Personally, I think in the case of single material, copper is more suitable for audio and earphone wire than silver, because the transmission capacity of copper for all signals in the audio signal range is relatively balanced, so the performance of copper is relatively balanced, and it sounds more smooth, warm and thick. This is my favorite sound. Among the conductive properties of metals, silver is much better than gold, and silver is undoubtedly the metal with the best conductivity among non rare metals. Therefore, as a sound wire for electrical signal transmission, silver seems to be a very suitable metal.
However, we also need to understand the conductivity of silver, that is, it has excellent transmission ability for high-frequency signals in electrical signal transmission, but not so excellent for medium and low-frequency signals. What is a high frequency signal? Let's popularize it.
Let's understand the parameter Hz, that is, the number of cycles per second. For example, the frequency of our national power grid is 50Hz, that is, the electrical signal has 50 periodic changes per second.
Then the high-frequency signals transmitted by silver are in M (1000khz) or G (1000MHz). The transmission range of our analog sound signal is generally 20Hz ~ 20kHz, which obviously does not reach the transmission range that silver is good at. The conclusion is that silver is not suitable for audio and earphone wires.
I'm surprised. I also think the unexpected is a little too sudden, but the fact may be true. Then why are there so many so-called silver wires or silver plated wires?
In fact, it is also simple. Because of the characteristics of silver, it can effectively improve the high-frequency transmission capacity. Although the sound signal does not reach the high-frequency range, at least the transmission of high-frequency signal is better than that of low-frequency, which will cause more high-volume sense in the sound signal and more details in hearing, Because most detail signals exist in high-frequency signals.
In the comparison of wires made of various materials, we will find that the details of wires made of silver are the best, which secretly caters to the development direction of equipment evaluated by details in the audio industry.
Therefore, we often hear the sound without smoke and anger that is originally a high-temperature moving iron unit and then matched with silver thread. It is said that it is immortal, but it is a little creepy. This is a matter of different opinions. We don't explore more in this post that only talks about materials.
Because silver does not have good fatigue resistance (that is, it is easy to be broken), the common silver wires are actually silver plated wires, which look shiny. In fact, they are composed of oxygen free copper or single crystal copper. This has another advantage for audio signal transmission, that is, due to the skin effect, high-frequency signals are transmitted from the surface layer with good transmission effect for high-frequency signals, while medium and low-frequency signals are transmitted by copper. It can make up for the transmission of medium and low frequency signals made of some silver materials.
If you are really a detail control, it is understandable to choose silver wire, but if you like the warm, smooth and thick sound, don't choose this silver wire.
simuwu Tripod
Copper is the first metal that we humans came into contact with, even earlier than iron, which is mainly due to the rich and easy access to minerals. The well-known Si Muwu Ding is bronze, that is, copper tin alloy. In the past, the weapons used by soldiers were also made of bronze. At that time, a country was destined to be strong when it mastered the smelting technology of copper.
Pure copper
Copper with relatively high purity can be used in signal transmission. Copper is a good conductor of electrical signals. It is better than gold for signal transmission and slightly worse than silver. However, copper is not a precious metal like gold and silver, which is also the reason for the large application of copper.
Oxygen free copper
Part of the resistance to the transmission of electrical signals in metals comes from the existence of oxygen. Therefore, the lower the oxygen content in the material, the better the transmission effect. Therefore, on the premise of technological progress, oxygen-free copper appears. Generally, the purity is above 99.999%, because more and more 9's are always needed. In order to simplify, it is expressed by n, There are as many 9's as there are n's, such as 6N copper wire, which is 99.9999%. Of course, some people say there is 8N or 9N, which has no theoretical basis, because even if you have the ability to produce copper of this purity in theory, there is no equipment to measure such high purity. It's embarrassing. There are many things that are really so embarrassing.
Occ
People's pursuit is endless. Of course, they can't tolerate the existence of only oxygen free copper. Therefore, technical experts have produced single crystal copper, which is a copper material made of only one crystal by continuous casting technology. It is said that a crystal can be stretched to more than 100 meters. In this case, if you use single crystal copper to make a 1.2-meter-long earphone wire, The signal is only transmitted in the same crystal, eliminating the blocking of the grain boundary to the signal. This is undoubtedly the best state of signal transmission, because the signal will be blocked and attenuated when passing through the grain boundary. Although this attenuation will be very subtle, who makes us a group of enthusiasts pursuing the ultimate? If you buy a single crystal copper wire, you should pay attention to one thing. This wire is directional, so you must make the signal direction consistent with the arrow direction marked on the wire, otherwise it will affect the sound quality in theory.
This is also true from the sense of hearing. The higher the purity of copper, the better its transmission capacity and the more transparent and exquisite the sound. This is definitely not metaphysics.
