DIY Interconnects

[ralph-bway]

General questions about the signal and return wires.

It seems that using the smallest gauge wire possible (that will handle the load being sent through it for the signal lead will decrease skin effect and increase all other positive attributes (attack time, harmonics, clarity, etc).

What about the return wire. Can this be a larger gauge or even a larger gauge in copper (if silver was used for the signal).

This is probably a silly analogy, but like the water plumbing in a house the return flow out of the house should have a higher capacity than the flow into the house, or there could be a backup.

Does this make sense or as usual is there something here I don't know or understand.

Thanks,
Ralph

[Christer]

Signals are AC, not DC, so the current changes direction all
the time. To use your water-pipe analogy, if the flow of water
would change direction every now and when, it wouldn't make
sense to have different size pipes. That is, it wouldn't make
much sense to have different size conductors. However, this
is audio, and this thread is likely to get a couple of hundred
posts over the next few days claiming various strange
pehnomenae like cables being directional etc.

[NEAR_SOTA]

I have been experimenting and looking at different designs for a few months now.

I agree that it does not make a differences. Kimber I believe uses a braid with 3 wires. 2 are for the return. I tried this using silver with no much success. It did help in knowing that the dielectric material held up doing such a braiding.

It's been said that using Silver with COpper produces gran,but I had success using such a design in stright form.

Try a few things to hear weather there is a maret improvement or which might work with what you are using is the beat advice.

I stayed with the same ga. in a cost effective straight design.

Experiment!