Using silver plating polish

Aug 12, 2005 51 Replies

I'd say it came from the practise of some pro cables being marked with a direction to aid fault finding in a big rig - you know which direction you need to follow to find the plug, so can be useful.

Someone not unlike Drivel saw this and decided it was directional cable. After all he's not the only person in the world who always gets the wrong end of the stick.

It would technically be possible to make a cable like that? Or one which altered the frequency response by ludicrous amounts of capacity etc?

But the question is why would you want to?

IIRC, Naim audio make a special speaker cable to get round the fact they don't use a series inductor in the output of their amps. Never had an explanation why, though.

Wasn't it this group where someone criticised Dixons for offering a similar service? ;-)

If people can genuinely hear the difference and genuinely consider that this difference is worth paying silly money for, then good luck to 'em.

Presumably someone somewhere must have done some double-blind tests on these 'snake-oil' hi-fi products? It would be very straightforward to prove one way or the other whether they make the slightest bit of difference, surely?

David

Lots of people have. The results are, not surprisingly, ignored by the Audiophiles...

Two main threads of attack are used:

(A) rubbishing the test methodology - more tests should have been run to get a statistically valid result, the environment was unknown to the listeners beforehand, not enough 'qualified listeners' were used etc...

(B) Stating that the perceived sound quality is somehow more than just the measurable electrical and mechanical activity of the system, and that regardless of the measured levels they can still 'hear' a difference.

Try

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for a looong exchange of views for and against...

The skin effect is only a problem if the connectors are not properly secured.

Wow - what a lot of replies, and out of all of them, some downright rude, some funny, and most off on a complete tangent, only one that even tried to answer the question ! Regardless of why I'm trying to plate the pins - the solution says it works on brass, so why doesn't it? That's all I wanted to know. Thanks anyway, I'll go feed the hamsters

They're very choosey when it come to food, hence why none of them go on strike. :-)

There's a standing offer somewhere of IIRC $10,000 for anyone who can reliably tell the difference between adequately specified cables in a double blind test. And an adequately specified cable will cost not a lot.

Some have tried, but non succeeded. The 'ear' is very easily fooled, especially after you've spent large sums on impressive looking cables.

I'm using Fyffes labels to retain them ;-)

Think yourself lucky this thread was (I think) kept Drivel free.....but then again maybe you were Drivel in drag all along

Drivel on anything vaguely electrical is even more amusing than his plumbing rubbish. At least with that he is a good source of the latest products, no matter how weird.

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