Topic: Optimal cable-making connectivity

[balou2]

I read the following quote, with regards to making cables, and attaching the interconnects:

"In terms of contact quality, crimping is superior to soldering... (C)rimping produces a physically and chemically optimum contact point with low transition resistance, which ensures pure signal transmission."

I guess I'm missing something here.  For whatever the reason, I thought this was the opposite.  Solder conducts signal...correct?  That being the case, isn't the connection mostly oxygen free, and better tinned, than crimping?  It seems to me that crimping would reduce the possible signal transmission optimization due to oxygen being present (i.e. there's bound to be areas of wire that do not contact points) as well as not constructing a solid tranmission area.

It's possible that I am not defining crimping correctly, at least with respect to professionally constructed cables.

Thoughts?

[guysonic]

I read the following quote, with regards to making cables, and attaching the interconnects:

"In terms of contact quality, crimping is superior to soldering... (C)rimping produces a physically and chemically optimum contact point with low transition resistance, which ensures pure signal transmission."

I guess I'm missing something here.  For whatever the reason, I thought this was the opposite.  Solder conducts signal...correct?  That being the case, isn't the connection mostly oxygen free, and better tinned, than crimping?  It seems to me that crimping would reduce the possible signal transmission optimization due to oxygen being present (i.e. there's bound to be areas of wire that do not contact points) as well as not constructing a solid tranmission area.

It's possible that I am not defining crimping correctly, at least with respect to professionally constructed cables.

Thoughts?

You're correct, not the quote.  Crimping is a poor connection, especially for higher frequency/power conduction.  While working as an electronics systems consultant on nuclear fuel rod scanners, a mechanical engineer made excellent quality crimp connections to a servo/stepper motor running a belt.  It would NOT run. 

He checked everything, exchanged components, and finally decided MAYBE the connections were not good even though ohm meter showed good conduction.  So he soldered all the connections, and viola, the motor ran perfectly. 

I took note of this and silver solder all the power, audio connections and patch cable adapters made here.

[balou2]

Interesting.  I s'pose this falls under the "snake oil" guise so many folks talk about with cables?  The manufacturer's statement seems like such an obvious un-truth, yet is written in such a way that I could see an unsuspecting customer making a decision based on the statement.

[cshepherd]

A poor connection?  I think that's a bit of an overstatement.  The quote came from Gutwire.  Here's another one from their site...

GutWire Audio Cables was founded on one simple principle:  Our products retrieve what is on the recording; no adding or subtracting from the signal. We firmly believe in the superior sound of cold-welding (a.k.a. crimping) in the termination process. During our research process, 10 out of 10 times, we found our listening panel voting unanimously toward cold-welding terminated cables.  Cables that are terminated with cold welding offer the following benefits: well-defined soundstage, maximum dynamics, real-life midrange and amazing 3D imaging…just to name a few.

This is not an isolated position Gutwire takes with regards to crimping.  Atlas also crimps their ICs.  There are other manufacturers as well.  I received this email from John, the head person at Atlas Cables, a couple of weeks ago.  It was in response to a question about why their xlr connector is superior.

Dear Chris,

The XLR plug simply uses silver plated OCC pins. Nowadays these are crimped
and not soldered in common with our policy of removing the solder joint in
all our products, thereby removing an interface (barrier) of differing
material resistance characteristics from the signal path. The body is in
aluminium as opposed to the more common nickel plated brass. The method for
gripping the cable is via a compression gland, but the degree of compression
is small since the plug is designed to fit Atlas 8.5mm cables.

Kind regards,

John

From Atlas' web site...

Most RCA plugs grip the cable with a clamp or grub screw. These compress the cable, causing reflections which distort the signal. Our patented RCA plugs do not compress the cable, maintaining the correct impedance.

That said, Van den Hul cables sound good and they solder everything.  My point is, go with what sounds best and try not to sweat the technical information.  None of it means a hill of Beans if the cables don't sound right. 

And FWIW, I listen to the Gutwire speaker cables daily.  They are fantastic.

Chris

[Brian Skalinder]

Crimping is a poor connection, especially for higher frequency/power conduction.

Would you classify mic cables or pre/ADC interconnects as carrying high frequency / power?  Not sure that I would, but I'm no techie.  Curious...

[pjdavep]

Kimber Kable crimps all of their interconnects/speaker cables as well.

I think this same question was asked on the Oade forum some time ago and basically Doug's answer was that he felt the best technique was to make your connections so that they don't need solder, and then just use the solder to solidify what you have put together.  If you can crimp it, do that, and then put a little high quality sodler on it to make it as permanent as possible.  Make sure the solder gets real shiny. (I think that means all the impurities are coming out ?).   Another analogy was taking a piece of solder and using it in place of a wire, then taking a listen.  Basically, the highest quality solder would sound like crap.

Later,
   pjdavep

[pjdavep]

Although it still has the manufacturer's spin, I found this link/info pretty interesting -
http://www.cardas.com/content.php?area=insights&content_id=13&pagestring=Solder+vs.+Crimped

Later,
   pjdavep

[guysonic]

Crimping is a poor connection, especially for higher frequency/power conduction.

Would you classify mic cables or pre/ADC interconnects as carrying high frequency / power?  Not sure that I would, but I'm no techie.  Curious...

Low noise, high frequency connectiion is important issue for most audio, except maybe for speakers where power is also present. 

Also consider that for cables, crimping can loosen with flexing if cable relief is not absolute,  but with solder welding the connections, cable clamping getting soft will not challenge the quality of a welded connection.

[Brian Skalinder]

Crimping is a poor connection, especially for higher frequency/power conduction.

Would you classify mic cables or pre/ADC interconnects as carrying high frequency / power?  Not sure that I would, but I'm no techie.  Curious...

Low noise, high frequency connectiion is important issue for most audio, except maybe for speakers where power is also present.

I'll take that as a "yes". 

[ghellquist]

Hmm. Things are never as simple. A correctly made crimp is much better than a bad solder joint. If done correctly you will not have any problem with reliability. Just look at every car and every airplane in the world, the majority of all connections there are crimped. I bet the failure rate is several orders of magnitude less than in a typical audio connection setting.

But a correct crimp connection has to be designed all the way. You need the right cable and the right connector and very important, the right crimp tool. It does not work if you randomly crush things together with any pair of pliers you happen to have around.

All in all I would say that in some applications a good crimp connection is better than a soldered one, in others it is better with a soldered connection. In any case, a wrongly made solder connection (and, boy, have I done a few) is bound to give up sooner rather than later.

Gunnar