On swimming, sure. But not fluid dynamics. It's a bit like music listeners shouldn't be treated as experts on music quality, or you'll get the audiophile nuts who need gold connectors. Some combination of personal experience for comfort and objective measurements for performance would be much better.
Silver corrodes relatively quickly and is expensive; that's a bad tradeoff against copper, which is much cheaper and nearly as conductive. So: gold-plated connectors on copper wires are extremely common.
None of that makes an audible difference, as it turns out: humans can't tell the difference between silver, copper, gold, aluminum, or even iron wires at audio frequencies and realistic (sub-kilometer) lengths with comparable resistance. All the advantages are material costs vs longevity without maintenance.
Also, most music listeners are not experts on music quality or sound reproduction quality (two very different things). Many music listeners are experts on their own preferences. Everyone is entitled to their own preferences.
It’s not strange at all. Gold plating improving quality sounds truthy but is absolutely false. I have yet to read a serious study, at least single blind, showing any meaningful difference. And I have yet to read a serious engineering study showing any meaningful difference in characteristics. Steel plated jacks are just fine, and optical connectors make the whole thing irrelevant. As you write yourself:
> None of that makes an audible difference, as it turns out
> Also, most music listeners are not experts on music quality or sound reproduction quality (two very different things). Many music listeners are experts on their own preferences. Everyone is entitled to their own preferences.
Indeed. But their preference have no effect on Physics. If they are happy to get gold-plated ruthenium cables with diamond coatings, more power to them. It does not make these cables any better.
Theo are entitled to their own preferences, not their own reality.
Actually, gold is a worse conductor than both copper and silver, and only a little better than aluminum.
> and does not corrode in air
This is the real reason for plating contacts in gold. But gold wires would be a bad idea, since they would be worse than both copper and silver wires.
