Gold plated connectors are absolutely normal and completely standard and essential. The vast majority of durable data/signal connectors used today are gold-plated. Hack open any random decent microUSB connector if you don't believe me. You need a solid connection for signal integrity. Corrosion messes that up. Of course, with modern cost optimization, usually only the contact surface is gold plated these days, not the entire pin, and the plating is quite thin and cheap. Connectors intended for higher connect/disconnect cycles will be more expensive in part because they need a thicker gold plating to avoid wearing out.Gold plated PCBs are also completely standard (google ENIG). In this case the plating is even thinner and just serves to ensure solderability and avoid corrosion. It's so thin that it immediately dissolves in the solder during the solder reflow process; it's just there to allow that process to happen properly, and to avoid corrosion in non-soldered areas. Almost every modern high tech PCB
Gold containing solder, on the other hand, is nonsense.
chipotle_coyote|3 years ago
Well, actually™, it turns out gold-tin alloys (which is what this probably is) get used a lot for solder, particularly in optoelectronic and microelectronic device packaging. You may already know this, but I didn't until tonight, when I thought, "Hey, is this really a thing?" and looked it up. :)
(I can't see anything that suggests it helps with "clearer sound," of course. I also searched for "audio-grade solder" out of curiosity and it seems there are some companies that market solder that way, but they seem to generally be (a) silver alloy, not gold, and (b) regarded rather skeptically.)
marcan_42|3 years ago