Solid silver rca interconnects?? for tubes???

[mcgarick]

Anyone here, use solid silver wire interconnects with their tube amps?

How did/do you like them??

I'm thinking about getting some to try.

They're not cheap....

So I wants some opinions on what they might do to the sound of my system.
My stuff shows below, EXCEPT I'm using a Minimax tube pre now..

I bought some silver coated, Chord Carnival Silverscreen speaker wire and it did improve the sound a bit,that's why I'm thinking about silver now...with the RCA's

opinions wanted.

Thanks!

 

[chadnliz]

Thinking outloud will likey get you more useful answers than the potential mocking you may face in this forum but having said that............
My experience with Silver is it can be more detailed sounding so for tubes it can be a great match as a warm system could use some sparkle, on a Solid State rig Silver can be harsh sounding. I like Silver for bass on biwire speakers. It might just be a great experiment and look forward to your results.

 

[RichPA]

Moved to a forum where it's got a chance.

 

[Mr. Lin]

You may read reviews and notice people often feel that silver sounds thin, bright, harsh, or all of the above. I know one respected cable maker who says he doesn't like the sound of silver for just those reasons.

In my experience, however, properly made silver interconnects are very transparent, plain and simple. You hear whatever is possible to hear with your particular source and system components. For that reason, I prefer it over copper, or mixed with copper - though IMO silver by itself is ideal. This is based only on listening tests and experience.

So the question really is whether your equipment is going to still sound pleasant when you "pull back the curtain," if you will. If you're using even a half-decent tube amp I'd be surprised if it ended up sounding bad, but you really need to try it out for yourself to make sure.

FWIW I've used silver interconnects with a tube preamp, a hybrid tube/ss integrated amp, a tube CD player (that tends to not really sound stereotypically "tubey" at all to begin with), and now, with a tube headphone amp. Great results with all. I prefer solid core to stranded, same with copper as a matter of fact.

Shop around before you buy, because, and this is my opinion based on things that I've purchased and used myself, many manufacturers seem to feel that the use of all-silver wire means they should suddenly add $500+ to the price per meter. The expensive silver interconnects I've tried, while good, where over-priced IMO, and it's because of the silver. Homegrown Audio is something you might want to look at. You can make them yourself, which is about as cheap as possible, or you can buy pre-assembled ones from them for what I think are reasonable prices compared to a lot of what's out there. If you end up making them for yourself, keep in mind that the type of RCA connectors you use is important.

 

[mcgarick]

My amps are Quicksilver, and that Company has solid silver rca (1 meter) for $100

 

[Mr. Lin]

My amps are Quicksilver, and that Company has solid silver rca (1 meter) for $100

Well, that's fairly atypical in the world of hi-fi cables. You're positive it's all-silver? Often times when the word "silver" is in the name of a model, it's silver-plated copper.

Are these the ones you're considering getting?

 

[mcgarick]

Mr. Lin
Here's what is said at the Quicksilver web site:

Interconnects
The new Quicksilver interconnect is designed specifically for tube preamps. The pure silver wire optimizes signal transmission and allows maximum resolution and bandwidth. The low capacitance configuration makes long runs easy to drive. Sold in one meter lengths or one meter multiples.


Price $100 per meter pair


This seems reasonable pricing for something like this...

I own the Quicksilver amps, and Im VERY impressed with these pieces still, they get better with all my upgrading of everything else,so there is a trust factor their too.

I think Im going to pull the trigger and get two pair.

One for my Arcam cd to the pre and one pair for the pre to mono's.

I will post my findings, Also, I'm going to find out what the return policy is!

I'll bet they're keepers though.

From what I've read so far......
and the people I've talked to,it seems to me, that the people running decent tube gear, like very much the silver interconnects. People using SS don't.

 

[RickB]

The Quicksilver interconnects are pretty damn good, they take a while to settle in, we've used them and had some input to Mike on which RCA plugs to use, the last ones we got from him used the same RCA plugs as the Incognito kits do...the Deltrons...I wonder if he is still using those...those plugs are what takes a long time to break in...

I'd also seriously look into the new 6 series of Wireworld Oasis in the same price range....we have been absolutely surprised at the sound quality of the new WW stuff...the new Oasis 6 competes with other manufacturer's cables that are twice its' price, and more...I would definitely try to audition a set of them before I purchased anything else...or, if you could splurge a bit more, the new Equinox 6's are superb....much, much clearer and cleaner than a set of Equinox 5.2's I own...and the new Luna 6's that are incredibly cheap, like around $40 a meter, are fully the equal of nearly anyone else's $100 a meter pair interconnects..boggles my mind...

My preference would be for the WW Oasis in my all tube system over the Quicksilver interconnect...

