Wow that is a whole big pile of work to make a very stiff cable that will give no noticeable improvement over a piece of unshielded wire...
Increasing cable performance??
I figured that the whole point of DIY cables was building the best performing/looking cable possible.
What I meant by increasing performance was reducing potential signal interference and improving the effectiveness of the shield. Some methods I've heard about before explain to use a twisted pair of signal/ground wires and surround with disconnected metal shield. In practice, this design results in a higher chance of EMI from the ground wire and the metal shield is less effective.
My design, in theory, ensures that from bottom to top, the signal will be introduced to the least possible interference, resulting in the greatest possible integrity of signal through the conductor. In practice, I doubt it will be a night and day difference, since we're talking about cables here, but I think there may be a psychological impact from just knowing that the best possible cables are used. Additionally, I feel like there may be some additional clarity or overall lack of congestion, but these are just guesses that will not be resolved until I actually build this cable.
Finally, this design should, in theory, reduce the cost of cable built using high price conductors, such as Litz wires, as only 1/2 of the previously required wire will be needed, and IIRC, the supplies that make up the shielding will cost less than the ground wire.
I hope this makes sense. I'm not George Cardas, and I'm not asserting that music will sound totally different using this cabling method. It's really more a peace of mind improvement than anything else.
Well if it's a long enough cable running by some noisy electronics... it may not be that crazy. But I agree, for 98% of users, it's probably overkill and stiff. I'm sure that'd be a great build.
I don't doubt that it's overkill, especially for an unbalanced kilobuck setup. But hey, go big or go home, I guess. I'd rather go to the extreme now than later.
I've decided to remove one layer of the cotton dielectric and heatshrink from the design plan, as I believe that it would needlessly add cost and thickness.
At this point, there are only 6 layers on top of the initial signal wire: Dielectric>Shrinktube>Foil Shield>Shrinktube>Mesh shield>Outer Shrinktube> (Optional) Fiber Mesh
Since the cotton dielectric will be pulled fairly thinly, and the layer of shrinktube above the foil shield will be as thin as feasible, I believe that this cable will still be manipulable and will not be overly heavy.
Additionally, I doubt I'll hear a totally dynamic difference, but I think that I may hear a slight difference just from knowing that the signal going from amp to headphone will not be interfered with in any way.