Based on the VH Audio's design, I made a pair of the OCC 5N 28 awg solid core silver cables last week. The results are amazing: open sound stage, airy, focused images and very detailed. I can hear more weak music tones and can now define the "distance between layers of music". 😀 They beat my 3 other diy solid core silver rca cables. 😡
What I'm going to do next? I'll re-do those cables which were twisted conductors in design 😀
What I'm going to do next? I'll re-do those cables which were twisted conductors in design 😀
what happens when the humidity changes?
water is highly polar, relative pemtivitivy ~ 80
even polystyrene dielectic loss increases ~10x with its miniscule <0.1% equilibrium water absorbtion
quick search finds: "Cotton can absorb about 25 times its weight in water"
although only the 1st 5-6 % of water molecules by wt % are bound directly to the cellulose free hydroxyl groups
water is highly polar, relative pemtivitivy ~ 80
even polystyrene dielectic loss increases ~10x with its miniscule <0.1% equilibrium water absorbtion
quick search finds: "Cotton can absorb about 25 times its weight in water"
although only the 1st 5-6 % of water molecules by wt % are bound directly to the cellulose free hydroxyl groups
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Audiophiles will argue for years about what interconnects to use.
I use decent Nakamichi Gold RCA connectors with RG58 Satellite Co-Ax and the sound is wonderfully transparent, clear, and with a good sound stage.
I eventually sold my pair of Chord Chorus interconnects because the RCA connectors weren't maintaining a good connection with the RCA sockets on my equipment.
The satellite RG58 cable is double shielded and good for 600MHz it does a brilliant job at Audio Frequencies.
I'm sure loads of you will disagree.
I use decent Nakamichi Gold RCA connectors with RG58 Satellite Co-Ax and the sound is wonderfully transparent, clear, and with a good sound stage.
I eventually sold my pair of Chord Chorus interconnects because the RCA connectors weren't maintaining a good connection with the RCA sockets on my equipment.
The satellite RG58 cable is double shielded and good for 600MHz it does a brilliant job at Audio Frequencies.
I'm sure loads of you will disagree.
I just worry that the construction shown is niether shielded or twisted pairs, basicly they form a dipole structure, not very good in areas of high rf pollution, ie any city town etc.
I had a reel of RG58 used it for everything, as I had 100m of the stuff, also used F connectors for it as I still have hundreds of the things...great all rounder.
I had a reel of RG58 used it for everything, as I had 100m of the stuff, also used F connectors for it as I still have hundreds of the things...great all rounder.
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😀 just use ribbons folks 😀 they're plain better 😉
Some 3 mm x 0,05 mm silver foils are good for interconnects.
For speaker cable, use 30mm x 0,05 silver or 0,07 copper to maintain a good cross section, with no thickness at all. Commonly found in ribbons chokes. Esay source of material for the diyer.
Ribbons will have to be tight wound in order not to vibrate. Use pfte strip aznd an assistant to do this 😉
Don't forget low metal mass connectors, silver lead free soldered
At least Allen Wright showed us the way 😎
Best,
nAr
Some 3 mm x 0,05 mm silver foils are good for interconnects.
For speaker cable, use 30mm x 0,05 silver or 0,07 copper to maintain a good cross section, with no thickness at all. Commonly found in ribbons chokes. Esay source of material for the diyer.
Ribbons will have to be tight wound in order not to vibrate. Use pfte strip aznd an assistant to do this 😉
Don't forget low metal mass connectors, silver lead free soldered
At least Allen Wright showed us the way 😎
Best,
nAr
For speaker interconnects - arguably the most cost effective cable is PVC clad domestic house wiring cable 2.5mm
I did a blind test at my local Hi-End Hi-Fi store and it was voted the best stuff out of the crowd of many - much more exotic - competitors.
I did a blind test at my local Hi-End Hi-Fi store and it was voted the best stuff out of the crowd of many - much more exotic - competitors.
Example for speaker cable ribbon :
Self JANTZEN - AWG14 0.10 mH - Selfs JANTZEN série AWG14
For interconnects, wires had it in 4 mm large before :
WIRES.CO.UK Copper Tape
Best is the silver foil here for interconnects :
Vacuum State - High End Hifi Equipment 3mm x 0,05 4N silver foil
For speaker :
Vacuum State - High End Hifi Equipment 25 x 0,05 mm copper tape
Sorry for beeing a little off-topic. 😀
best,
nAr
To my way of thinking the criteria for a good unbalanced interconnect are:
1] A heavy braided return. For long interconnects the return should be 14AWG equivalent or heaver.
2] The shielding should be suitable for anticipated interference. Lower frequency interference use braid. For high frequency interference add a foil shield. Interference is rapidly becoming more prevalent.
3] Low capacitance, not always a problem with more modern circuits.
The Cotton OCC 5N Silver Interconnect Cables only meet the third criteria.
1] A heavy braided return. For long interconnects the return should be 14AWG equivalent or heaver.
2] The shielding should be suitable for anticipated interference. Lower frequency interference use braid. For high frequency interference add a foil shield. Interference is rapidly becoming more prevalent.
3] Low capacitance, not always a problem with more modern circuits.
The Cotton OCC 5N Silver Interconnect Cables only meet the third criteria.
I totally agree with you. That is why I made my previous silver wire cables twisted. To me, the VH cotton insulated rca project is a new job. Having a lot of fun and excitement out of it!
Actually, I've been wondering that satellite cables could be nice interconnect rca cables too. I have constructed a pair similar to Jon Risch's design (learned from a Japanese website ) : the twisted pair, but not with Belden cables as recommended. I love them and they've become one of my favourite collections.🙂
The resistance of the shield should be as low as possible to reduce the chance of noise, specially at mains frequencies.
I use Canare Star Quad wire exclusively.
http://www.canare.com/ProductItemDisplay.aspx?productItemID=53
It's just better science.
http://www.canare.com/ProductItemDisplay.aspx?productItemID=53
It's just better science.
i would like someone to actually explain why a shield is of any use on an RCA cable? there is no separate shield terminal, so it just more efficiently gathers the noise and shunts it to signal ground, as both are directly connected, doesnt seem ideal and in my experience, even with quality belden cable really doesnt do much at alll, just serves to add a bit extra capacitance. i use UTP in preference to shielded pair for RCA every time
The Canare Star Quad can be used for single ended purposes. In this case, the shield is connected to ground at one end only.
hmm, no thanks, how does that do anything to stop it from being connected at both ends? given shield and ground terminal are one and the same with RCA, what difference does it make if you connect it at one end?
besides i think you'll find that this is a pretty old solution some used on XLR cables to cope with unknown or bad grounding techniques used in large interconnected systems. we, as diyers have control over how the grounding works in our systems, i dont see any reason to do this even with XLR unless you have made a mistake with the chassis/signal grounding