Siltech S10 Monocrystal Silver
To the best of our knowledge, Siltech’s S10 Monocrystal Silver is the finest audio cable conductor ever developed. We don’t say this lightly, as it is the product of many decades of intensive research and development, now arriving at our 10th generation of silver metallurgy. Our dedicated listening team, and many music lovers around the world with us, think it delivers a musical performance without equal.
Material science
The type of conductor used is central to the performance of an audio cable. Various materials have been tried over the years, from copper to carbon fibre, silver, gold, or combinations of them. These all have their own characteristics which have a fundamental effect on sound quality. But it isn’t just about what material you choose; it also depends greatly on the production technique used to make it.
Looking under a microscope, you’ll see that metal is a lattice or matrix constructed from individual atoms, which is imperfectly constructed from multiple large crystals, all locked together. Between those crystals are boundaries and voids – barriers that any signal passing through the metal must cross.
These interruptions and discontinuities in the conductors don’t show up via empirical measurement techniques, but subjective listening can detect them all too clearly.
Because human hearing is a primary defence mechanism that’s capable of discerning the distance and direction of any potential threat, it is incredibly sensitive to any disturbance in the patterns and natural structure of noises all around us.
So, while our auditory system might not have been designed specifically to appreciate recorded music, it is astonishingly capable of analysing and appreciating the complex shapes, patterns, and structures in a musical performance – and recognising any distortions or deviations that afflict them.
Monocrystal Silver
Siltech (short for SILver TECHnology) has become famous for its silver metallurgy used in its cables and even in loudspeakers and electronics. Siltech’s first invention – back in 1997 – to solve the problem of these crystal voids of natural silver was its proprietary Silver-Gold alloy, now having reached the ninth generation G9. It fills those tiny gaps inside the crystal structure with pure gold, leading to a more accurate and enjoyable sound than any other type of silver. You can read more on this here.
Although filling in these microscopic cracks brings huge sonic benefits, it cannot match a conductor where those voids are entirely eliminated in the first place.
Developing our own specialist, audio-specific measurement techniques, Siltech was able to detect and evaluate the impact of the barriers and voids within conductor materials, and identify the myriad of micro distortions they produce. This lets us set about reducing the damage that they cause to the audio signal passing through our cables. This approach went way beyond simply selecting the raw conductor material.
Using sophisticated annealing processes, adjusting both the temperature and rate at which our conductors are drawn and how long they take to cool, we were able to produce larger and more consistent crystal structures, reducing the barriers and discontinuities in the signal path.
While many manufacturers have worked with what’s commonly called ‘long crystal’ or ‘monocrystal’ copper, Siltech combined this technology with our superlative quality silver to produce our groundbreaking Monocrystal Silver cables. Not only does it reduce distortion, but our monocrystal silver wire also has a conductivity of 106% to even 112% of regular silver wire, leading to an extremely detailed, transparent, and homogeneous sound.
Absolute performance
As they feature the most expensive raw materials and are hugely time-consuming to produce, you will only find Monocrystal Silver conductors in Siltech’s premium and flagship products, with Crown in their name – Our 35 Years Anniversary Crown Prince series and the flagship Royal Crown Series (including our top-of-the-line Royal Triple Crown).
When absolute performance counts, cost or effort cannot be a concern. Indeed, the very existence of these products shows Siltech’s commitment to advancing the science and art of sound.