AST bare wire selection guide and user notes
All our wires perform extremely well, exhibiting the virtues of ultrapure silver and optimised processing.
Even very small diameters, like 0.15mm, can sometimes confuse listeners as they sound very clean, open, detailed and balanced.
The main difference between diameters is the harmonic richness, especially in the mid-bass region and the general level of ‘body’ in the presentation. As in most things audio, the taste of the listener and the particular system characteristics are different in each situation. We will attempt to describe the character of each of our wire diameters as objectively as we can.
The 1.15mm dia. wire is our highest diameter of our standard range of conductors.It exhibits a very powerful and rich sound, very detailed and clear. Some listeners using the 1.15mm using it in a twisted pair design may consider its presentation a bit excessive or slightly bloated, others will simply be stunned by its dynamics and huge soundstage. The 1.1 is definitely very suitable for speaker cable designs.
We consider our flagship conductor the 0.95mm dia. wire. It sounds super detailed, silky smooth and very harmonically rich.
Even used in a simple twisted pair design it performs at a leading level regardless of cost range.
The 0.75mm dia. wire keeps all the unique qualities of the 0.95 and actually possesses a bit more focus at the expense of a little of the rich body of the larger diameter.
The 0.55mm dia. and the 0.35mm dia., in the same direction, possess more focus as the diameter decreases, again at the expense of ‘body’ and harmonic richness . They remain top-class performers and are preferred by listeners who appreciate extreme accuracy and focus over a stronger body. The 0.55mm dia. is often a favourite of recording engineers.
The 0.35 is ideal for lower signal levels, like phono interconnects.
All our conductors are ideal as internal wiring for audio equipment which needs to perform at its very best.
AST ultrapure silver wires push the sound quality in a very organic manner to new levels of performance and naturalness.
They do not exhibit any of the typical silver ‘glare’ or aggressiveness and they are very dynamic and musical.
They are also very revealing and may bring forward shortcomings and weaknesses in an audio system. They are generally intended to be used in audio systems which are designed and integrated to deliver very high quality sound..
PLEASE NOTE: AST wires are normally produced in the proprietary AST Optimized Temper, for maximum audio performance. They are metallurgically very stable but should not be heated for an extended period of time as this can affect their metal structure and degrade their performance. So any further annealing or other thermal processing, including cryogenic treatment must be avoided. An optional temper is dead annealed, for customers who wish to treat the wires thermally or cryogenically.
Being made of extremely pure silver, our wires are very resistant to corrosion.
Nevertheless they will tarnish with time and require some protection. High quality virgin PTFE tubing is a practical option.
They need an initial burn-in time of about 30h and around 100h for full burn-in.