Searching the perfect cable section

[Sir Trefor]

Alves,

Why Silver? Why not a heavier gauge copper conductor of the same resistance?


http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

[Alves]

PauSim, I have not enough 26awg wire for that geometry.
Twisted serpentine: Inside the cable I use a rope and the conductors go around that rope like a snake around a tree.

Sir Trefor, I made only a few experiments with copper but the extension (top and bottom) was not the same I was getting with silver. Detail and silences were also better with silver. Probably I was not using the best copper.
What brand of copper do you recommend?

Regards,
Alves

[PauSim]

Oh I tried that too. It seems to give no character of its own, which is a good thing.

Well, when you have enogh wires you could experiment with a Kimber Hero Serpentine then. Place the rope in the middle of the four wires and start braiding.

wire 1 wire 2 rope wire 3 wire 4



Another thing: everytime a new design sounds too heavy on the bass, for example, I try to re-tune the system. Bring the speakers more upfront...

[Sir Trefor]

Alves, if your into oxygen-free copper try any kind of oxygen-free copper magnet wire you want. I have never done any comparative sound tests between OF copper, and standard copper(if you go to the engineer's site I linked to, you will see he does not believe there is a significant difference between the two). I use Essex magnet wire for my speakers. Magnet wire has the advantage of having little or no Dielectric absorption

[hermanv]

My friend and I have been experimenting with DIY interconnect cables because the commercial cables that sound best to us approach astronomical pricing.

We have not confirmed whether copper or silver is best but think they are different. Copper appears warmer and silver appears somewhat tilted up at the high end, it would depend very much on your system which of these two seemed more neutral. We believe, so far without confirmation, that both purity and grain structure of the conductors matter.

What we are most sure about is that the choice of insulator and its' dielectric constant is very important. Even beyond the dielectric, a construction technique that guarantees as much space (or air) between the conductors as possible seems most important. The choice of insulator and the air space are two factors that seem to control the amount of hash or smear created by the cable. The hash seems mostly concentrated in the upper mid or sibilants region of the audio spectrum and also appears to mask or reduce dynamic range.

So far Teflon seems to be the best insulator material. We have not found a source of foamed Teflon, we suspect this would be better yet,

Keeping the wires far appart while still maintaing an anti EMI/RFI construction method is not all that easy. Braiding seems to not be the best choice, unless perhaps you braid over a hollow tube.

We have also not resolved either the best wire guage or the best number of wires. Nor do we know if composite guage (lots of tiny wires) acts the same as a single larger gauge.

The number of variables is quite large, but we do seem to hear minor differences for each construction technique we have tried. One problem we have found is that some cables that sound a little better on one CD might be worse on another, so even evaluating the test cables takes a lot of time. Adding a reasonable break in period means the number of tests in a given time frame is small.

[PauSim]

I don´t know if this thread is still open or not, but a good way to determine the best cable section is to run the wires straight from source to load, with the least geometry or dielectric influence.

[hermanv]

This does seem to be a most common technique, specially in equipment that uses point to point wiring. Tests my friend and I have performed demonstrate that capacitance and dielectric constant significantly influence interconnect cables sound. Point to point typically minimizes capacitance.

The problem comes in for external cables because of the need to surpress EMI and RFI signals. Usually this means shielding (adds capacitance) or twisted pairs (can add capacitance) or both.

[PauSim]

Originally posted by hermanv
The problem comes in for external cables because of the need to surpress EMI and RFI signals. Usually this means shielding (adds capacitance) or twisted pairs (can add capacitance) or both. [/B]

Yes. This invariably gets to the Omega-Mikro designs. Active shielding the straight wires to a ground other than the cable´s return path.