gold plated

[mccarthy11ster]

I was wondering if gold plated wires and connectors’ were worth that little extra. I have had many connectors’ and wires just die on me and I was wondering if gold plated ones lasted longer or just gave a nicer crisper sound. and if so is it worth investing in some

 

 

thanks

ian ;)

[Ynot]

For what?

 

Average home hi-fi? Almost certainly not.

Top-whack hi-fi? Possibly, depending on how sad you are about that little tiny benefit of GP conns! ;)

Disco? Nah - just buy some nice robust solid cables.

 

Whether they're useful for theatrical instances is debatable, depending entirely on what kit you have, what venue it's in, the type of install, etc., etc...

 

Horses for courses.

[Bobbsy]

Generally gold won't do much (if anything) for you. Far more important is to use decent quality cable and brand name connectors like Neutrik or Switchcraft. Made off properly, a heavy duty cable with a good connector should last a long time and sound just fine.

 

Gold is no "magic bullet" to improve sound. The one thing it has going for it it that, as a metal, it doesn't corrode like some ultra cheap stuff from your local hifi shop or Tandy. However, decent non-gold connectors don't corrode either...and the gold plating on hifi gear is so thin is can often wear off after a few cable swaps anyway.

 

(OT--A well-known semi-pro audio dealer once tried to sell me a gold plated Toslink (i.e. fibre optic) lead. Last I heard, a good electrical connection wasn't especially important to a fibre link!)

 

Bob

[Simon Lewis]

If you have had connectors and wires "just die" on you, I would be looking at the quality and physical construction of your cable and connectors, your soldering technique and the way you use and coil your cables.

 

Further to Bobbsy's comments, firms such as Neutrik use a 2 μm silver coating over a brass or bronze contact. Where these are used in atmospheres with a high sulphur content (e.g. from industrial or transport pollution - although 'low sulphur' fuels have help minimise the latter) it is not unusual to see a black, non conductive, silver sulphide deposit on the contacts.

Frequent mating will help prevent this occurring (!), so it's often more of a problem in installations where non gas tight connectors are left mated for very long periods.

 

Neutrik do produce connectors with 0.2 μm gold hard alloy over 2 μm nickel to help reduce problems from atmospheric contamination and to maintain low contact resistance. As others have said, this is primarily to do with maintaining good electrical contact, not some magic spell that will transform your audio.

 

Simon

[Sirch Sound]

I was wondering if gold plated wires

 

Just wondering about this one?! Its the first of this type of cable I have herd of! Gold plated connectors, yes theres thousands, but gold plated cable?

 

As bobbsy said, a well made cable using good reputable components are the way forwards. The only two audio cable assembleys I use are canford HST or FST cable with neutrik connectors or van damme cable ( OFC Mic cable or OFC Starquad mic cable) again with neutrik connectors. Most of my connectors are the neutrik NC series however as im replacing connectors or assembling new cables I am using the new XX Series mainly because I think they look cooler!

 

These are probably the most popular professional cables you will encounter in the trade, however some people prefer the swichcraft connectors, but I have never had a problem with neutrik so never felt the need to use anything else.

 

Depending on how many cables you making you will probably find it cheaper to buy a drum of cable and make up your own cables to length as you need them. This is genrally what I do, when running out of cables due to them going walkies or damaged I buy a drum of cable, a handful or two of connectors and get high on solder fumes for a night.

 

Finally I think one point that no-one has made clear yet is that gold plated stuff does not neccaserily give more robust cables, it will mearly improve sound quality and stop corrosion, however both these factors are so small that it is genrally not worth the extra cost. I am yet to come across someone who can prove to me that gold plated connectors make you pa system sound better. The best way to improve the robustness of your cables is use some of the cable and connector reccomendations above. The other issue with durability is your soldering, how good is it? I always put heatshrink on the striped section of the cable inside the connectors after I have soldered it to make sure no strands can break free and make contact with other pins, do you do this? It could well be worth it. Infact one very important point is that you dont tell us where you cables keep breaking? Is it the cable or the connectors or your soldering in the connectors?

 

As you can see there are so many factors involved with this issue!

Hope this helps

Rich

[mervaka]

(OT--A well-known semi-pro audio dealer once tried to sell me a gold plated Toslink (i.e. fibre optic) lead. Last I heard, a good electrical connection wasn't especially important to a fibre link!)

 

I nearly spat my tea out in laughter ;) goddamnit!

[andy_s]

well gold is very very shiny, so it's got to help the light pass through the cable, hasn't it?

 

how they get the gold to actually line the inside of the cable is anyone's guess....

[jamesperrett]

I was wondering if gold plated wires

 

Just wondering about this one?! Its the first of this type of cable I have herd of!

 

There may possibly be advantages at microwave frequencies due to the skin effect but there's absolutely no point at anything approaching audio frequencies. I've seen microwave people actually using pipes rather than wires because the centre of the cable would serve no purpose at those frequencies.

 

Cheers

 

James.

[Bobbsy]

OT aside: jamesperrett is correct that microwaves are fed through "pipes" (more properly known as waveguide). The reason for this is that cable losses simply become too extreme at frequencies in the microwave range. (If you look at cable specs for radio mic antenna leads, you'll see that the losses are getting progressively worse as you move up through the UHF band, even with high quality cable.)

 

The "pipes" are actually rectangular in cross section and sized to match wavelength of the frequency band in use. The cable losses are the main reason that the "LNB" (low noise block down converter) is located as close as possible to the focus of a satellite dish. This converts the satellite frequencies down to L band (which CAN travel through cable) so the signal can be fed to the receiver without bulky plumbing.

 

We now return you to the original topic.

 

Bob