Public Service Announcement: AVOID "bobsbid1"

Anyone care to hazard what Oxygen Free Copper Wire is? "It's copper free of the cupric oxide dipole pairs that can cause unwanted rectification and attended mixing of signals resulting in added intermodulation distortion." B#))$^!t (a form of bovine excrement). We did this as a result of the above quote from "The Audio Expert". I did not doubt that said expert was just repeating what he's heard with zero understanding. I actually managed to get a piece of the stuff from the resident audiophile. My boss heard that and as a result of his engineering expertize in materials and my major eye roll and grimace we sent it off with some similar copper wire of the same guage from a local source to a materials lab for analysis. Since the company was in the business or using wire of all types as part of the product there was significant expertize available to analyse the result. Findings were the generic #6 and the OFCW got mixed up that the assay of both looked the same. Not similar, the same as nothing to distinguaish any difference. One came from local hardware store. Owing to the price difference we laughed very hard at the so called audiophilic inane beliefs. Quality copper wire is nominally oxygen free or it would show a distinct resistance variation from standard. Another easy test is to take a known length, measure the resistance at a easily calibrated standard temperature (ice water). Then raise the temperature (boiling water) to a new known point and remeasure with accurate milliohmmeter. Calculate the alpha (rate of change in resistance over temperature) pure copper has a known alpha and they will be the same to meaurement limits. If they differ it's due to impurity in the copper, plating if any (silver is commonly used for TFE coated wires, Nickel is common too) or it's not plain copper (copper clad steel). It's not rocket science. Allison