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How critical are the connectors on an interconnect? - Page 3

post #31 of 50
6/6/07 at 2:37am
Hey,

I mimicked Kimber Kable. And all wires have insulation. To be honest I think there is no point in peeling off insulation unless you got horrible insulator. My insulations are all Teflon, so I didn't care.

Note for Kimber Kable, there is one + and one - and one floating. The last one is floating in the sense that only one end is soldered. ... Some one posted schematics while back. You ought to check. ... me? After I finished my cable didn't make sense to go back and rebuild again. ...

T
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post #32 of 50
6/6/07 at 4:37am
Thread Starter 
Tomo, is the floating wire oneside soldered to the signal or the ground?

thanks
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post #33 of 50
6/6/07 at 10:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by AudioCats View Post
Tomo, is the floating wire oneside soldered to the signal or the ground?

thanks
Essentially, this "floating" (per se) wire is soldered to the ground in one end only.

I wanted to research some more on it, but I never had time to verify. But there are many people with exactly the same problem. Rest assured, give some time on the net you will find it. ... me? I am happy with no "floater". (I have two wires for ground and one signal.)

I would assume you connect the "floater" connected end to the signal source and the side "floating" to the amplifier. But I am not certain of theoretical benefit of such technique. (Originally, I thought Kimber uses braiding because it looks awesome when the braiding is are done carefully. Hehe. I am no smarter than you.)

Heres my IC (mini-RCA)



T
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post #34 of 50
6/6/07 at 10:43am
I believe the floater is an attempt at EMI/RFI shielding. The intention is that this radiation is 'caught' by the floating wire and only has one way to go. The floating bit is to direct the stray radiation towards a device which can ground it effectively.

Works far more efficiently with braided shielding...can't see it being very good on a thin cable unless wound very tightly around the cable and even then it would likely introduce extra inductance/capacitance to the cable.


With regards to the unbalanced signal and ground schemes I just can't understand why.

From what I can see we have a circuit from source -> amp (just as an example). Since the signal has to pass through both wires you'd want it to be balance I would have thought.

Having a thicker wire by physically using a thicker wire or using multiple wires together would lower the resistance over the path of the cable and theoretically the signal would get there quicker. Having a thinner wire on the other half just seems non-sensical to me. Not that I'm disputing any claims that this geometry is beneficial I just can't understand why it would be beneficial.

It would seem that the thin cable introduces resistance to the chain and any sonic benefits of the thicker cable is negated/reduced by the weakest link in the signal path.
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post #35 of 50
6/8/07 at 6:21am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by jtizzle View Post
Yeah I just went and looked this up and one guy who has apparently torn them all down states that Kimber PBJ, Silver Streak, KCAG, and KCTG are all the same config, two grounds, one hot. You don't want to mess with Kimber because he has forgotten more about cables than we all collectively will ever know, but it just never made sense to me why you wouldn't run as many positive conductors as you would grounds.
the ratio of hot/cold wires changes the sound, mostly the bass quantity/quality. I just done some test with 0.18mm (about 33 gauge) magnetic wires and the difference among 1:1, 2:2, 3:1 and 1:3 hot/cold is actually quite noticable. My initial ball-park conclusion is the metal determinds the detail/resolution; wire diameter determinds the crispyness; geometry & hot/cold ratio determinds the bass type/amount (which then changes the airyness and 3-D feel); Di-electric purity determinds the cleaness (which may have something to do with softness, don't know at this point).

Very hard to balance all these elements. Got some 26 gauge silver coming (the on sale stuff), I hope the 8mil coating is not too thin to use, makes me wonder why they are using 12 mil for their own cables and having the 8 mil for sale.

Have fun ( I hope I will )
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post #36 of 50
6/8/07 at 11:49am
Hey,

Just curious. Why do you people use so thin wires? Mine's braided with 22 ga. This thing got really fat core too. You might be encountering the phenomenon (that sound changes with number of "hot" (which is technically wrong term to use ... ) wires just because your wires are simply too thin and have high resistance. Ordinarilly it ain't matter much, but I mean 33 ga. man! That's practically a resistor.

Using fatter wire would prohibits you to wind tightly. So you might have low inductance and all. (And thus less hysterisis-like effect.)

Also, you may end up with higher effective capacitance producing surface with small wires. You know this is bad.
Tomo

P.S. Some people go as far as BARE RAW copper thin slabs for speaker cables. ...
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post #37 of 50
6/8/07 at 3:08pm
Thread Starter 
I thought for interconnects the resistance and inductance are not criticle, right? at least my op-amp input has a 300 ohm resistor to prevent self oscilation, IC resistance is nothing comparing to that.

two 33 gauge twisted together do give very crispy highs though, at least in that department thin is good. Yes, thin wires twisted together might have more inter-capacitance, that is why I worry about the 8mil coating on the wires I just ordered....

I have read the speaker wires carry current, therefore resistance and inductance matter more, while IC's pretty much only carry voltage so capacitance has the most effect, right?
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post #38 of 50
6/8/07 at 11:45pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by AudioCats View Post
Very hard to balance all these elements. Got some 26 gauge silver coming (the on sale stuff), I hope the 8mil coating is not too thin to use, makes me wonder why they are using 12 mil for their own cables and having the 8 mil for sale.

Have fun ( I hope I will )
I can't imagine this difference in thickness of the teflon coating will have a material impact on the way the wire sounds. I just can't. I suppose if it's a big issue for you, you could always get some more teflon tubing to run the conductors through. I am not going to waste my time.

