Originally Posted by samsquanch /img/forum/go_quote.gif
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.
(my first language is French, you see).
