h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why are gold connections better for audio & SCART?

Supplementary question: Where are the Sex Gyroscopes?

I think that gold is a better conductor than copper. AFAIK. IIRC.

Roughly speaking, the metal with the highest conductivity is silver, followed by copper and then gold. I suspect the reason they use gold is either: A. it makes better contact because it's soft, or B. it's a gimmick to make you pay more for something you perceive to be better.

As I've never come across gold contacts outside the consumer market, I suspect it's the latter.

Traveller in Time digging gold from redundant memory chips
"The advantage of Gold over cupper is it does not corrode. Many contact problems in domestic audio systems seem to be based on corrosion. One leaves a connector in place for years and 'suddenly' it fails to connect. The reason for using gold in chips is the wires can be thinner then any other metal so you can use many more in the same space.

(headphones)"

Yeah I'm with Traveller in Time - corrosion resistance makes gold better.

Yes, from past days, it was corrosion resistance - conductivity coming second.

Incidentally, didn't a major computer player (who?) have a rather big problem with 'creeping copper'? So pure, therefore so soft, that it slowly spread about on the printed circuit boards - to the extent that tracks acually touched each other?
That would have been in the early 70's.

TiT is right.

Guys