Do Gold plated cables make a difference?
- Thread starter Mr-Chris
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Soldato
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Maybe with analogue but I cant see it will in regards to digital cables.
i believe gold is actually less electrically conductive than copper. so i think it would be no and possibly slightly worst? (just a guess)
i think the gold plated stuff its more aim at wear, when you pull out and plug in often. so doesnt wear out as fast?
don't know i might be completely wrong lol
i think the gold plated stuff its more aim at wear, when you pull out and plug in often. so doesnt wear out as fast?
don't know i might be completely wrong lol
I believe you're correct. I think silver is the best conductor and copper is better than gold (but just a little worse than silver). Gold plating is used because it looks nice, reduces ware and can be easily sold to mugs who pay extra for it. 
Soldato
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You want to try and match your metals at the contact point. Electrically speaking, it's better if you connect a gold plated plug into a gold plated socket. And likewise for nickel to nickel etc.
But generally, in real life it doesn't matter.
But generally, in real life it doesn't matter.
Soldato
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No, gold it there pretty much because L@@K SHINY!
Gold doesn't corrode or oxidize, so your gold will still be L@@K Shiny in hundreds of years from now.
The level of plating will be a few atoms thick and gold is extremely soft, and wears incredibly easily. It's not for wear protection.
But as I posted above you want to match the metals. If you plug a gold connector into a nickel socket, there is a potential difference and over time gold atoms will move to the nickel socket which is basically slowly damaging your plug, leading to corrosion and oxidation etc. But in reality this almost never happens.
Haha. Silver is the best conductor there is, incidentally. I think that in reality it makes little difference to the image on the screen. Even half decent VGA cables can produce images on a modern monitor that are indistinguishable to the best gold-plated HDMI cable.
copper oxidises quite rapidly if not sealed. A copper cable is essentially sealed (if ofc) and safe from oxidisation.
I'm not going to comment on audio cable, or analogue video cables, but with a digital video cable ie. Dvi or hdmi I would just buy a cheapish one, or use the ones that came with the equipment.
I'm not going to comment on audio cable, or analogue video cables, but with a digital video cable ie. Dvi or hdmi I would just buy a cheapish one, or use the ones that came with the equipment.
I was looking at getting a dual link DVI cable from somewhere and in its product description it said "Gold-plated contacts provide full conductivity whilst preventing ghosting and data loss." so I doubt that is true, a normal one is probably the same. It also said it was triple shielded, i guess this helps prevent inteference right?
It's a lie to get mugs to buy their cables.
Yup, we sell a 1m belkin grey series (not even gold plated) for £39, and we buy them in for £7 as a company. It's just margin-driven lies! Saying that, I've seen some horrible scart leads that looked like fan cables insulated with bits of string, all wrapped in rubber. I'm sure you can improve on those, but for digital it won't make a difference. I'm waiting for them to come out with gold plated optical leads
You can further improve the performance of these cables by upto 15%* if you align them with magnetic north.
*Subject to solar activity, and if there is an "R" in the month.