DIY Cable Questions and Comments Thread

[Paladin79]

Thanks @Paladin79 . The reason I ask is that @PLUSSOUND says they use Type 6 lizt, which must be custom made for them, as I cannot find it anywhere is headphone size. Cooner Wire has it, but smallest is 9AWG. Cooner has a 22 AWG type 5, but when I sent them an email enquiring about samples and pricing, I got no response. I should probably call them.

I seriously doubt what they are calling type six equates to what New England Wire calls type six but I have no way of knowing. The fiber core is used on some cables to insure the round shape but it also keeps all bundles on the outside of the cable. If you read the uses for what New England Wire is producing, you will not see any audio applications so it gets tricky when you are not comparing apples to apples. I have seen closeups of some chinese Litz were you can see several bundles of wire, if a bundle runs down the center of the cable, it is not likely that all wires reach the outside surface equally nor are they as concerned if they do not. You are trying to limit skin effect when using high frequencies and keep the signal traveling on the inside of the wires as much as possible. You have less worries with audio frequencies so more than likely it is the proximity effect that can help litz wire when used in audio applications. What I have was made in Russia, it is not bundled and each strand may well indeed be exposed to the outside since it was made for specific applications. I like to see country of origin whenever I buy such things, it really should appear on the product.

 

[Paladin79]

Does anyone have a good source for USB type B connectors? Type A are readily available. I hope to build a 12 or 13 foot quality custom cable from computer to DAC using miniature star quad cable. (USB type 2 plugs)

never mind...

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/assmann-wsw-components/A-USBPB-N/AE11180-ND/5017725

I have been pricing some that go from around $50 -$1,000 and some of the $50 items use star quad.

Digikey has all needed parts including hoods for both the A and B plugs. It will be fun to see how well this works.

Another possible cable is Belden 8723. Dual twisted pair, 22 AWG, well shielded and I found a history of folks using it for USB.

 

[bcowen]

Does anyone have a good source for USB type B connectors? Type A are readily available. I hope to build a 12 or 13 foot quality custom cable from computer to DAC using miniature star quad cable. (USB type 2 plugs)

never mind...

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/assmann-wsw-components/A-USBPB-N/AE11180-ND/5017725

I have been pricing some that go from around $50 -$1,000 and some of the $50 items use star quad.

Digikey has all needed parts including hoods for both the A and B plugs. It will be fun to see how well this works.

Another possible cable is Belden 8723. Dual twisted pair, 22 AWG, well shielded and I found a history of folks using it for USB.

I like these:

http://www.partsconnexion.com/product25845.html

A bit pricey, and they only come in A/B pairs, but they're nicely made....and gold plated (if that makes any difference for the application at hand).

 

[Paladin79]

Thanks! I prefer using the gold plated but had not seen many so far. One of my employees mentioned that gold might be nice. Most anything that does not corrode is good but gold has a nice look with black.

I have a bunch of nickel plated on the way, I was considering building a half dozen or so and giving them away to folks on here to test out. I will be adding mesh or some type to pretty them up a bit, paracord or pure cotton.

The Belden wire is individually shielded twisted pair, if it is bonded twisted pair, then it is top notch material. i did not have much time today to research that but these should work very well. I also will experiment with some star quad, most anything with four well shielded wires and a good shield system is certainly a start. The Belden is also 22 awg which should allow the cables to be used at a maximum of 15 feet.

I have plans for a cabinet for all of my amps etc but the distance was a factor so I started shopping around. I will post photos when it is done. Naturally I will use top of the line interconnect cables but I also want storage for all of my headphone cables, headphones, and turntable related products.

 

[buke9]

USB https://doublehelixcables.com/product/dhc-custom-gold-usb-connectors-set-of-a-b/

 

[Paladin79]

Thanks Buke, I had a chance to look around a bit last night and found some for $5.00 a set in 15 micron gold plating if I buy them in bulk. It was a little shocking to see Ebay sellers from China asking as much as some local merchants on the same or lesser parts. A lot of the nickel plated shells still have gold contacts, the shell in nickel or gold will not tarnish but that is still mostly for looks. This is going to be an easy build and something most anyone with a soldering iron can do provided they purchase connectors with solder lugs and not SMD (surface mount) contacts.

Buying 100 sets, (if I get into production on these cables) the price gets even better for gold or rose gold connectors.

I have received drawings from several manufacturers I can find very little difference between the connectors on U.S. made product and those that might be imported. By Friday of this week I will have built a couple A-B cables and will do a bit of testing.

 

[leeperry]

hey guys, gonna go quad-braided OCC with black paracord but I need a nice looking & lightweight Y splitter, any ideas please? I guess I'm stuck to stuff like https://www.ebay.com/itm/KSS-black-Cable-Pants-for-DIY-speaker-cables-boots-4pcs-/252426829590 ?

 

[EthanTM]

If you are braiding your cable, would you just cut off all of the insulation around the wires, sleeve each wire, and then braid them back together? If so, would the lack of insulation affect sound quality, and if not, how is buying canare L-4E6S star quad cable and stripping off all of the insulation to make the cable different from just buying regular copper wire from a hardware store and sleeving that?
In other words, for braiding cable, do you still even need special insulated audio cables like Canare star quad cable or could you just use regular 21 AWG copper wire and get the same results?

