What do you guys think of this article? Is he right or is he nwavguy-ish?
https://audiotruth.wordpress.com/2015/03/19/silver-gold-2/
https://audiotruth.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/the-toxic-cables-plot-thickens/
When trying to determine the effectiveness or sound of a cable based purely on that material's percentage on the IACS conductivity scale, you have a problem. That's just not how things work. I'm not going to defend the Toxic Cable guy's claim that an alloy of 99% silver and 1% gold reduces the conductivity of silver by 1% or whatever, clearly that's not grounded in any science.
There may be reasons for adding a small amount of gold to silver wire though, beyond just pure conductivity. Clearly, if conductivity is all you are worried about, then you should
never use machined brass or bronze audio connectors (which is what almost all connectors are made out of) because those metals are
awful at conducting electricity.
I don't subscribe to the theory that assuming you use appropriate gauges to equal out conductivity, large gauge aluminum wire will sound the same as small gauge copper wire.
The problem that cable makers run into is when they attempt to justify the use of silver by claiming its higher on the conductivity scale in the first place. Silver's additional conductivity over highly refined copper with minimal impurities is small enough to be negligible. And unless you have the ability to cold weld your connectors, you're going to be introducing other metals via solder, even with pure silver connectors, which are relatively rare. Most silver connectors also tend to be plated with a low conductivity material like platinum or rhodium because pure silver oxidizes and tarnishes so easily, even though unlike copper oxide, conductivity of silver oxide remains high.
Just say you use silver in your wire because you think it sounds better, not because it's 106% vs. 104% or whatever, especially when your using Cardas connectors made out of 28% conductivity brass.
