What do you recommend using for sleeving cables? I have multiple kinds of Pure Silver, OFC and OCC wire from Aliexpress. Some of them are really microphonic,almost not suitable for IEM Cables or even Headphone cables used on the go (I guess at home sitting at my desk it would be fine). The outer diameters range from slightly below 1mm to about 2mm, most of them are around 1-1.2mm. I have quite some experience in cable sleeving since I built some high-end PC systems with fully custom cables and all that kind of stuff.
I have MDPC-X Sleeving and some other PET sleeve in big amounts lying around my workshop, about 100m in all kinds of colours and diameters, but that stuff is not really soft or anything (I would not want to sleeve the upper part of an IEM cable with that), so it will scratch on your skin and be extremely uncomfortable I guess. Then I thought that I get some sleeving for Hifi-cables, in this case the "Viablue Geflechtsschlauch" in small and medium size. So I did that. Great sleeving for thicker cables, for cables around 3-4mm OD the small sleeve is really nice, but it is way too big for sleeving cables with 1-2mm OD and then braid them afterwards, which is mainly what I want to do. So my next idea was the Atwood Rope Paracord Micro and Nano as well as some standard 550 for larger cables. It should be softer than the other 2 kinds of sleeving and should also be good for braiding the cables afterwards, but how about the influence on microphonics? This is really my main problem with cable building so far, some of the wires are just terrible - especially the silver plated one, which is really stiff compared to the other ones. It's also stranded but much less flexible, sounds amazing though. I will maybe post a picture.
Also my little review of MMCX Connectors:
Eidolic:
- very high quality, very expensive
- look very nice but are kind of large
- the locking system locks once and forever - if something went wrong, there is no real chance to correct anything
- good connection, harder to remove than other mmcx connectors, but they lock in perfectly
- not easy to get the cable hole sealed, heatshrink won't stick on the shell of the connector, and the bore is pretty large for IEM cables
- L/R marked by coloured rings
Plus Sound:
- well-built, well-designed connectors, pretty much on par with the Eidolics
- the locking system can be used more than once but still is secure and simple, the way it should be done
- the screw for the locking system provides something for heatshrink to grip on, which helps me a lot
- they look just very nice and understated, I know looks are subjective but I like this minimalistic approach
- also fit very well in the IEM sockets I tried
Acrolink / Papri-Audio? (->
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1pa...32831019328.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.3HXdi5)
- very compact, well-built connectors - if you are looking for a really small MMCX connector, THIS is the one you might want
- affordable, comes with cable splitter (I glued that one together and it looks really clean - if you don't mess it up like I did)
- locking system not as secure, but if you screw them on really tight and have heatshrink all the way up into the connector housing, it will hold just fine from my experience
- L/R is marked
