Harbeth Super HL5+

[Jim Taylor]

The golden ears around Fidelis were so impresssed by my solid silver wire concoctions that I developed a tiny startup in retirement called ArgentPur, and have been wiring AXPONA and CapFest rooms for a couple of years.

I see ... so you're the manufacturer?

Jim

 

[ErnieM]

Yes, I was urged to hand-make solid pure silver cables in my semi-retirement, as the prototypes' performances impressed colleagues and those who demo'ed them. Quick way to turn a hobby into a cash sink! Sigh....My last hurrah is to reverse engineer my favored Orchard Audio ULTRA GaN-FET modules with an improved SMPS and total inner pure Ag wiring. The result is simply more improvement in soundstage detail and flesh...an extension of the effects of my speaker and interconnecting cables. There's very little to improve upon with Leo's bigger module...maybe replacing a cap or two with Mundorfs. The results are stellar...and like Leo's efforts...affordable, banging on the door of much higher-priced GaN-FET and other Class D iterations. I'll probably just make monos, as I like keeping amps close to speakers, using longer balanced interconnects, and for now am concentrating on "straight wire with gain", eschewing a j-fet or tube input buffer or full preamp design, baking instead powerful cakes that users can frost with their own preferred preamp flavoring. (My ref/work system uses a Pass Aleph P in balanced mode.)

 

[Jim Taylor]

Yes, I was urged to hand-make solid pure silver cables in my semi-retirement, as the prototypes' performances impressed colleagues and those who demo'ed them.

with an improved SMPS and total inner pure Ag wiring.

So you're saying that your silver wire caused an audible change in the sound that you heard coming out of the speaker? Like this (below)?

The result is simply more improvement in soundstage detail and flesh.

This ^^^ sounds like subjectivist audiophile b.s. As long as the wire meets specifications for its particular use in a circuit, differences in wire composition have not shown to have any effect, much less an audible effect.

... baking instead powerful cakes that users can frost with their own preferred preamp flavoring

And where does accuracy of reproduction fit into this poetic picture?

Jim

 

[ErnieM]

C'mon, Jim. I come from a scientifiuc background steeped in metrology and statistics. Except for having 6% improved conductivity, I cannot explain why solid silver can cause the ear-brain to solidify, detail, clarify, and perceive a soundstage as more natural. It just happens.
I was imperfectly happy going along listening to my ref system after climbing the Nordost (Ag-PLATED Cu) ladder for decades, blaming upper octave artifacts on source material, mics, CD res, etc. As soon as I configured a bunch of twisted-pair Ag strands in individual tubes and made jumpers for my Parsifals and decidedly...and repeatedly...heard differences I wouldn't have believed it either.
This revelation followed peeling back a Valhalla clone layer by layer and listening to matched pairs...not hearing a delta even when the naked strands were exposed. Comparison THEN to solid Ag was jaw-dropping and decisive.
The effect was even larger when I replaced my trusty 8' Nordost SPM with 1 12AWG matrix of silver strands I concocted. Replacing my RedDawn long XLRs wasn't as important as the speaker leads.
I am NOT going to claim that my cables have less L, C, or R than others, but simply that the ear-brain is capable of synthesizing soundstage retrieval and detail in ways that we simply don't fully understand...and haven't measured yet.
My 71 year old ears aren't as capable as decades ago, so I rely on very sensitive feedback from 40 yr olds with more acute hearing. One guy sweated comparisons with Tellerium Qs for a week, finally selling them off after a two month long series of rounds before picking them. Another guy recently shed his $$$ Ansuz after listening to my humble hand-builts. It isn't magical nor voodoo. Just build matrices of fine Ag strands in individual airy tubes to the desired AWG and terminate carefully.
I'd been listening through the Orchard ULTRAs for two years before recently deciding to build a pair in nicer chassis with better power supplies...and of course solid Ag thoughout. If they didn't sound different well that's ok, as I sold off the OEM pair anyway. But dammit, the soundstage improved AGAIN, so I might as well make some for others.
Like I said, I'm quite in the red, perhaps never seeing the black ever. If this was all bullshit I'd just ride my bike, play my Steinway (Schubert Sonatas and the classical Spaniards are faves), and revisit this 4-stringed mistress called a violin-cello I picked up recently.

I am NOT lurking to eventually submit cables or monos for measurement, as I suspect there'd be no surprises, as I don't think deltas are about phase, group delay, or other measurements pertaining to the complete coherence that solid Ag allows us humans to perceive.
I just wish I'd doubted silver-PLATED copper (or other bonded alloys) earlier in my life. I always wondered how B&W could get away with a huge upcharge on their "Signature" editions using internal Ag wiring. Overpriced? Of course. Audible? Undeniable.

I respect pure objectivists for their beliefs, of course. My chat with Galen of Iconoclast at AXPONA revealed his great reliance on electrical measurements to predict cable performance. But of course, as a Belden chief tech for decades! Others, like Jonny at Snake River, mix metals to arrive at various tonalities or spectral tilts to match a variety of systems' resolutions and personalities. Bravo. He's been at it awhile, as have George C and Ray K., to whom I'm grateful for guiding precepts such as the Golden Ratio and braided construction for self-shielding RCAs.

