PS
Much of the last few decades of progress in metal conductor technology has come from major Japanese refiners and manufacturers -- a community well known for being more engineering-driven than marketing-driven. Hitachi might be a poster child inheritor of Xerox's, Philips' and others tradition of being better at inventing than at employing and deploying, at least in the consumer products domain.
OCC (Ohno Continuous Casting) was developed by Professor Ohno while employed by a public university, and such it was the government which licensed the technology in the 1980's to both Furukawa and Sumitomo, and later to Neotech's mother company in Taiwan. When in 1987, I shifted from using Hitachi's LC-OFC to Sumitomo's PSC-OFC, I was not dealing with fly-by-night audiophile companies who supposedly do no more than take a standard cable, throw Holy Water at it, bless it, and maybe freeze it before disguising it -- I was dealing with major industrial companies who for the most part couldn't give a hoot about our little audio world.
I chose to buy OCC from Sumitomo because they drew from 12mm as-cast vs. Furukawa drawing from 15mm as-cast. Later, prior to switching to the US processed copper I use now, I was fortunate to have Sumitomo work with me, giving AudioQuest the opportunity to evaluate conductor drawn from 2mm OD as-cast, and from 4mm OD as-cast. The performance hierarchy from 15mm > 12mm > 8mm (the standard from Noeotech) > 4mm > 2mm was exactly as would be expected. In this context, any benefit of possibly slightly more directionality in the more processed samples was completely swamped out by the more-or-less damage done by the (even extremely refined) drawing process.
Because AudioQuest was the largest customer for OCC metal outside of Japan, in the early 1990's Nippon Mining (later Japan Energy, another of those touchy-feely little Japanese fly-by-night companies) came to AudioQuest in San Clemente, bringing along one of Japan's most famous audio reviewers to make the introduction, in order to present Stress-Free 6N copper to me. I started to use this material shortly afterwards, years later switching my 6N purchases to Dowa (another "little" Japanese company) because Dowa's copper gave a slightly better result. I don't know why Dowa's copper conductors were better -- I knew all that I needed to know. In my role as a professional consumer, I bought performance, not theory.
In 1999 when I started purchasing the US manufactured copper and silver conductors which I refer to as Perfect-Surface (obviously not perfect, but the surface is a major point of differentiation), I knew less about the "why" than I did when I had previously bought LC-OFC, PC-OCC, or 6N, because the process was not intellectually protected and couldn't be fully revealed -- but again, the "why" only satisfies curiosity, it was the in situ audio performance which justified my switch and my allocation of resources.
My point: The above named Japanese and Taiwanese companies are full of extremely competent engineers, who do measure. That's their world. My world is learning to choose the best of what they have learned to manufacture, and to as cost-effectively as possible apply their products as appropriate in my products.
Sincerely, Bill Low
Much of the last few decades of progress in metal conductor technology has come from major Japanese refiners and manufacturers -- a community well known for being more engineering-driven than marketing-driven. Hitachi might be a poster child inheritor of Xerox's, Philips' and others tradition of being better at inventing than at employing and deploying, at least in the consumer products domain.
OCC (Ohno Continuous Casting) was developed by Professor Ohno while employed by a public university, and such it was the government which licensed the technology in the 1980's to both Furukawa and Sumitomo, and later to Neotech's mother company in Taiwan. When in 1987, I shifted from using Hitachi's LC-OFC to Sumitomo's PSC-OFC, I was not dealing with fly-by-night audiophile companies who supposedly do no more than take a standard cable, throw Holy Water at it, bless it, and maybe freeze it before disguising it -- I was dealing with major industrial companies who for the most part couldn't give a hoot about our little audio world.
I chose to buy OCC from Sumitomo because they drew from 12mm as-cast vs. Furukawa drawing from 15mm as-cast. Later, prior to switching to the US processed copper I use now, I was fortunate to have Sumitomo work with me, giving AudioQuest the opportunity to evaluate conductor drawn from 2mm OD as-cast, and from 4mm OD as-cast. The performance hierarchy from 15mm > 12mm > 8mm (the standard from Noeotech) > 4mm > 2mm was exactly as would be expected. In this context, any benefit of possibly slightly more directionality in the more processed samples was completely swamped out by the more-or-less damage done by the (even extremely refined) drawing process.
Because AudioQuest was the largest customer for OCC metal outside of Japan, in the early 1990's Nippon Mining (later Japan Energy, another of those touchy-feely little Japanese fly-by-night companies) came to AudioQuest in San Clemente, bringing along one of Japan's most famous audio reviewers to make the introduction, in order to present Stress-Free 6N copper to me. I started to use this material shortly afterwards, years later switching my 6N purchases to Dowa (another "little" Japanese company) because Dowa's copper gave a slightly better result. I don't know why Dowa's copper conductors were better -- I knew all that I needed to know. In my role as a professional consumer, I bought performance, not theory.
In 1999 when I started purchasing the US manufactured copper and silver conductors which I refer to as Perfect-Surface (obviously not perfect, but the surface is a major point of differentiation), I knew less about the "why" than I did when I had previously bought LC-OFC, PC-OCC, or 6N, because the process was not intellectually protected and couldn't be fully revealed -- but again, the "why" only satisfies curiosity, it was the in situ audio performance which justified my switch and my allocation of resources.
My point: The above named Japanese and Taiwanese companies are full of extremely competent engineers, who do measure. That's their world. My world is learning to choose the best of what they have learned to manufacture, and to as cost-effectively as possible apply their products as appropriate in my products.
Sincerely, Bill Low
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