 

[Paladin79]

Manufacturers like Canare, Mogami, Belden etc. use a higher grade of copper wire, less impurities and oxygen than hardware store grade. They often use a higher strand count that allows for flexibility yet better conduction and less resistance than lesser strand count wire.

Star quad also has great shielding and a very exact twisted pair system. Some manufacturers even use bonded pairs since twists can change as cable is bent.

To answer the first part of your question, you can remove overall jacket in star quad but I would leave individual wire jacket and form twisted pair with mesh or heat shrink tubing over twists to help maintain uniformity in twists. Tomorrow I will post a link to twisted pair and why maintaining exact twists is important.

 

[EthanTM]

Manufacturers like Canare, Mogami, Belden etc. use a higher grade of copper wire, less impurities and oxygen than hardware store grade. They often use a higher strand count that allows for flexibility yet better conduction and less resistance than lesser strand count wire.

Star quad also has great shielding and a very exact twisted pair system. Some manufacturers even use bonded pairs since twists can change as cable is bent.

To answer the first part of your question, you can remove overall jacket in star quad but I would leave individual wire jacket and form twisted pair with mesh or heat shrink tubing over twists to help maintain uniformity in twists. Tomorrow I will post a link to twisted pair and why maintaining exact twists is important.

Awesome. I don't know why maintaining exact twists is important so that link will help

 

[Allanmarcus]

Awesome. I don't know why maintaining exact twists is important so that link will help

Most of us remove the outer insulation and shield, then use the inner, still insulated, connectors. Often we braid 4, 8,and sometime 16 wires to make the cable. Sometime the cables are paracord sleeved, sometime not. See my DIY site for some of my samples, or look at the DIY Cable gallery thread.

hey guys, gonna go quad-braided OCC with black paracord but I need a nice looking & lightweight Y splitter, any ideas please? I guess I'm stuck to stuff like https://www.ebay.com/itm/KSS-black-Cable-Pants-for-DIY-speaker-cables-boots-4pcs-/252426829590 ?

See this page. https://sites.google.com/marcusfamily.info/diynotes/home/y-splitters
Note, Cable pants suck as y splitters. They just aren’t the right size. Also, if you get a y splitter, make sure the openings are both side will fit. A caliper helps.

 

[Paladin79]

Awesome. I don't know why maintaining exact twists is important so that link will help

https://www.belden.com/blog/broadcast/how-starquad-works

This is one of my favorite articles on twisted pair, oftentimes there are two wires and a shield for TRS usage and that may be more what this gentleman is describing. Regardless, when you start with a quality product like star quad, I break out the four wires and try to get exact twists in each pair, then cover them with heat shrink tubing to lessen the chances that movement will affect the twists.

The first time I heard of people cutting star quad apart and removing the wires, I was a little shocked. Why take a product that is so precisely made for a certain purpose and possibly decrease the overall quality by re-braiding the wires yourself? Basically the answer is, some folks in other countries do not have easy access to quality OFC and the 24 or 26 awg stranded wire used in such cables is quite good. Braided cables also look nice and it is fun to learn to make them and in effect by braiding, that is probably a form of twisted pair. I have gone as far as sending 24 awg ofc wire no charge to DIY builders in the U.S. so they do not have to cut star quad apart to retrieve the wires.

My views probably differ from many because much of my education is in science, electronics and business and I work with cables for a living and we build a lot of custom cables for studio and professional usage. I also have a lot of equipment in close proximity in my home setup so I am pretty cautious about cable shielding. This weekend I will begin mounting some equipment in a cabinet for easier access and I will try to post photos of my DIY interconnect cables and how I lay them out once the process is completed. I am also working on a fairly precise setup to test various types of headphone cables against each other. I need some space to incorporate that but I need easy access for switching in and out occ copper, ofc, litz wire, four wire strands, eight wire strands etc.

 

[leeperry]

See this page. https://sites.google.com/marcusfamily.info/diynotes/home/y-splitters
Note, Cable pants suck as y splitters. They just aren’t the right size. Also, if you get a y splitter, make sure the openings are both side will fit. A caliper helps.

Yeah thanks but I really want it light-weight and I think some cable pants are small enough for the job, will look it up but I guess that's my only option.

 

[Paladin79]

As far as a good fit that is not too heavy, you can use adhesive heat shrink tubing and use long nose pliers or a hemostat to bond the tubing between the two legs of the cable. 2-1 heat shrink ratio is very common but 3-1 allows for shrinkage that fits two different diameters better in some cases. What I fashioned here serves the same function as cable pants but it also has adhesive to keep the two colors of mesh in place. It is a permanent addition so it is best to make sure you have proper continuity and a lack of short circuits before sealing it.


I just received cable and connectors for building USB A-B cables for use from computer to DAC. So far all sizes are perfect, cable with paracord is fitting nicely into the connector hoods. Within an hour if all goes well I will have a couple of quality usb cables to start testing. 22 awg, individually shielded twisted pairs with a nice looking mesh over the cables.

 

[Allanmarcus]

Yeah thanks but I really want it light-weight and I think some cable pants are small enough for the job, will look it up but I guess that's my only option.

The barrel splitters are very light. You could also do heat shrink like he pic above.