And while the materials used in constructing the cables makes a difference, there is much, much more to it than just silver vs. copper...I've heard shrill copper and mellow silver...

Mike makes great gear, of that there is no question...but there are a lot of folks, like David Salz, who have a lot more advanced experience with designing cables, and that sometimes shows....Mike's cable is of simple coaxial construction...there are some of us who do not like a pure coaxial design where the signal ground passes through the shield vs. a conductor of it's own that may or may not be shielded...you've gotta put them in your own system and try them for yourself to see...

 

[Mr. Lin]

I think Im going to pull the trigger and get two pair.

That sounds like a good idea. You're right, $100 a meter is a very fair price for those. Also keep in mind Ricks suggestions though, sounds like something to try in the future perhaps?

FWIW I also agree with Rick's comment about the types of metal. In my experience, OCC copper and silver are superior to regular OFC copper.

I look forward to reading your thoughts when you get them.

 

[mcgarick]

I have NOT pulled the trigger yet,....

as I'm thinking about this still, my finger got reeeaaaall ichy for a moment.

Stay tuned.

and thank for the input!

 

[Number 6]

Hi:

I've had very good experiences with Nordost silver plated interconnects, particularly with the Blue Heaven and Red Dawn in particular. If you can get Red Dawn used at a decent price I'd say absolutely go for them. I have a tube power amp and on my system the Nordost IC's add a lot of detail and a life-like presence. I've been told that silver IC's can sound harsh, but Nordost seems to be very good at making their cables sound detailed without any harshness. By the way, the best advice I've heard about IC's is to put your best pair of IC's on your best source to preamp. That way you'll get the most detail from your system. You can't add detail back once its been lost.

 

[RickB]

I just talked to the fellow I work for about the Quickie interconnects, and we both agreed that they were great sounding cables, but that Mike is somewhat spotty in getting them out...he also felt like I do that the WW stuff is a must audition cable at that price point.

There's also a difference in construction...the Quickies are OK, but in a decent homebrew sort of way...the WW's on the other hand, look like they cost five times what the Quickies do, just as you would expect something from a professional cable manufacturing concern to appear, the fit and finish is that much better...

To comment on Number 6's comments about Nordost, yep, I've played with Nordost cables, from the Freys to Valhallas, to Blue Heaven, Red Dawn, Moonglow, etc., and they are clear, bright, clean, the Nordost family sound is just that...the farther up the line you go, the fewer compromises the sound is subjected to, but none of them are warm...they are also a lot less immune to outside interference than many other types of cables...also, the better cables use the WBT Nextgen type plugs and you can really hear their vast superiority in clarity in comparison to the Neutrik ProFi's used on stuff like the Red Dawn, for example...

I tried a set of Valhalla Bi-wires on my Martin Logans and a couple of sets of the interconnects to hook up the SACD player and preamp to amps when I brought home a set of NuForce Reference monoblocks for an audition....the Valhalla speaker cables acted like an antenna broadcasting all the digital noise from the amplifiers and the interconnects acted like receiving antennas, it was impossible to use any FM tuner in the house with this setup!!!

So, I don't know the particular RFI conditions at the OP's home, but if there are long runs to the amps I would be wary of noise pickup...

Another incident was when I was setting up a table one Saturday and needed to test one of the little Bellari tube phono preamps, so I grabbed a set of Nordost Frey 1m interconnects to go between the ProJect Xtension I was seting up and the Bellari...Man! The hum was incredible through a set of Sennheser 650's plugged into the headphone jack...I really like the Frey's sound, but in this instance they plain flat did not work!

I futzed around with it a bunch and was unable to get the hum to disappear...until, that is, I grabbed a set of interconnects I had made up for the bench using Klotz cable I cut off Rega arm I rewired with an Incognito kit and some salvaged Neutrik ProFi RCA plugs...instant silence...

That one incident reinforced the fact that you MUST audition cables in YOUR system with YOUR equipment before really deciding what you're going to spend your hard earned cash upon...

Which is why we send out cables all the time to folks to audition...it's really the only way to buy stuff that you KNOW is going to work well for you...

.

 

[Mr. Lin]

Another incident was when I was setting up a table one Saturday and needed to test one of the little Bellari tube phono preamps, so I grabbed a set of Nordost Frey 1m interconnects to go between the ProJect Xtension I was seting up and the Bellari...Man! The hum was incredible through a set of Sennheser 650's plugged into the headphone jack...I really like the Frey's sound, but in this instance they plain flat did not work!


.

