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What is OFC and should I buy it? OFC (Oxygen Free Copper) wire is a type of wire that often gets sold by stereo shops as the best stuff to hook up speakers or a high power amp. I occasionally get asked about it. I’ve had folks ask if I can make battery cables out of it. What’s different about it? As the name suggests the copper used in the wire is “oxygen free”, almost. It’s not really “oxygen free”, it has less oxygen. When copper is smelted oxygen is added to help remove the other impurities. OFC adds another step by adding phosphorous to remove the oxygen. Standard wire is AT LEAST 99.90 pure copper. OFC is 99.95 pure copper. An extra 0.05% copper sounds good. What’s the down side? In a word, COST. OFC is often TWICE the price for the same size of standard cable. So you are paying DOUBLE for 0.05% more copper. That sounds very expensive. Is it worth it? NO. Even though the wire is more pure (a tiny fraction of a percent more pure), there are NO measurable electric differences (source Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen-free_copper ) . As an exercise we emailed a dealer which sold OFC for stereo application and asked about resistance. They said the resistance of 4 ga OFC that they sell is 0.883m milliohms/meter. Standard 4 gauge is 0.815 milliohms/meter (source: http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm ). So according to the guy we talked to, the spec’ed resistance of OFC was actually WORSE than standard copper wire (although the difference is really negligible). We did not verify these numbers with physical measurements. To sum it up, you pay DOUBLE but get no performance difference. Are you saying that there is no good reason to pay extra for OFC? YES. It is my opinion that OFC is just a fad in the high end stereo world. It’s marketed as a way to improve performance but it's nothing but a scheme to remove cash from uninformed customers. According to one of my wire and cable suppliers the story gets even worse. Some low-cost imported OFC is incorrectly marked with the wrong wire gauge. For example, the wire may be marked as 4 gauge but it’s really 6 gauge. If you think you are getting a great deal on some 4 gauge OFC it may be because it’s really 6 gauge. So what’s your advice? What’s the bottom line? Forget about OFC. It’s just a gimmick. If you want better performing cables don’t waste your hard earned cash on OFC, just buy a larger gauge cable. Return back to Wire Types |
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