25 pair cat 5 cable for speaker cable?

[Sparhawk]

I made a pair of these once, just for fun.

27 pairs of plenum-grade (FT6) CAT5E. The plenum-grade has Teflon insulation, which is prefefable.

You definitely want to use the solid colours for one side of the connection and the stripes for the other, as the whole point is to take advantage of the twisted pairs to achieve a very low inductance. But, as has already been pointed out, the trade-off for low inductance is high capacitance, which can cause oscillation problems. Especially with a 27-pair cable.

I don't think I would make another pair. They're a huge pain in the @$# to make, and the capacitance can be problematic. But they sure do look spiffy.

And I have to admit, I'm rather skeptical of the whole speaker cable sound thing... I think there are much better areas to tweak, that make differences that are orders of magnitude greater. Like room acoustics, for instance.

[AndrewT]

Hi,
I would try and suggest you do, 4pair (0.8sqmm) for treble driver, 8pair (1.6sqmm) for mid driver and 12pair (2.4sqmm) for bass driver to get advantage of bi-wiring or tri-wiring.

As usual keep the cables as short as possible.

Check your amp is stable with capacitive cabling.

ps. 25pair is not 20sqmm but is 4.9sqmm.

[phn]

Maybe I was mistaken. I thought he meant 25 cables of four pairs.

Four leads are indeed 0.8 qmm. I was calculating 0.8 x 25 = 20 qmm.

[bob_v5]

why would you want to braid the cable? i thought the whole point of cat5 is that it already comes like that?

[AndrewT]

Hi,
Cat5 are twisted pairs.
I think that, to improve rejection between adjacent pairs, the pitch of each of the 4pairs is different.

The braiding came from previous experiments by our DIYers to find ways to combine more copper and improve performance.

[mpmarino]

Originally posted by AndrewT
Hi,
I would try and suggest you do, 4pair (0.8sqmm) for treble driver, 8pair (1.6sqmm) for mid driver and 12pair (2.4sqmm) for bass driver to get advantage of bi-wiring or tri-wiring.

As usual keep the cables as short as possible.

Check your amp is stable with capacitive cabling.

Thanks

But what should I do with the 25th pair ??

Also, I have both shielded and non shielded 25 pr. Whadya think would be better?

Does anyone know how well Pass Alephs handle capacitance? Well, I know someone does...how about out of the people reading this?



Thanks

[AndrewT]

Hi,
my suggestion uses 24pair.

Choose to leave the 25th pair unconnected or try using it to augment the other used cables.

I would not bother with the screened, but if you feel like experimenting, I will let you go ahead on condition you come back and tell us of your successes and failures!!

It could save us all a lot of time.

[klitgt]

More on the subject here:
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ffrc_e.html

The tnt-audio site has more pages about speaker cables than the on about the FFRC cable, look here
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/diycables.html

[jneutron]

It is unfortunate indeed, that such erroneous physics harpings are so easily available for all on the web.

Lest you assume the wrong thing, I have not stated that physics proves all cables sound the same. I have stated that the large part of the technical information you have linked to is in error.

Hugely so.

Cheers, John

[davidlzimmer]

I'm not going to spend any money. I've got the cat 5 waisting away in a shed. I'm going to try the braided variety. If it makes a difference, it will be interesting. If it makes NO difference, then at least I will have satisfied my own curiosity.

The only test equipment that counts is MY ears.