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Regarding not sticking cotton buds in your ears, it's a risk I have to take as I haven't found any other way to get my ear canals to dry. The problem is that they tighten slightly at the, uh, mouth (for lack of a better term), meaning I need to use it pretty much daily. My right ear canal actually seems to occasionally function as a helmholtz resonator, I get a physical sensation in my ear canal from the sound a 991 GT3 makes near redline. I got a squeezy bulb that blows a bunch of air through them, but that left my ears ringing making me think that its damaging my hearing over time, all the little ear focused hair dryers are just ceramic resistors and don't really work, and that alcohol based stuff for swimmers feels like its trying to eat away the skin in there. So for me, the price of dry ears is eternal vigilance.
Yeah, I'd stay away from preparations with alcohol. Those work by dehydrating the skin, which isn't really a good idea. Have you tried olive oil? A couple of drops in the ear a few times a day for a week or so will usually soften the wax sufficiently to allow the natural movement of the hairs in the canal to start working again. The skin of your ear canal produces wax to catch debris that gets into the canal, and then the fine hairs in the canal move slowly to shift that wax and debris down the canal and out of the external meatus. This mechanism will fail if the wax hardens or gets impacted (and the most common cause of impacted wax is earbuds). Severe cases of impacted wax might need syringing out (by someone with a microscope who knows what they're doing), but a little olive oil and some patience usually does the trick.
A typical headphone cable is 2 meters long - though some can be longer.
Typical wiring in headphone cables is AWG 24 copper stranded wire. Resistance of AWG 24 copper wire is 25.67 ohms per 1000 feet. The audio signal current must flow through both conductors in the cable, so in a 2 meter cable the signal flows through 4 meters of wire per earcup. The resistance os 4 meters of AWG 24 copper wire is close to 0.10 ohms.
The resistance of a 4 meter length or AWG 24 silver wire is 0.008 ohms less than a 4 meter length of copper wire - assuming that the silver wire is the same diameter, but as silver is more expensive than copper and fancy cable companies are focussed on making the most profit possible, it could well be that they are using very thin wire in their cables to save cost - I don't know for sure but I think it's a safe bet.
Giving the cable maker the benefit of the doubt let's assume the silver wire is the same size as typical copper headphone cables, the silver cable will be 0.0955 ohms vs. 0.10 ohms for copper. This is less than 0.1 dB difference in sound level. The smallest perceptible change in sound level is defined as 1 dB, so the sonic difference in silver cable vs copper is one-tenth of the smallest perceptible difference. Do you really think that a cable with 0.008 ohms less resistance is going to make a sonic difference that is worth the cost?
And if the silver cables are thinner gauge wire - as I suspect they would be - then, in fact, the resistance of the silver cables would be HIGHER than the standard issue copper.
I have done blind listening tests with silver vs. copper phono cables. The tests revealed no difference in perceived sound. I have not done a similar test of silver headphone wire, but as phono circuits are very sensitive and very low voltage and low current, I would expect wire-material audible differences to show up in a phono circuit before it would show up at headphone signal levels.
Now, if you were trying to use headphone cables in excess of 1000 meters....well then you might hear a difference.
In my professional opinion - I'm an engineer - silver headphone cables are snake oil designed to wring money from gullible audiophiles. If you doubt my opinion, then buy the silver cables and conduct blind A-B or A-B-X listening tests, and report your the results of statistical analysis here. If my opinion is proved wrong, I am always interested in learning new things....
Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) and isopropyl alcohol (IA) are both used by medical professionals for ear flushing. When I flush my ears, I use H2O2 repeatedly until it comes out clean, as H2O2 is an effective cleaner that is gentler than IA. Then at the end I do a single IA flush, which helps get the ear canals clean and dry, without it the H2O2 likes to stay in the ear and dribble out over the next few hours.
There's a whole 'nuther detailed thread on ear cleaning here at ASR, just use Search.
Regarding headphone cables, I've seen OEM headphone cables deteriorate to the point where the connection becomes intermittent and causes audible distortion from short or open circuits. When this happens, a high quality aftermarket can definitely make an audible improvement!
Of course, all that glisters and all that ... thought I'd share a picture of a cheap 'gold-plated' connector I bought a long time ago: View attachment 124051
Beware of 'gold-plating' that's little more than a coat of paint and will rub off after minimal use. Proper hard gold plating should last a long time, though a properly nickel-plated surface is just as good. Rhodium is just there for people who like to spend money.
All good advice, especially for users of IEMs. which tend to push wax into the ear- the opposite of the direction the ear is trying to make it go. I have 'waxy' ears and use IEMs a lot- a 'worst case' scenario that is why I irrigate with peroxide every 10 days or so.
Giving the cable maker the benefit of the doubt let's assume the silver wire is the same size as typical copper headphone cables, the silver cable will be 0.0955 ohms vs. 0.10 ohms for copper. This is less than 0.1 dB difference in sound level. T
Agreed with your post except that the difference in resistance when using a 16ohm headphone is just 0.0025dB in level. Granted this is well below 0.1dB and thus inaudible it shows the magnitude difference.
Although I think medical profession agrees that using olive oil drops once in a while to keep the wax moving is not gonna be hurting your ears, and likely only to provide benefits.
I mean it's ok to clean the outside of your ear like that put you wouldn't really be wanting to push your fingers into your ear as that will just push wax back into it. If I sometimes have an itchy ear I try to fight the urge to do that. I think it's a sign that the wax is moving out (maybe). I tend to put a couple of drops of olive oil into my ear if it's itchy and it's a convenient time.
