4 wire RCA interconnects

I might catch some crap for this, but....

if you're cable is under 10 feet, you're probably not going to notice any benefit to a braid.  Twist your pair together and put them inside something to hold them together (heat shrink, expandable sleeving, rubber hose, tape......), twisted pair does a pretty decent job of noise rejection by itself.

Also under 10 feet, shielding is not necessary, unless you're in a RFI/EMI noisy enviroment, if not, then don't sweat it.

A drain wire is a wire that is some how making contact with the shield, whether it is a separate wire that is touching the shield (foil or braided), or is the braided shield twisted together into a wire.  For balanced or microphone cables, there will be a twisted pair of wires inside of a shield, and there will either be a separate drain wire, or you will need to twist the braided wires of the shield together to solder to the appropriate pin.

For an RCA interconnect, you will do just fine with 2 wires per cable, which will attach the same on both sides, pin to pin, sleeve to sleeve.  24 and 22 gauge wires work well, I've seen studies done that say 24 is the best gauge, but I prefer to work with 22, and find that it will withstand more abuse.

Using multiple wires for a single point of connection can cause signal smearing, as the signal will travel down multiple paths of different lengths, which can cause phase cancellation or attenuation at higher frequencies.  Just stick with 1 wire per point of connection.

Hopefully this helps.

Whats the point in using wire whose only point is looking pretty if you cover it? So no shield with jenna wire. Or techflex.

The advantage to CERTAIN 4-wire cables is that they have really scary good noise rejection properties (see MFR's propaganda for various starquad type cables - if its half true your getting a lot for your money! Add to that the fact that people who measure stuff like to pounce on other people who measure stuff for posting bad/misleading measurements and your probably getting the majority of what they claim!) The downside is that the parallel capacitance of the wire is on the high to very-high side per unit length. If the cable geometry is not correct you just have lots of capacitance. 

On the note of shields & drain wires - 

Shields block EMF and RFI from entering the cable, where it can cause all sorts of interesting problems. They do cause ADDITIONAL parallel capacitance, and not everyone appreciates that. Considering that for most home systems noise pickup in line level interconnects is not a real problem most people skip the shields. Im on the fence myself, but it only hurts if your gear cant drive the cable capacitance properly which is a terribly sad situation for so many reasons.

The drain wire is a bare wire that touches the shield all along the length of the cable. The problem with a wire mesh shield is that the impedance from the middle of the cable to the end (where the shield is grounded) may be high enough at RF to be significant compared to a path to ground through the signal path which lets noise in. The impedance of a straight piece of wire is pretty much nothing at RF so you get better noise rejection at very high frequencies which keeps more noise out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Benjamin6264 

Thank you very much for your reply. However, I have discussed of the matter with someone from Jena, and here's what he told me :

 

"The larger gauge is better for your home stereo.  18 gauge.

And three wires per interconnect is the minimum we recommend.... two signal and one ground... per cable/interconnect."

 

What do you think?

As I'm not familiar with Jena, but I have sat through plenty of cable manufacturers lectures/sales pitches, there is always the chance they just want you to buy more cable....  Did he/she sight any actual reasons as to why you would need two signal wires and one ground?  this makes perfect sense for a balanced connection, three conductors, positive signal, negative signal, and shield/drain/ground, but for an RCA it is excessive.

I've never done business with them, nor have I talked to them about their cable theory, so they might have a reason for what they've said.

With that said... I've made a lot of cables in my life, I've jammed two 16 gauge wires in an RCA before, made some funky braids out of 4 pieces of 18 gauge, used 26 gauge wire from an ethernet cable, made a cable with a piece of copper pipe, and I keep going back to using a twisted pair cable.

My best advice is make a bunch of different cables, if you don't notice a difference in using a cable with two conductors on the center pin, than a cable with only one, then save yourself the cash and buy less wire.

also, if you do some searching, there are some great website reads about how using a larger gauge cable can cause signal smearing.

After the R10 debacle and seeing Jenna cables that look like they were made to do nothing but weave 8*3ft pieces of $5/ft wire into an RCA cable, yea no. Im not really a fan of most cable makers though.

I normally use silver plated copper. When I get fancy with my cable making, nobody follows :( 

My favorite was an anti-cable modification. 

22ga cheap copper magnet wire ground, 40ga cheap copper magnet wire signal, shoelace to provide some strain relief for the 40ga wire, and Radio-Shack RCA connectors. The coolest thing is seeing peoples reaction when you tell them thats the first cable in a chain of 4 amps in parallel... 

Im not sure that i agree that its simply 2 conductors in parallel (a 4-wire cable: 2 signal, 2 ground or 2+, 2- in a balanced cable) causes a smear. Id suspect that most of it is from a source that cant drive the cable. People wax poetic about litz-wires which are effectively a bundle of separate stands that never touch...

I would say go with 22 gauge, trying to get 18 gauge in a LOD would be a nightmare.

If you're going to make a bunch of different cables, I would suggest switchcraft RCA's, you can get them with a black shell and gold plated on the connector portion for about $5 a piece through mouser.  If you want fancy, go with WBT, but plan on spending $30 each minimum.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod 

Im not sure that i agree that its simply 2 conductors in parallel (a 4-wire cable: 2 signal, 2 ground or 2+, 2- in a balanced cable) causes a smear. Id suspect that most of it is from a source that cant drive the cable. People wax poetic about litz-wires which are effectively a bundle of separate stands that never touch...

I'm not sure exactly where I read about this, I'll try and dig it up.

The science of audio signal cables is so convoluted and complex that it's often very easy for a cable manufacturer to make wild claims, knowing full well that most people will never read up on the subject, and even fewer will understand it.  The best approach is to just make a bunch of cables and figure out what sounds best to you.

Valab's NOS DAC has its fans, not sure about their DIY stuffs.