[fefrie]

I've tried luna shops, I've tried taking cables from other earbuds, to rebuild my IEM all in the efforts to find cables with low microphonics or stethescope effects.
 
At this point it's proven to be unsuccessful.
 
So I found this:
 
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/10M-OCC-copper-Silver-Plated-Stranded-Wire-0-12mm-Teflon-cable-for-earphone-/121720048159?hash=item1c57148a1f:g:8mUAAOSwT6pVvZI2
 
Could someone explain to me what 'teflon' cable is?  I'm looking for something soft that doesn't have any stiffness to it.
 
Basically I'm looking for the floppiest cable possible.....

 

[MJLavelle]

It is just regular wire inside a Teflon coating. The conductor is still copper wire, the Teflon is just the outer coating.

 

[tangent]

Teflon-insulated wire is pretty stiff, in my experience. The primary tradeoff is that it's much tougher than PVC.
 
Teflon is also "marine grade" in terms of waterproofing, though that's only likely to matter if you live near the ocean and find that salt in the air keeps corroding the copper in the wiring.
 
Two Teflon-coated wires right next to each other (i.e. a stereo pair in a cable) also make a much lower value capacitor than having two PVC-coated wires with the same coating thickness because the dielectric constant of Teflon is much lower than for PVC. (2.1 vs 4.5) I couldn't find the dielectric constant of the polyurethane lacquer most commonly used in earbud cables, but since the lacquer coating is always much thinner than for PVC or Teflon, I think we can ignore the dielectric constant and reasonably guess that the capacitance is going to be even higher, all else being equal. (Conductor size, space between insulating surfaces, etc.)
 
I point all of this out because the higher the capacitance, the more work your audio source has to do to drive those headphones. It is possible that your headphones could sound better with the Teflon-coated wire.
 
But again, you'd have to be willing to pay the stiffness cost.
 
That's why they use lacquer-coated wire in earbuds so often: it's tough enough that it can be very thin, contributing little to cable bulk, so there's less to bend. It's about as good as you can get short of naked copper, from a flexibility standpoint.
 
Everything has tradeoffs.

 

[Speedskater]

Teflon coated wire is designed for extreme environmental conditions and fire.  Copper wire needs to be silver plated when Teflon coated.  Teflon wires are very difficult to strip, so small diameter wires can be damaged by DIY cable builders. 

 

[HiGHFLYiN9]

As mentioned above, Teflon has a low dielectric constant so it's great for audio purposes, however you'll want one with thinner dielectric, otherwise it can get stiff. A braid of four 24 gauge Teflon wires in relatively thin dielectric, sleeved in nylon makes a perfectly good headphone cable that's flexible and exhibits low microphonics. Polyethylene (PE for short) is a great compromise as well, the dielectric constant is a tiny bit higher than Teflon, but much lower than PVC, and it's notably more flexible than Teflon, at least all the implementations I've used). Polypropylene is also perfectly acceptable with similar qualities.
 
I've made plenty of headphone cables with UP-OCC (ultra pure ohno cast copper) in PE, it really has all the qualities you'd want for your purposes. OFC in PE is fine as well if you're looking to save a few bucks.