[arpinnurmela]

I love the Verum One headphone. It is ridiculously good for the money. I didn't like the stock headphone cable for several reasons. Principally because I wanted a dedicated 6.3mm cable instead of the 3.5mm cable that it comes with, especially since the Verum One don't seem like a portable headphone to me. So I went on a long DIY journey to build a replacement cable. I unfortunately ran across an idea that advocates solid core wire air-gapped inside of Teflon. This eventually landed me working on a cable made of pure silver that runs between the AECO silver plated 6.3mm and 3.5mm plugs. It's a lovely cable. And I've had more than a few people ask me if I could make such a cable for them. After I explained that the parts cost alone ranged from $250-300, people quickly realized that they weren't interested in spending more on the cable than their headphones. But... for my personal money, the Verum One are easily worth the investment. And I can promise you that the Verum One scales so hard and so easily that improvements to cables are well resolved on the headphone.

After trying out many different types of plugs and learning the difference in sound between them I finally landed on some basic guiding principles that allowed me to build something totally awesome at a fairly reasonable price! Hopefully this post will serve to help anyone on their own headphone cable journey. So let's get into it.

A solid copper (99.9%) core air-gapped in Teflon, housed in Paracord, 6.3mm to 2x 3.5mm.​

Parts:

1. Paracord 550.
2. 20gauge thin walled teflon PTFE tubing. (length of cable x4)
3. Thick gold-plated 6.3mm barrel connector (no tabs).
4. Thick gold-plated 3.5mm barrel connector (no tabs).
5. 26gauge 99.9% bare solid copper wire. (length of cable x4)
6. Non-Eutectic Cardas solder.
7. Cable splitter housing.

Tools:

• soldering iron
• wire cutter
• tweezers
• lots of patience

Step-by-step instructions:

1. Cut Paracord 550 to 1ft less than desired length. Remove all inner nylon filaments.
2. Cut 2x 1ft Paracord 550. Remove all inner nylon filaments.
3. Cut 4x teflon tubing at the desired length of headphone cable.
4. Insert all 4 teflon tubes together into the longer Paracord from step 1, and tediously inch that bunch of 4 cables down the Paracord until they come out the other side.
5. Slide the 1ft length of Paracord onto only two of the teflon tubes, and repeat for the other teflon tubes.
6. Use a flat tip soldering iron to melt the Paracord junction together.
7. Slide on the cable splitter and secure over the fused junction so that it doesn't show.
8. Mark one of the two teflon tubes after the junction as ground. Do this for each branch. (You'll need to know this later to prevent a wiring error.)
9. Slide the 26ga copper wire into each teflon tube such that you have 5mm exposed on each side. Cut the copper only after you have run the length of the teflon tube. Work slowly and carefully so that you don't crimp the copper wire as you are inserting it. (Each crimp causes additional friction. Multiple crimps will make you sad. When you inevitably crimp the wire, gently pull it out and smooth it before reinserting.)
   1. Once you pass a copper wire through a ground tube after the junction, mark it as ground on the side with 4 tubes.
   2. Once you pass a copper wire through your first non-ground tube, mark it as left channel both after the junction and on the side with 4 tubes.
   3. No need to mark the last non-ground tube.
10. Slide the 6.3mm housing thread side out onto the 4 wire assembly. (Otherwise you won't be able to get it on after soldering. Yeah... I make this mistake all the time.)
11. Solder the left channel to the "tip" barrel, as it is the first and closest to the wiring assembly. (It will also be the smallest most inner barrel.)
12. Solder the right channel to the "ring" barrel, as it is the second closest to the wiring assembly. (It will be the medium barrel next larger than the inner barrel.)
13. Solder the grounds to the housing barrel below the screw threads. (This is ideal as it avoids soldering to the low metal quality tab.)
14. Make sure that the Paracord is able to stretch to cover the entire tubing run. If not, then cut tubing for proper fit. (Paracord can both stretch and compress, so you have flexibility with it.)
15. Slide the right angle housing parts in reverse assembly order over the 2 wire junction. (x2)
16. Carefully adjust the length of the tubes and wires such that they match the sizing required for final soldering and that they will lay flat next to each other. (x2)
17. Verum One is wired for the tip and ground of the 3.5mm plug. Solder the positive lead to the tip barrel of your 3.5mm plug. Solder the ground to the ground barrel of your 3.5mm plug.
18. Assemble all of the housings on the 6.3mm and 3.5mm plugs.
19. Plug in and have your mind blown!

