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So everyone says silver offers a bright sound signature, but what does graphene do? If anyone has done a blind A/B test of this versus an entirely OFC cable I would be interested to hear your opinion.
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keyboard_arrow_downVictorfabius
105
Oct 28, 2021
Just to be the exception: silver doesn’t offer a brighter sound signature. There now not everyone says it.
Graphene, in this use case provides little to no value. Here’s why:
Graphene is a perfectly honeycombed arrangement of carbon atoms. The benefits it has is that - in theory - it’s incredibly strong, thin, and lightweight. It has an exceptionally high Young’s modulus (ref: https://depts.washington.edu/matseed/mse_resources/Webpage/Biomaterials/young's_modulus.htm). It’s also highly conductive, which is the more applicable concept for the cable.
The problem is that of limitation. Have you ever been stuck in traffic? Even on an expressway? Does traffic move faster or slower during rush hour? It doesn’t really matter if graphene is highly conductive if the other conductive material around it is less so. You can only go as fast as the car in front of you, and that’s true of conductivity here.
The other issue is that graphene is still difficult to produce, especially in large sizes. That increases the likelihood that the cable uses flaked graphene glued (or otherwise attached to a surface, though I will say ‘glued’ for expedience) to a surface. There’s no real regulation on what and how one can call something “graphene” these days. Now, it’s true these graphene flakes can actually increase the strength or flexibility of the material they’re attached to, but for a cable, it won’t address the weak points at the plugs.
In terms of sound, a pure graphene wire would sound the same as a pure copper or silver wire. Why? In order to reproduce sound, the headphone (IEM, in this case) gets a signal in the form of electricity. It takes two aspects of electricity, - the voltage and amperage, - to produce the sound you hear (one determines frequency, the other volume). If your cable is adjusting the electricity it’s supposed to conduct, then it’s either broken or had redefined physics to the extent that no electronics could ever work in any reliable fashion ever again.
The only way a cable would impact sound is if it either increases or decreases the impedance vs. another cable. This would also require an amp with either a high output impedance, a non-flat impedance curve, or both and an IEM (or headphone) with not only low impedance, but also a non-flat impedance curve. But the actual effect produced would be very small, especially with sensitive IEMs, where it might not be discernible at safe listening volumes, and the effect would vary based on the peculiarities of the IEM’s impedance curve.
A blind A/B test - conducted well - would very likely generate inconclusive results at best, when compared to another, functional cable.
Victorfabius
105
Oct 29, 2021
Short answer: no.
Though I now recall one more point of differences cables can make: RF/EMI interference reduction.
This specific cable doesn't give any indication that it is any better or worse than any other with that. But not all shielding is the same, so that could also be a point of improvement.
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