Riddle me this: how is carbon a conductor?

mPrime, your math is flawed to say that you get 20dB or 30dB less signal passed through a carbon conductor. The ratio of carbon's conductivity to that of copper is not the proper way to look at it.

What we are concerned with is the amount of voltage that is delivered to the next stage. If a perfect voltage source has a 1 volt output, and I use a cable with 1 ohm of impedance hooked up to a 50K ohm input impedance, I will get 99.998% of that 1 volt delivered to the load. If I use a cable with as much as 1000 ohms of impedance I will still get 98% of it, which is -.18 dB.

As far as characterizing carbon as a "poor conductor," it has more resistance than copper but in the grand scheme of things it's really not that much. I looked at the Van Den Hull website and they state a 38 ohm/meter spec for their metal free, carbon fiber interconnects. This would result in -.006 dB/meter in the example above.

Herman,

The reason I take this approach is that the souce component will drive the interconnect and it's target load. Thus, the voltage drop you say we are concerned amount is impacted by the IR drop across the IC. This isn't anymore complicated than Ohm's Law (Freshman Physics).

Look, I'm not trying to get into a peeing contest, nor am I looking to create a flame-fest. I'm trying to understand if a manufacture's claims are supported so I may make a determination to explore their product offering. In this case, I've come to a conclusion. BTW, my conclusion should not impact anyone else's enjoyment of Mr. Wolff's products.

Sincerely,

Lee

Sean, lighten up :>) You sometimes seem to grab a mantra, such as lower resistance is better, and defend it to the death without even considering another perspective.

The issue is much more complex than how much resistance a cable has. That is but a tiny part of the complete picture, which I maintain there is much we don't understand. If we did we wouldn't have these debates ad-nauseum on topics such as is balanced better than single ended, is copper better than silver, are tubes better than transistors, is cable A better than cable B, CD vs. vinyl vs. DVD-A vs. SACD vs. my personal favorite, 8 track tapes ..........................

Open up your mind a bit and consider something besides that which you have convinced yourself is the truth and the only truth. When Monster started pushing cables in the early eighties we all laughed that a piece of wire could affect the signal at audio frequencies. Now we know better.

I don't know if these carbon cables are any good as I haven't heard them. Others say they are pretty swell. To condemm them on the basis that the resistance is a bit higher reminds me of all these people who won't eat rice because it is a carbohydrate, and they've read a bunch of sound scientific reasons why they are bad for you. I just got back from Japan and some of the longest living people in the world are a bunch of rice eating Okinawans

You defended the magnet guy in another thread and he offered nothing but the word of God to back him up. Hmmm, that sounded a little blasphemous. I think you should give the carbon guys a chance too.

The "carbon" in question is graphite, and its delocatized pi electrons are responsible for its conductivity. That is also why carbon nanotubes are conductors.

There are a number of forms of carbon each with different physical and electrical characteristics. Think graphite and diamond. Graphite, the most common form is in the form of flat plates that have very different measurements depending on whether you measure across that flat surface or through the plate. Thus material processing can drastically alter the measurements if you process to align the crystals instead of allowing them to be random which is the common form measured. Technically graphite is a hexagonal crystal that tests quite differently along its central axis than across the flat plates.