Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Speaker Cables

Last night I replaced my 12 year old speaker cables with new ones of the same gauge. I don't know. My system just seems to have a fresher sound now.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Oh yeah, since the manufacturer removed the oxygen from the new cables, will they maintain their freshness longer?

You have to store them in long, narrow Tupperware containers.

I've had speaker cables get stale over time. They turned green in spots (or was it yellow?) under the clear jacket.

I needed a bit more lime juice in my guacamole the other day too.

What cables did you purchase btw?

Just standard 12 gauge.

Speaker cables do need to be replaced or at the very least cleaned up on the exposed ends from time to time as copper does oxidize which can give you poor connections. It is situations like this that someone buys the expensive cables and then proclaims them to be soooo much better than standard copper when it is just the old oxidized wire causing a problem.

Well if you do buy the "expensive" ones, you won't have that problem.

SBrown Well if you do buy the "expensive" ones, you won't have that problem.

Problem solved before it happens,sounds good to me.

Gary, hopefully it didn't really sound good to you, because if the comment was meant other than jokingly, it's sheer nonsense. Any copper exposed to air(e.g., the stripped end of a speaker cable)will have some surface oxidation over a long period of time which can either be cleaned off with a mild abrasive or the stripped end can be trimmed off and another half inch stripped. This is true regardless of whether the cable cost $1 or $100,000.

Defiantly jokingly JohnK, I agree 100% with what you said.

John, one of the differences can be the quality of the insulation used in the construction of the cable. Over time i think that the insulation can break down if the manufacture uses the cheapest possible stuff.

Okay, Gary; as an example of economy in the selection of speaker cable, I'd have no hesitation in passing over the $60,000 pair here in favor of one of my (not too rusty) coat hangers .

Alex, of course now I'm poking a bit of fun at the silliness in the audiophile industry when charlatans attempt to peddle pieces of connecting wire at outrageous prices.

What you say about the jacket covering the wire itself can be true on rare occasions. Ordinary lamp-cord costing about 20 cents a foot, which I've had around for about 20 years, doesn't have that problem. However a poorly formulated PVC(polyvinyl chloride)jacket or one subjected to extremely high temperatures can experience a PVC breakdown, releasing the chlorine to combine with the surface of the copper, forming the greenish copper chloride. The oxidation reaction involving oxygen creates cuprous and cupric oxides which are an increasingly dark brown to almost black(e.g., old pennies).

Interesting, thanks for the links John. In my soon to be setup, I was thinking about soldering good quality locking banana plugs onto a good oxidized 12 gauge wire. If the soldered joint is done properly, does this eliminate in the future the oxidation issue? Would the locking banana still be prone to tarnishing?

Gary, ALL metals oxidize accept for gold platinum, and palladium. Some metals like stainless steel will oxidize and then stabilize.

http://www.estainlesssteel.com/corrosion.shtml

This is why gold plating is popular.

Thanks dak, so the locking banana plugs I could clean up maybe with some very fine grit emery cloth. I understand that the exposed side of the solder will tarnish, and can be cleaned up at the same time. But what about the cable? Since it would not be exposed to the air(insulated/completely soldered ends)
would the copper strands be protected from oxidation?

Gary, it appears that you may be a bit too concerned about this. Any significant degree of oxidation to the exposed ends may take years and is easily cleaned or trimmed off. The portion of the wire that's covered by the jacket is essentially sealed from contact with the air. Cutting open wire that's been around for many years(e.g., my wire about 20 years old mentioned above)for a new connection reveals clean bright copper in the newly cut ends. If you have any old wires around, you can examine the stripped ends for oxidation or cut a new section to see how the previously covered wire is.

My hatefully stiff, finger puncturing, Home Depot bulk wire all oxidized at the ends somewhere within 3-4 years.

My joy to work with, Monoprice wire has not yet shown any signs of degradation at the ends at all.

I simply trimmed the ends of the Home Depot wire and it's fine so no biggie but one interesting thing to note is that the much nicer Monoprice wire was significantly cheaper than the horrid HD stuff. So quality is not always about price.

Thanks John, I sometimes get caught up in matters like this. Cause and effects, Tunnel vision, analyses by paralyses. It goes back to my Industrial Maintenance Mechanic's days.

From a review of two differnt speaker cables I just read:
The "brand a" had a softer, slower sound, with added measures of body and warmth; the "brand b" was more insistent, muscular, and precise. Initially, I thought the "brand b" sacrificed the AQ's ability to present long, graceful decays. But when I focused only on crash cymbals, for instance, I realized that the Kimber did, in fact, produce equally well-expressed decays; it just had a persistent way of redirecting my attention to attack transients—the initial pulses of energy from percussive sounds such as piano keys, drum heads, and metal shakers.
Does this review fall into the catagory of "Golden Ears", or fanciful imagination? Sounds to me like a bunch of hooey.

Option B!

How'd you know my nickname among the ladies?

Charles... Charles...

there's no way to say this nicely.

If you were Option B, well, you'd probably be happily married by now.

Ha ha. It's my polite nickname, then.

... and divorced (never go for option B)

... and JP would have a little less time to post here during the day.

That review reminds me of the episode of Weeds where the Andy character is trying to get into a school to become a Rabbi so he can escape going to Iraq and only succeeds because he writes an essay on "What it means to me to be a Jew" while being so stoned at a pot convention that it gets written on a Torah like scroll of paper towel while laying on the floor of a female restroom.

There is a chance that these difference were in fact there if the cables in question had some sort of electronics on them, There are some out there.