 

[arpinnurmela]

Comparing the Copper/Gold cable to the Silver/Silver cable.​

I started my DIY solid core journey with just silver. And then when I wanted to build my own solid core speaker wire I realized that I wasn't going to be able to afford a couple of thousand dollars for solid core silver wire with the appropriate gauge. So... I got desperate and tried 99.9% copper wire in teflon tubing. Mind blown. To further this exercise I replaced the internal wiring of my bedroom hifi system with solid core copper, both inside the speaker cabinets and inside my amplifier. Mind blown. Then I built several copper only interconnects and learned a lot more about the importance of connectors. Which led me to making this cable for my Verum One.

Frankly, had I built this cable first over my Silver/Silver cable that cost me $250 in parts, I'd have been supremely happy and never built a silver/silver cable. It's that good. It delivers the solid core clarity that I can't live without. It delivers stronger bass, more impactful mids, and clear as day highs. And best of all it has around 60-70% of the soundstage that the silver/silver has for a fraction of the parts price.

Is the silver/silver cable better? Yes. Yes it is. Is it worth way more money? Well... I think that depends on you. Would I have been happy to land on this copper/gold cable and never bother with silver? Heck yeah. But I figured out the proper assembly for a pure silver cable first, which means I have that to compare. And despite being 10x the parts cost, for me, for the Verum One, and my gear, wow, the silver/silver is the way to go. Maximum soundstage and clarity across the spectrum for days and days.

Both cables are simply mesmerizing. Because they both transform the Verum One and truly show what that headphone is capable of on whatever gear you have. And mostly because they deliver soundstage on a headphone. It's slightly hypnotic... With the silver/silver being a real mind trip.

 

[arpinnurmela]

Pro-Tip: Interconnects First​

It took me a long time to figure out how to best make a headphone cable. It's complicated and the parts are often very hard to source. But good news! RCA interconnects are super easy to make with solid core wiring. Not only that but the further upstream you go solid core, the more important it is. I did a comparison where I only replaced my solid core headphone cable but kept my bad interconnects and compared that to where I only replaced my interconnects but kept the stock headphone cable. To my ear, the interconnects mattered more than the headphone cable. So feel free to start there! If you want advice on interconnects just message me.

 

[arpinnurmela]

ABC​

I've been having fun sampling my three different Verum cables. I was in a bare bones acoustic mood and put on Michael Hedges Oracle, a Windham Hill release. I started with the stock cable. And everything sounded beautiful running the CD straight into my Naim clone. The Verum One were sounding beautiful and had plenty of merit about them and I was really enjoying the overall playback. The guitar had a vibrant and palpable feel to it, so much so that I was wondering what gains if any I was going to hear with such a simple album. Until I put on the copper/gold cable. There was suddenly air around the guitar that jumped out. Layering in the sound appeared in the playback. Little details that I didn't even catch the first play through were suddenly making themselves known to me. Fingering and string extension were available without any attention effort. I've been playing through multiple tracks with the copper/gold cable and I'm simply enjoying the entire chain and the music. And it gets me thinking, what is there with my silver/silver cable? And then I switch over, and there is yet another surprise waiting for me. More depth, more extension across the entire playback spectrum, more nuance, more subtlety, and frankly just more ease of sound.

Better is Easier​

These DIY cables of mine have been real teachers for me in hifi. I've had some wonderful hifi experiences over the past two decades plus. I sold hifi part-time for 8 years because I just love talking shop with people. Been to a lot of demos, but I've learned more about hifi from my recent DIY activities than I have out of all of those experiences. One of the surprising truths to me about really excellent detail and accurate tonal reproduction (re: low to no time domain issues), is that really accurate reproduction of music always sounds easier, or at least it should. And I've learned that if it isn't sounding "easier" then there's a problem. My first Verum cable was made with rhodium plated plugs. And yes, it sounded better than the stock cable. But in some ways it wasn't "easier". It had some rough spots that I actually attributed to the Verum One headphone. And I've many many times listened to hifi gear and had this sense about it. And at least for me, if gear doesn't have that "ease of sound" where I feel I can listen for hours without fatigue, then it just isn't something I want to own.

