for positive and one length for negative if you want to splurge.

nOrh Power Cables (made from high quality copper German wire): $60 for two meters

High Quality Connectors (per pair): Banana Jacks - $5.00, RCA - $8.00, SPADE Jacks - $5.00

All jacks are gold plated/high quality connectors.  Compare at up to $25 per connector from major suppliers.

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