My aim is to match the elevated sensitivity of better Siltech and Crystal, as well Kimber Silver Signature, but at much lower prices. My limitation is the 2-4 hrs needed to hand-thread and complete 2 PCs or pair of ICs, and 6-8 hrs for a pair of speaker cables. Would I be doing this and shedding our savings if I was kidding anyone? Gimme a break. Try an AgPur cable for 27 days. If you can't hear the improvement in a good ref system send it back. Simple. Just don't think that it will act as a low pass like a lot of copper cables and tame a hot tweeter or eliminate distortion in a tube amp.

I'm pretty thin-skinned. Please be nice. Thanks.

 

[LTig]

Yes, I was urged to hand-make solid pure silver cables in my semi-retirement, as the prototypes' performances impressed colleagues and those who demo'ed them. Quick way to turn a hobby into a cash sink! Sigh....

You should apply for the Audio Dealer Tag.

My last hurrah is to reverse engineer my favored Orchard Audio ULTRA GaN-FET modules with an improved SMPS and total inner pure Ag wiring. The result is simply more improvement in soundstage detail and flesh...an extension of the effects of my speaker and interconnecting cables.

Uh huh.

There's very little to improve upon with Leo's bigger module...maybe replacing a cap or two with Mundorfs. The results are stellar...and like Leo's efforts...affordable, banging on the door of much higher-priced GaN-FET and other Class D iterations.

Uh huh.

I'll probably just make monos, as I like keeping amps close to speakers, using longer balanced interconnects, and for now am concentrating on "straight wire with gain", eschewing a j-fet or tube input buffer or full preamp design, baking instead powerful cakes that users can frost with their own preferred preamp flavoring. (My ref/work system uses a Pass Aleph P in balanced mode.)

So you're voicing them to your taste.

 

[ErnieM]

You should apply for the Audio Dealer Tag.

Uh huh.

Uh huh.

So you're voicing them to your taste.

Nope. No "voicing". I'm leaving that to users who select source components, especially preamps and speakers, to color the presentation. Thanks for the dealer tag ref.
Cheers.

 

[Jim Taylor]

Except for having 6% improved conductivity, I cannot explain why solid silver can cause the ear-brain to solidify, detail, clarify, and perceive a soundstage as more natural. It just happens.

The more common explanation is that it doesn't happen at all. When matters of audibility are in question, a double-blind test (with all the applicable protocols and rigors) is the easiest way to tell whether the listener is truly hearing a difference or is allowing themselves to be the subject of biases.
There are testimonies of members here who believed that they heard differences and were subsequently enlightened by the DBT. OTOH, there is not, to my knowledge, even one example of a listener claiming differences in specification-acceptable wire who has been able to differentiate by ear.

What you are purporting has no support in scientific testing, whereas the opposite has been consistently true; types of wire, if within spec, offer no audible change in audio equipment. None.

I am NOT going to claim that my cables have less L, C, or R than others, but simply that the ear-brain is capable of synthesizing soundstage retrieval and detail in ways that we simply don't fully understand...and haven't measured yet.

This is a canard that subjectivists often posit here ... that there are audio qualities for which there is no measurement.

If those qualities actually exist, then a DBT will definitely prove such. If the DBT does not prove such, then the logical conclusion is that they do not exist.

In fact, the remainder of your post is assertions that you need to prove with double-blind tests. Not the lazy, undisciplined DBT that many people undergo, but a well-controlled, disciplined DBT as shown in this video:

Would I be doing this and shedding our savings if I was kidding anyone?

You bring up a very good point here. The constant recommendation for double-blind tests that you see here is NOT for vindication of the prevailing scientific viewpoints we espouse. It is for YOUR vindication ... or enlightenment. We well understand that first and foremost, you are kidding yourself. You are being deceived by you own brain, with its enormous capacity for relying on biases.

A list of biases can be found here: List of cognitive biases - Wikipedia

That's exactly the reason so many subjectivists come here with the earnest and oh-so-well-meaning mission of enlightening us; they actually believe what they say.
It's just that what they believe isn't true. All the things that you have asserted fall into the same category.

Please take advantage of the website's Audio Reference Library: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?forums/audio-reference-library.30/

And you might be interested in viewing a few of our site owner's videos explaining the science behind accurate reproduction of recorded music:

Master List of Instructional Teaching Video presentations (How to read and interpret/understand all the Graphs and Charts!

Collection of Amir’s instructional Videos for reference, refresher and new members: (“Behind the Curtain @ ASR University”) Welcome New and returning Members of ASR. Our Host Amir has put together a collection of comprehensive instructional videos that might help new and returning Members...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Thank you.

Jim

 

[Jim Taylor]

Thanks for the dealer tag ref.

The "dealer tag" is granted to bonafide commercial entities. It is not sufficient that someone comes here and simply postures themselves as a dealer. Snake oil - claims not able to be supported by scientific evidence - is not appreciated here.

The gist of your posts indicates that you are not making claims which are able to be supported by scientific evidence. I don't see you as a "dealer", but as a normal, everyday well-meaning-but-misinformed subjectivist

Until your claims can be scientifically proven, they seem to be nothing more than the fore-mentioned snake oil.

Jim

 

[Soniclife]

You bring up a very good point here. The constant recommendation for double-blind tests that you see here is NOT for vindication of the prevailing scientific viewpoints we espouse. It is for YOUR vindication ... or enlightenment.

Additionally if you did prove audible differences that were surprising that would advance the science, which would be great.