But isn't the Frey unshielded? I had the same issue in the past finding appropriate interconnects to use from my Thorens TD125 MKII to phono preamp. Most of the ones I tried, even though they were shielded, resulted in hum. Incidentally, in the end the winners were Tara Labs and Grover Huffman's cables, the latter is the only pair I still have.

Some people swear that the lower-end Nordost cables lose the brightness once they've been properly burned in for a long time. I've never owned any.

 

[RickB]

But isn't the Frey unshielded? I had the same issue in the past finding appropriate interconnects to use from my Thorens TD125 MKII to phono preamp. Most of the ones I tried, even though they were shielded, resulted in hum. Incidentally, in the end the winners were Tara Labs and Grover Huffman's cables, the latter is the only pair I still have.

Yeah, but I thought I'd try them just to test out the Bellari....makes me wonder if some of the hum problems people have attributed to the Bellari could have been credited to the cables the folks having problems were using to connect their tables to the Bellari....

Some people swear that the lower-end Nordost cables lose the brightness once they've been properly burned in for a long time. I've never owned any.

Yeah, they do, but they also lose out in transparency vs. the higher end models, but they still have that very flat and neutral Nordost house sound, just a bit cloudier, if you will, than stepping up the line....

It absolutely amazed me, though, to hear the difference between the WBT and the Neutrik ends, we had a couple of "tester" suitcases from Nordost filled with their cables (man, there had to be $40K worth of cables in those things!!!!) and there was one series that had a set of interconnects with WBT and the same ones with Neutrik and the difference was "illuminating" to say the least!

.

 

[Mr. Lin]

Yeah, but I thought I'd try them just to test out the Bellari....makes me wonder if some of the hum problems people have attributed to the Bellari could have been credited to the cables the folks having problems were using to connect their tables to the Bellari....



Yeah, they do, but they also lose out in transparency vs. the higher end models, but they still have that very flat and neutral Nordost house sound, just a bit cloudier, if you will, than stepping up the line....

It absolutely amazed me, though, to hear the difference between the WBT and the Neutrik ends, we had a couple of "tester" suitcases from Nordost filled with their cables (man, there had to be $40K worth of cables in those things!!!!) and there was one series that had a set of interconnects with WBT and the same ones with Neutrik and the difference was "illuminating" to say the least!

.

Although I don't have firsthand experience with the WBT connectors, I've discovered the importance of quality connectors during the process of making my own cables. Furutech and Eichmann make great ones, and all-copper or all-silver is far preferable to the typical brass alloy IME. Putting a relatively massive piece of brass at the end of a thin wire doesn't make much sense, it just happens to be a lot cheaper.

 

[Number 6]

I've heard the best from Crystal and Nordost, and to me the Nordost was the most neutral sounding with great detail. Valhalla IC's and speaker cable are incredible, but at that price I won't be buying any in this lifetime! It would be nice to get Red Dawn IC's with better connectors though.

Back to the OP's first question: yes I'd definitely agree that silver plated cables will be a better match for tube equipment. You probably don't need more warmth in your system than you have now. Good luck with your choice.

 

[marqueemoon]

I've been considering the Valab DAC/silver interconnect package ($250 for both on ebay) to mate with my old CD player, tube integrated, and 6.5" Audio Nirvana full range-based speakers (no supertweeters or sub).

Given the natural rolloff of the speakers a little more brightness *could* be a good thing. I dunno. The DAC + Blue Jeans ICs would still be cheaper.

 

[Mr. Lin]

I've been considering the Valab DAC/silver interconnect package ($250 for both on ebay) to mate with my old CD player, tube integrated, and 6.5" Audio Nirvana full range-based speakers (no supertweeters or sub).

Given the natural rolloff of the speakers a little more brightness *could* be a good thing. I dunno. The DAC + Blue Jeans ICs would still be cheaper.

Good silver interconnects should give you a neutral sound overall, basically just revealing the source and all the components in your system. From the description of your system here, that's probably going to be a good thing, so they might work well. Really good copper interconnects should do the same thing by having the same transparency and neutral presentation.

 

[marqueemoon]

Good silver interconnects should give you a neutral sound overall, basically just revealing the source and all the components in your system. From the description of your system here, that's probably going to be a good thing, so they might work well. Really good copper interconnects should do the same thing by having the same transparency and neutral presentation.

That's the thing though. I'm not sure these silver ICs fall into the "good" category.

There's a shop here in Portland that has a good selection of used ICs. If certain people who have not bought me a present yet would like to do so...:scratch2:

 

[Mr. Lin]

That's the thing though. I'm not sure these silver ICs fall into the "good" category.

There's a shop here in Portland that has a good selection of used ICs. If certain people who have not bought me a present yet would like to do so...:scratch2:

One of the reasons I now make my own - it's tailored!