You know what they say about opinions, it's like a*******, everyone has one but they think each others stink.
I agree with selling the audiophile cables and get this 12/2 fat zip cord, you can cut it in half and have two 25ft cables, pr cut them to whatever length you like/need (I'd suggest always having both cables the same length):
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Cerrowi...d-Landscape-Lighting-Wire-241-1602B/30328905712 gauge may be overkill, but it insures it's very low resistance at any length used in a residential application. and it's still less than a dollar a foot.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Cerrowi...d-Landscape-Lighting-Wire-241-1602B/30328905712 gauge may be overkill, but it insures it's very low resistance at any length used in a residential application. and it's still less than a dollar a foot.
Getting back to your original post that started this whole thread, here is the answer. You can't hear a splice. Period.
So, it doesn't really matter how you do it. There are many ways to do a good splice and whatever pleases you is fine. Don't sweat the sound part of it, because there is none.
But the people who would pay "fair market used price" for a high end cable are gonna swear up and down they CAN hear a splice, I guarantee it. They're not interested in evidence, proof, or that they're being laughed at by the vast majority of electrical engineers. Sell them an intact cable (it's broken in, even!), get the 12/2 zip cord or something equivalent, and get some nice music and some nice meals with your newly surplus funds.
Let us agree that many representatives of "great prestige brands" put their grain of sand for the general confusion.
https://www.audioelite.es/blog/shindo-laboratory-300b-aurieges/
" Shindo makes his teams with that philosophy, according to Ken Shindo, everything influences the sound. Placing a condenser lead in a specific orientation can make a minuscule audible difference, but multiply that small variation by a factor of dozens or hundreds and you end up with a product that sounds quite different from the one Ken produces."
" Knowledge, experience and instinct in harmony are a powerful combination to achieve that special sound. "
They forgot to mention something like:
"All solders are 99.9 percent silver, 0.01 is lead/tin just to improve adherence, the eastern wisdom of Ken's ancestors knew that precious metals produce harmonic and sweet music, copper is inharmonious and sour" 🙄
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Actually, after carefully reviewing all of the posts in this thread so far there has been only one person who truly believes that you can hear a splice. And there is one other person whom I'm not really sure about, because he won't clarify his remarks.
But that's not a bad count. Perhaps we are seeing more people now who really do understand the science and are not bedazzled by a lot of Internet nonsense. One can certainly hope so.
It is a connection, if it is poor, it will be noisy.
A proper joint will not be noisy.
As for listening impressions...that is a topic which has been discussed too many times to bother about here.
Signal noise more important in SCADA and plant control circuits, where kilometers of signal length are encountered.
I know people who have spent an entire day tracking down a bad joint in a plant.
Our telephone system had kits for cable joints, the single strand wire was stripped at least 50 mm each side, preferably 75 mm, and twisted together.
And then the joint was covered with a rigid plastic sleeve, and before jointing each wire was wiped with iso alcohol wipes as the wire had petroleum jelly as coating inside the cables, which were in multiples of 50 pairs. Like 50 /100 / 200 PAIRS.
After the cable joint was tested, the entire lot was fitted inside a special cover, part of the kit, and EPOXY COMPOUND poured in, there was even a vent to check that enough had been poured in.
This was for underground telephone cables.
There are issues of data speed and cross talk in telephone cables, and they can be measured, those standards are there.
Speakers are nowhere as critical, believe me.
And if I tell the people who actually did the work that you are quibbling about splices, they will laugh, long and hard.
A proper joint will not be noisy.
As for listening impressions...that is a topic which has been discussed too many times to bother about here.
Signal noise more important in SCADA and plant control circuits, where kilometers of signal length are encountered.
I know people who have spent an entire day tracking down a bad joint in a plant.
Our telephone system had kits for cable joints, the single strand wire was stripped at least 50 mm each side, preferably 75 mm, and twisted together.
And then the joint was covered with a rigid plastic sleeve, and before jointing each wire was wiped with iso alcohol wipes as the wire had petroleum jelly as coating inside the cables, which were in multiples of 50 pairs. Like 50 /100 / 200 PAIRS.
After the cable joint was tested, the entire lot was fitted inside a special cover, part of the kit, and EPOXY COMPOUND poured in, there was even a vent to check that enough had been poured in.
This was for underground telephone cables.
There are issues of data speed and cross talk in telephone cables, and they can be measured, those standards are there.
Speakers are nowhere as critical, believe me.
And if I tell the people who actually did the work that you are quibbling about splices, they will laugh, long and hard.
Everyone is entitled to hope. But the usual rebuttal from the shills are, if you can't hear the difference, your hearing isn't good enough, your system isn't resolving enough... yada yada... or there hasn't been enough money spent on hearing research to know everything about what we hear. We've seen those on this forum many times.
I never dreamed that the question could possibly generate so much debate. And I'm happy to report that last night it was all rendered moot. I bit the bullet and decided to rearrange the whole listening area. The whole splice thing was just a lazy attempt to avoid doing that. But there's no getting around it. And as it turns out, bu doing so I've got enough cable to avoid splicing! Sadly I'll now be deprived of knowing what the sound of the splice is. Thanks to all and cheers,
If braiding where of any help, you would see e.g. ethernet cables using braiding. It uses twisting ;-) - you know, twisted pair.... Braiding is cute - thats about it.
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Truth be told, I expected a lot more negative feedback along the lines of "imaging will be ruined," "channels will reverse," "earth's magnetic field will be depolarized," yada yada. And then I figured I'd ignore it and splice anyway, being a cable agnostic. Especially after pricing out new cables. Nice to see that sometimes sanity reigns, something I rarely expect in the world of high end audio. Cheers,