Where do I post about making your own cables ? Types and gages.

[Speedskater]

Of course cables have a sound.
But all good cables have the same sound.

 

[Einric]

One of the things I always found funny is people that use 50ohm coax cable and put a 75ohm RCA connector on it.
I am in th RF industry and something like that would be a huge NoNo.
There are 50ohm speccd. RCA connectors out there but they are pretty scarce.
I am in the process of sourcing high quality bulkhead BNC Female connectors and mating Males for my cables that are all 50ohm.
I don't know if it really makes a difference at audio frequency...... But still.... It's a head scratcher.

 

[marce]

'marce' you have that upside down. You need to reread the Henry Ott paper:

"Balanced vs. Unbalanced Audio Interconnections"
http://hottconsultants.com/pdf_files/Audio Interconnections.pdf

Bill Whitlock suggest that the Shield/Return be the equivalent of 14AWG/2.0 sq mm or larger.

Woops thanks for that I should have said a high shield resistance sorry....

 

[marce]

Then we better get rid of the faulty tubes, paper cones, vinyl, transformers, etc

Of course wires have a sound. There is no perfect audio conductor reference. There is nothing perfect in this hobby, or in this physical realm. And if there was it would be very expensive and therefore labelled "snake oil," right?



Lower resistance = better damping. Try it for yourself.


Here's another DIY silver cable article.

Would love to see some real proof regarding silver instead of the usual anecdotes such as it sounds brighter..., a 4% difference in resistance isn't gonna make that much difference...
Why then do no other areas of electronics go on about cables, why do they just use the correct cable, engineered for the job in hand?

 

[marce]

One of the things I always found funny is people that use 50ohm coax cable and put a 75ohm RCA connector on it.
I am in th RF industry and something like that would be a huge NoNo.
There are 50ohm speccd. RCA connectors out there but they are pretty scarce.
I am in the process of sourcing high quality bulkhead BNC Female connectors and mating Males for my cables that are all 50ohm.
I don't know if it really makes a difference at audio frequency...... But still.... It's a head scratcher.

The rest of the chain including the PCB traces are going to be all over the place impedance wise, even low speed digital doesn't really care about controlled impedance paths, its only when you get to high speed (fast rise times) that it really becomes a problem and controlled impedance PCBs connectors and cabling have to be used, analogue audio wouldn't even blink at the mismatch... I would have thought.
For the record I did do some silver cables once, stranded silver in clear plastic, to go with some home made speakers with a super tweeter on top, the silver was chosen for the bling factor, it did look good, cant say I could hear any difference from the normal cheep copper cable I usually use.

 

[JMFahey]

Then we better get rid of the faulty tubes, paper cones, vinyl, transformers, etc

You are comparing very non linear stuff to the most linear element in the Audio World ... so much so that a perfect preamp is often called to "a piece of wire with gain".

Of course wires have a sound.

You bet, when Miss Helga in her leather bikini and high heels whacks your soft behind with a piece of cable, heavy welding cable makes a distinct thump, while light Mogami Audio wire just makes a faint slap.
At least we can agree on something

Lower resistance = better damping. Try it for yourself.

You got it wrong, silver does not have lower "resistance" but lower "resistivity" (google resistivity)
Same length 16ga copper has less resistance than 18ga silver, any day of the week.

 

[Speedskater]

One of the things I always found funny is people that use 50ohm coax cable and put a 75ohm RCA connector on it.
I am in th RF industry and something like that would be a huge NoNo.
There are 50ohm speccd. RCA connectors out there but they are pretty scarce.
I am in the process of sourcing high quality bulkhead BNC Female connectors and mating Males for my cables that are all 50ohm.
I don't know if it really makes a difference at audio frequency...... But still.... It's a head scratcher.

This is more of a problem with BNC connectors. There are both 50 Ohm & 75 Ohm BNC connectors. It's hard for the average person to tell the difference. But it only starts to be a problem as you approach 100 mega-Hertz. So even for digital audio, it's not a problem.

 

[DF96]

Of course wires have a sound. There is no perfect audio conductor reference.

Fortunately we don't need perfect conductors to get an audio signal safely from A to B. We just need sufficiently high conductivity (=almost any metal, and mud) and sufficiently high linearity (any metal, plus mud). This assume a highish resistance load, normal in audio systems. Only faulty wires have a sound.

Lower resistance = better damping. Try it for yourself.

Don't be silly.

 

[DF96]

One of the things I always found funny is people that use 50ohm coax cable and put a 75ohm RCA connector on it.
I am in th RF industry and something like that would be a huge NoNo.
There are 50ohm speccd. RCA connectors out there but they are pretty scarce.
I am in the process of sourcing high quality bulkhead BNC Female connectors and mating Males for my cables that are all 50ohm.
I don't know if it really makes a difference at audio frequency...... But still.... It's a head scratcher.

As you say "audio frequency" I assume you are talking about an analogue interconnect. In that case it doesn't matter one jot whether you use 50 ohm BNC or 75ohm BNC or anything else, because you can be absolutely certain that a '50ohm' cable does not have a characteristic impedance of 50 ohms at audio frequencies. When dealing with RF things are different.

I don't think any RCA connector can be 50ohm, although it might not be too far off. No need anyway, even for digital.