Do WBT connectors make a positive SQ difference?

[gmgraves]

1 hour ago, thotdoc said:

I'm getting new speaker cables from Analysis-Plus, their Apex, top of their line. I need to decide on A-P connectors or WBT connectors. Does anyone have experience with the difference in how connectors sound?

 

Thank you

I shouldn’t think so. After all, a connection is either a good connection or a bad one. And any connector worth using will give a low resistance connection. What WBT brings to the party is quality construction that leads to high reliability, and maintains that liability over time. It also doesn’t hurt WBTs reputation that users can see and feel that quality when they use those parts. Often such quality connectors are the final touch, the crowning glory, as it were, to a piece of high-end equipment; a touch that will help to justify the high price of a piece of luxury equipment.

[gmgraves]

8 hours ago, daverich4 said:

 

High reliability is a liability? 😳

No, but my iPad’s autocorrect is definitely a liability sometimes!👿

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

My best guestimate would be that WBT are "better" - I looked up the web page for that brand, Analysis-Plus, that is, and have to say that their geometry wouldn't be my first choice; I always use single strand conductors if aiming for best sound.

 

 

The problem is contact noise - a less truly gas tight metal to metal contact area opens the door for noise generating mechanisms to affect things; as a result, there's a whole area of engineering that deals with this - look up Ragnar Holm.

 

 

A good alternative is to use an industrial silver paste contact enhancer, between bolt and the cable's connector - make sure beforehand that a mechanical very tight connection can be made; then carefully clean the mating surfaces, apply only just enough of the paste to completely coat the surfaces - too much paste doesn't make it better! - then join, and make it as mechanically tight as you checked earlier. Then, do not disturb !!! Fiddling with the connection point at all from then on will only degrade its quality - if you have to disconnect, clean all the muck off, and start all over again, as above.

Try Stabilant 22a, before ruining your connectors by gooping  them up with solder. Stabilant is so good that NASA uses it on connectors as does the entire Aerospace industry and most automotive companies. It ain’t cheap, but unlike soldering one’s connections, Stabilant IS reversible.

[gmgraves]

6 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Note that my experiences with these type of contact enhancers, years ago, wasn't positive - but Stabilant 22a may be an exception - I haven't tried it.

 

The silver paste treatments are long term stable, unlike the liquid preparations, IME. And, the application is also completely reversible.

Yes, various liquid unctions are reversible, unlike the soldering of connections which is not. Believe me, the military wouldn’t give Stabilant a Mil-Spec number and the Society of Automobile Engineers (SAE) wouldn’t have given the stuff a spec number and NASA would not have spec’d the material for use in spacecraft, rockets, and satellites. I’d say that this is ample evidence that Stabilant does what it says it does. Also, when Dayton-Wright was selling Stabilant 22a as Tweek, this audiophile treated one channel of his system, the difference, with a mono signal, between the treated and the untreated channels was immediate and profound. It even fixed an intermittent connection in my Alfa Romeo’s speedometer. In short, it works.

[gmgraves]

17 hours ago, fas42 said:

My experience with the liquid enhancers is that they go bad with time. When I was experimenting, and this is a long time ago, I noted that there was a very slow, but steady degradation in the subjective quality - it got greyer, and greyer, which is about as good a phrase to use. To confirm what was happening, put the connectors apart, thoroughly clean and replug with no enhancer added - ah-hah, full SQ restored. I repeated testing what was happening a number of times, and always got the same result. This is what motivated me to go the next step, soldering the connection - and then all the slow degradation issues vanished.

 

Later on I experimented with silver paint, paste preparations - this was just the normal stuff you get from electronic parts suppliers - and they always delivered a positive, and more importantly, lasted the distance. The downside is that you have to be meticulous in how you do it; just slapping it on, treating it like a car grease is not the way - a good approach is to think of it as very soft solder; and therefore treat it in every context as if it were indeed solder.

But you said that you had not tried Stabilant!(?!). Stabilant is, by itself, non conducting. Only when used in conjunction with the mating parts does it increase the  area of the connecting surfaces. So one can use it without fear of inadvertently shorting out nearby connections by sloppy application. BTW, Stabilant is the goop itself, and Stabilant 22a is the goop diluted with isopropyl alcohol - which is how it’s supposed to be used.

[gmgraves]

57 minutes ago, fas42 said:

I tried other than Stabilant 22 brand enhancer. So this one may not have those ageing issues - I won't know until I try it, .

 

I'm curious that you believe that it increases the effective area of the mating surfaces - my understanding is that its benefits are in excluding atmospheric gases from the metal surfaces junction, and otherwise is completely inert. By contrast, the silver paste does two things, improves gastightness and enhances conductivity.

 

Sloppy use won't help, of course - but the same thing could be said of being hamfisted in soldering - again, I see it as being a form of very soft solder; and the same care should be taken as for the hard stuff.

Read the Stabilant white paper. It should be on their web-site.