I've had a roll of this wire and a set of Eichmann Silver Bullets on my desk for over a month, and I just haven't had the peace and quiet I feel like I need around here to sit down to put it together and make it go.
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post #39 of 50
6/9/07 at 4:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by AudioCats View Post
I thought for interconnects the resistance and inductance are not criticle, right? at least my op-amp input has a 300 ohm resistor to prevent self oscilation, IC resistance is nothing comparing to that.

two 33 gauge twisted together do give very crispy highs though, at least in that department thin is good. Yes, thin wires twisted together might have more inter-capacitance, that is why I worry about the 8mil coating on the wires I just ordered....

I have read the speaker wires carry current, therefore resistance and inductance matter more, while IC's pretty much only carry voltage so capacitance has the most effect, right?
You are absolutely right about IC not conducting much current though I am not very convinced about your reasoning. Nonetheless, it would be interesting to try out.

Your concern of insulation thickness is well founded. It will essentially define the cable capacitance. But there is a way around the problem. You can FORCE some distance between the wires. Look at this.

http://www.venhaus1.com/diysilverinterconnects.html

This way, you can make sure that strong electric field does not develop. (Field change direction as you go) Also, the teflon tubing will make sure the wires stay away from each other. (Make sure you heatshrink to fix the wire on the teflon tube.)

T

P.S. I see where you found this idea. Here right?

http://www.soundscapeav.com/cable_ar.html

Electrical Flux increasing with diameter. Very very fascinating.
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post #40 of 50
6/9/07 at 8:44am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the link.
I have done some experiments with the telephone cord wires and the 33 gauge transformer wire (yes, taken off a little transformer from a bad switching power supply). Tried about 10~12 configuration total. The conclusions I draw were from my own listening test results, so they might be off a little I guess. Other people's perception might not be the same as mine, so I'd rather trust my own results. Haven't study too much theory about it and don't expect to. I am not gonna become a cable R&D guy.....I will try to learn enough to make six good cables, then I will quit(I hope):
a) One mini->RCA, needs to have good highs and good bass, for rock; I guess I will try the three braid kimber geometry.
b) One mini->RCA, needs to have good highs but a lot less bass, for classical (my 990/600 is kind of the bass king, pumps out too mcuh bass for that kind of music). plan to use // PVC hose, just lay wires inside. Already tested this with magnet wires, result was good, actually very good but seems to have just too little bass (and that was with the Beyer !). Have to check it again once the silver arrives. If the silver version has the same or less bass then I will have to try something else.
c) RCA->RCA version of a)
d) RCA-> RCA version of b)
e) mini -> mini version of a)
f) mini -> mini version of b)

I hope 50' of silver will be enough to finish all 6. the tri-braid design is a major silver killer, just one 3' cable will use 18' of silver, ouch!

I have 12 RCA plugs to play with, but only have 2 mini plugs. Anybody know where to get mid/high quality right-angle minis?

Also, can anyone suggest a configuration that has good everything-else but not much bass? Thanks
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post #41 of 50
6/9/07 at 11:04am
I've used the principal of the "DIY Silver Interconnects" as the basis of my mini-RCA cable connecting my PC to amp.

Using 24AWG silver wire (with a blue enamel...not really needed) I found this to produce an absolutely gem of a cable...great solid punchy bass and nice clear mid/highs.

I had chosen 24AWG from quite some reading around on diyaudio/tnt-audio and decided it would be a good basis to start on with regards to balancing bass/high's, soundstage, and resolution whilst making consideration for physical electrical characteristics (i.e. capacitance/inductance/resistance, eddy currents, etc)

It'd be nice to experiment with slightly smaller gauge wire but the construction process of my particular cable design is very time consuming and as mentioned is a nice silver killer (mine is 2metre's long...so 8metres of silver used) which is better used on other projects right now.
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post #42 of 50
6/9/07 at 11:27am
Any gold plated Neutrik connectors are OK. I can clearly hear the difference between gold plated and "silver" Neutrik connectors. No-name connectors even gold plated are far behind any Neutrik. Regarding cable RCA-RCA will work very good on any digital TV coaxial cable having silver coated OFC copper wires. Cheapest audio cables are made of pure copper with no coating which is not a disadvantage but copmletely doesn't fit its much higher price per meter. My DIY "digital TV" interconnect sounds better than $50 brand-name interconnect which I bought years ago.
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post #43 of 50
6/9/07 at 11:59pm
Hi,

I recall Neutrik has an L-type mini. But becareful because they are going to be heavy and impose stress on your wires. ... I suppose thinner wires could be a problem here.

You might get away with a plastic type if the mini is jacking into the CDP. You want to make sure the location at the amplifier input side is shielded, but you might be able to get away with no shielding on CDP side. You saw me do it. I don't have much problem with mine.

I wasn't looking for an L-type, but the straight type is nearly a size of small lolipop, solid metal and heavy. I was afraid it might destroy my CDP. Anyone can confirm my fears?

T
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post #44 of 50
6/10/07 at 12:42am
Quote:
Originally Posted by AudioCats View Post
Thanks

So I suppose the wire material is much more critical then..... I was wondering why most DVD players have those cheap looking RCA jacks, now I guess it doesn't really matter much, the performence is mostly in the wires.....

Now where can I find solid silver wires?
Connectors do make a difference- what I hear with RCA upgrades is less grain and better dynamics.
There are some cheap RCAs that are pretty good- Neutrik makes many cheap but good RCAs (+ headphone jacks).

www.diyaudiostore.com (for silver wire)
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post #45 of 50
6/10/07 at 4:41am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomo View Post
Hi,

I recall Neutrik has an L-type mini.
They have both L-type and straight. Each kind can be shiny or black metal housing, gold plated plug or nickel plug.
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