Cables Matter? What​

And I also learned that cables matter. I literally told my customers not to spend money on the more expensive hifi cables we sold over and over again. One time I even had a customer get frustrated with me for suggesting this and almost lost the larger sale until I backpedaled and got out our most expensive cables. My manager was very excited. I couldn't see (hear) the point though with these cables. I've been to two company headquarters and heard well controlled and demo'd cable setups designed to get sales people like myself to sell these to customers. I've had private listening sessions to even more ridiculous cables than were demo'd to me. And never once did I walk away thinking, "WOW, some day maybe I can own that for myself!!" No. That never happened. After every demo, I simply walked away feeling like I wasted some time listening to an imperceptible difference instead of listening to music and loving music. Which is why I usually down sold my customers on cables. So for me to have a full 180 on this is kind of ironic to me.

Louder is Easier​

One of my favorite things about air-gapped solid core wires is that louder music is far less grating on the ear and annoying. Dynamic compression is typically reduced and those typical weaknesses that would generally derail a system near the limit, are significantly reduced or evaporated, leaving behind a truer presentation for the music. Granted, I do enjoy loud music, but I also hate annoying system weaknesses that tend to get exaggerated at volume or near limit. Like I've mentioned in my multi-post review of the Verum One, I actually don't know the limits of the Verum One, especially so since I've switched over to my design of audio cable. With my DIY wiring and modding, the Verum One will hurt my ears before I can find any weakness in the headphone itself. That's how good the Verum One are.

BC​

I'm still jamming to Hedges, just at a louder volume. Switching back to the copper/gold. This copper/gold cable has all of the benefits of air-gapped solid core. Pristine sound and proper tone. And it is so good that on its own I feel that it could even offer a reasonable preference for someone over the silver/silver cable. It maintains enough soundstage to be surprising and beautiful, and the slight hardness it picks up relative to the silver/silver cable actually gives it a flavor rather than a weakness, because the hardness is very slight, unlike the hardness of rhodium which has a flat hardness to it that does create fatigue one certain types of playback. Whereas the copper/gold cable avoids being flat in any way, and the slight hardness it picks up has its own allure and comes across as boldness. It's only by switching back to the silver/silver cable that my mind realizes any value, as when I'm listening to the copper/gold cable, the soundstaging and air just give the impression that the copper/gold is bolder than the silver/silver. Hence my statement that the copper/gold ends up more having its own signature, and I could easily see someone actually preferring this sound to the silver/silver cable. Even in back to back listening. Or put another way, I struggle to find a significant fault with this copper/gold cable.

 

[arpinnurmela]

Soundstage and Air from a cable upgrade? On a headphone? Yeah...​

It's true... It is possible to use better connectors, plugs and jacks, to unveil the soundstage and air trapped in the recording. Biggest factors I find on delivering soundstage and air are connector quality. Specifically preferencing barrel connectors on plugs, which means that the solder point of the wire has a continuous path without junctions to the plug. Meaning that the signal has a single path from the wire to the contact of the headphone jack. I first noticed this when I spent too much money on an AECO connector. Wow that was a clean demonstration of the seeming benefit of having a continuous metal path between the wire and the jack contact. To specifically test this out I have a modded KPH30i that screw around with. I had 3micron gold plated 3.5mm on them, and simply replaced it with a barrel connector 3.5mm with 3micron gold plating. Mind blown. The difference was far more than I expected and resulted in a very rich sounding modded KPH30i. Lovely stuff.

The other element of connectors that seem to matter is the thickness of the plating. Thicker platings sound deeper and present even more soundstage, air, and information. And at volume this translates to more headroom. It has a sound sort of like dynamic compression but slightly different. Whereas dynamic compression tends to also exhibit small amounts of breakup and less variation between the quietest and loudest parts of the music, the effect of plating thickness tends to reveal itself as flatness in the music, and this flatness of sound can come across as a lack of dynamics, but distinguishes itself actually in low volume listening. Let me explain this a bit more. You know how you might turn up the music at times to get more information?? Yeah, this is the flatness I'm talking about. You turn it up so that you can hear more of the low level detail in the music but then that top end starts sounding like a flat blunt object almost banging away? Yep. I think you may have experienced this once or twice, or even assumed that this is endemic to all audio playback. Well it isn't. It seems to be richly connected to this connector quality issue, specifically the plating thickness. Thick platings will work to reduce or eliminate these two effects, allowing for more rich detail to be observed at lower listening levels, and removing that annoying flatness at higher listening levels.

Barrels and platings matter.​