Which is the best gemotry for diy silver interconnect?

[mbl]

Which winding method or wrapping technique is the best?

How to reduce dielectric that the material touching the conductor?

[AndrewT]

air or vacuum spaced.

[DF96]

There is a special knack to winding silver cable around a vacuum, and you have to ensure the vacuum does not leak out at the ends.

[zygibajt]

There is no winding technique that is the best.

If you want to create a good IC the things to consider are:

The diameter of the strands used. You will never build a great cable using single diameter strands. Thick ones alone will never be any good, thin, even if you put hundreds of them (litz strands do best) never will work best as the combination of many diffrent dimensions. Cardas knows that, Audio Note and other high end brands too.

Second to this is the purity of material, the better the better.

Next thing is shielding, there is no high quality interconnect without shielding, but shielding applied wrong way will do more harm than benefits. Shielding is must, but proprly applied.

Consider dielectric used, teflon, poliethylene, I like cotton for example.

And after that you might consider some geometry techniques, diffrent style of windings etc.

Without the above considering gemetry or winding is pointless like 99% of DIY Audio cables projects out there, especially silver single strand ones.

Cheers

[bear]

Actually, I would consider the capacitance per foot as being important.
The inductance per foot, if meaningful can be considered.

Personally, I am not a fan of solid core - but it can be an inexpensive way to get into a silver interconnect.

Shielding adds to capacitance.

Andrew T might want to suggest some practical building methodology for air dielectric cables?
We can dispense with the vacuum concept I suspect??

_-_-bear

[Allen Wright]

Originally Posted by zygibajt

Without the above considering gemetry or winding is pointless like 99% of DIY Audio cables projects out there, especially silver single strand ones.

Cheers

This is completely against my, and hundreds of my clients, experience. 10 years ago, I wrote the SuperCables CookBook and have sold thousands of copies since. It was recently completely revised and updated, the key new I/C design using three very thin BRAIDED silver solid core wires. TO DATE, THIS EASY TO MAKE CABLE HAS PROVEN TO BE A SUPERB PERFORMER, BETTERING IN ONE TEST, THE $35,000 Nordost Odin I/C.

Our SilverFoil design, also in the book, can sound even better, butit's very high capacitance needs a lot of potential driving current.

OK?

Regards, Allen

[marce]

How much is the dielectric gonna upset a audio signal, one wonders, or skin effect or ...

[bear]

Hi Allen,

I'm not a fan of "very thin" ... YMMV.

My own product Silver Lightning has been the same and stable since ~1990 uses three wires in a braid. The Balanced version uses 5 wires. There is some yin/yang in the choice of "wire" for everything... "a superb performer" too!

Everyone probably knows that Kimber uses a braid - mine too, but a difference recipe in important ways... I do prefer multi-gauge stranded, but this is not available to the DIYer...

Allen's book is a good read, fwiw.

Marce, how much is the dielectric going to effect a capacitor?
The bottom line is that in many systems, the choice of interconnect appears to effect what people report hearing. Measurements may or may not correlate to what is heard.

_-_-bear

[zygibajt]

Originally Posted by Allen Wright

This is completely against my, and hundreds of my clients, experience. 10 years ago, I wrote the SuperCables CookBook and have sold thousands of copies since. It was recently completely revised and updated, the key new I/C design using three very thin BRAIDED silver solid core wires. TO DATE, THIS EASY TO MAKE CABLE HAS PROVEN TO BE A SUPERB PERFORMER, BETTERING IN ONE TEST, THE $35,000 Nordost Odin I/C.

Our SilverFoil design, also in the book, can sound even better, butit's very high capacitance needs a lot of potential driving current.

OK?

Regards, Allen

Halo, thanks for your opinion. What exactly is in total oposit to your and your clients expirence?

I do not know your book, nor the cable buliding techniques, sorry. But I have a quite a good expirence in building cables and these are my expirences based on many many hundreds of cables built. Looking at some well known brands they follow similar paths considering using diffrent diameter conductors.

By three very thin BRAIDED silver solid core wires you mean solid core silver conductors shielded with some kind of braid?

I have made many many DIY Audio cable projects from the internet in the past, many of them claiming to beat high $$$ Audio cables but comparing them to expensive high end cables always turned them to bee poor performance. This applies to all the Belden based cables, X-Ubyte, solid core silver conductors and many many others I don't even remember right now.There is no cheap and easy to make recipe for the very high quality cable in my opinion. Agree foil conductors have great potential. But many thanks for your opinion Allen I would like to hear more about your expirences and designs.

Thanks

[zygibajt]

Originally Posted by bear

Actually, I would consider the capacitance per foot as being important.
The inductance per foot, if meaningful can be considered.

Personally, I am not a fan of solid core - but it can be an inexpensive way to get into a silver interconnect.

Shielding adds to capacitance.

Andrew T might want to suggest some practical building methodology for air dielectric cables?
We can dispense with the vacuum concept I suspect??

_-_-bear

Agree solid core conductors might be inexpensive way to make a good performing cable but not high quality.

In my expirence capacitance itself is not important as long as it is low enough not to make any trouble to the components the interconnect is connecting, but might be more important with longer runs.

Yes shielding adds capacitance, especially poorly applied. Well applied adds very little and the benefits are huge. In my opinion there is no high quality cable without shielding. But agree that sometimes poorly applied shielding might be worse than no shielding.

Air dielectric might be easy to make if one is creative. But using air dielectric with poor conductors, poor geometry or lack of well applied shielding will not help the cable to be any good. Tried that many times. Sure it might help if all other apsects of building are well thought and we want to get even better cable. That are just my opinions based on my expirences. and I prefer high quality copper in litz but that's just me.

Thanks