Buy or DIY cable?

[tubee]

Hi all.

Few weeks ago i swapped my very old and thick speaker cable (low voltage truck cable) because it was oxidised, also under the vinyl. It had a diameter of +/- 4mm2.

Replaced it diy-way done with 8 massive leads Cat-5 network cable. +/- 2.3mm2. braided 3 cables, kept vinyl around it. All dark cables are plus, lighter ones became minus. The cable's plus and minus run then straight along eachother.
At first it sounded rather good, clearer sound, cleaner treble, deeper soundstage, only some boomy bass so i added a massive lighting cable on the braided bundle, diameter is extend now to 3.8 mm2. Lenght btw is 2.5 Metres to the amp.

Slightly better bass now (have only two mosfets/channel) Classical music sounds good now, but longer listening reveiles a uncertain factor on the whole sound, something is not right. Its like the stereo image is "pulled out of eachother"
Yesterday the main fuse of left channel of amp was blown during the night. It could be the amp has some problems with the low capacity of the cat-5 cable.

I am thinking to buy The 4 mm2 cable from them: http://www.audiolab.nl/kabel.htm
Or a from Supra Sweden, they're tinned.

But has someone a good sounding diy solution?
Thanks!

[tubee]

Well, 72 vieuws and still no respond.

I found this on the Elliot ESP pages:
"Many construction methods have been used, from multiple CAT-5 data cables, with the wires interconnected (usually all the coloured leads are deemed the +ve conductor, and all the white wires - the "mates" - are used as the negative). Because of the tight twist, the inductance is minimised, but at the expense of capacitance. In some cases, the capacitance may be high enough to cause instability in the amplifier, which not only does awful things to the sound, but can damage the amp."

The high capacity of twisted CAT5 probably made the amps fuse blow.
Btw its inpossible to bi-wire, have a 12 dB series filter used for my two way TL's

So has anyone a good diy solution for a fine sounding loudspeaker cable, if possible low capacitive?

[joe carrow]

I think you just want to keep your impedance as low as possible. That means minimizing capacitance, inductance, and resistance. 2.5 meters isn't so far; 4mm^2 should be more than sufficient. No special twisting or weaving or braiding should really be required to get keep your inductance low. A speaker is a fairly large reactive load, and audio frequencies relatively quite low. Don't worry about inductance, just run some straight leads of heavy cable.

[tubee]

Thanks Joe for reply

So you suggestion is to get a simple but heavy cable? With the current diy cable each copperwire is isolated itself. Bought cables often consist of a bundle of Litze-wires together with one isolation around it.

Btw, the fuse blew on the side where the speakerwiring was NOT in a 1 turn loop before speaker. The other channel had a loop, this maybe prevented a blown fuse of this channel.

[sdclc126]

I think about the best values I've seen for speaker cable are automotive amplifier and ground cables - almost always cheaper per foot than "loudspeaker cable". And you can buy as heavy gauge as you want - down to zero (half-inch?).

Look on eBay for the bulk stuff - some great deals there - just for aesthetics maybe get the red-colored amp wire for positive & the black color for negative - looks cool.

[jneutron]

Originally posted by tubee
Well, 72 vieuws and still no respond.

Well, what did ya expect? The thread subject line tweren't very sexy..

Ya shoulda jazzed it up so's we'd notice.

Fuse gone probably due to capacitance.

Loop comment confusing.

Boomy bass could be due to the resistance of the cat.

Cheers, John

[audio-kraut]

get canare 4S11 - no problems with parameters. Have it for years...

[wigginjs]

Fuse blew on your amp? What kind of speakers and what amp? I'd look to the speakers unless you're doing something particularly strange with the cables. Twisting a bunch of Cat 5 together really is just a fancy way of making a large diameter piece of copper. Did you check to make sure none of the "plus" strands got mixed in with the "minus" strands?

[Tenson]

I use solid core lighting cable, works a treat, though quite stiff. Comes in a number of gauges, I used whatever the middle one at B&Q was lol.

[tubee]

Hi all
Thanks for reply. 4s11 look promising audio-kraut.Will see if i can get it nearby. http://www.livingcinema.nl/catalog/c...able-p-88.html

M0tion: The amp is a stereo hybrid, E88CC/6922 tube stage, pio cap coupled with 2 fets/channel. Each channel has its own PS/transformer.
Speakers are two ML-TQWT's, 20cm Audax bextrene woofer and a very old modified Keflar tweeter. Filtered series 12dB and equalation of some resonances. Speakers are good, the diy cat-5 cable is tested before application. After placing new fuse it played till now again.

jneutron: no not a fancy sexy thread, but for that you will have to search somewhere else.
The loop is simple: the cat-5 cable is not in a straigt line to speaker, but its running in a loop now of one turn just before entering speaker terminals.

Tenson: to enlarge copper diameter to get some less boomy bass, i added 1.5mm^2 lighting wire allready to get close to 4mm^2 total and thus lower resistance. I could hear the difference, though its allmost an unmeasurable difference in resistance. Lighting wire sounds good too, but has PVC isolation, Cat-5 has polyethylene.