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Does silver speaker wire sound bright?

I purchased a kit of 99.999% pure silver speaker wire with PTFE insulation and assembled it. I installed it on my system and it seems to scream at me. My system is all tube (Melos)and my speakers are the North Creek Rhythm. I use the preamp also as a headphone amp and use Grado SR325's. The headphones are not bright they lean tward a little dark sounding. I feel the brightness is in the cables and wounder if they will mellow with age, and how long will it take?
mi3491
bmpnyc
710 posts
 
In a word ..sometimes. My experience with silver is that the low end can be a little bit "light" causing it to seem bright. A copper and silver blend can give you back some warmth and balance, but you might lose some of the detail. Many times it takes WAY longer than expected for break in. Often from 100 - 200 hrs of both pink noise and music with a big dynamic range. Wait and see what happens and if after a while it still sounds bright ..try, try, try again. Good luck.
sharpe49
34 posts
 
Again I agree with the first comment. Silver wire can be bright and hard initially but if you can let it mellow it will "soften up" in time. I have waited close to two hundred hours for silver interconnects and speaker cable to fully mature. The wait is worth it. Good luck.
carl_eber
1,425 posts
 
All the silver interconnects and speaker cable I've had in my system have sounded different, just like all the copper ones. Break in is a factor, but I will admit that it's easier to have a bright silver cable than a bright copper one. There are other more important factors though, like AWG (for DC resistance), impedance, capacitance, etc..............I'm beginning to think that the little cheap MIT Terminator 3 speaker cable is better overall than my AudioTruth Dragon Plus, so the conductor material isn't always pivotal. Some guys swear by the carbon fibre conductors in Van den Hul cables, but I've never heard them.
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