[Paladin79]

Nicely done as well. I do have some very tiny mesh that I want to try to use inside the hd 800 connectors. Solid silver wire should fit nicely and when done, it is not larger than 24 awg insulated, or at least that is my intent. Using heatshrink tubing inside those connectors is pretty difficult and if it is close to where you are soldering, you run the risk of inopportune shrinking.

 

[JamieMcC]

Very nice job and I am impressed by the way you maintained the twists with heat shrink tubing. I was just working with some of those connectors myself with 26 awg wire. it looks like you used an adhesive lined heat shrink tubing on the connectors themselves which is also a good idea. I have some solid silver wire on the way for use inside such pins.

I am acquiring some cotton mesh that I can use on the star quad. I also have silk mesh on the way but it is smaller and more for single wire. The vendor was nice enough to send me samples of all the cotton sizes as well, they are measured flat. 8 MM should be a perfect size for fitting over cable roughly a 1/4 inch diameter or smaller. One of my cats is demonstrating the proper way of picking up the samples using your claws.

Thanks I am pretty certain it was one of your posts that mentioned using the glue lined heat shrink tubing to maintain the twist and for strain relief.

The cable splitter was the second one I made the first being made out of a nice bit of snake wood but my two year old made off with it and after searching hi and lo I gave up and made another its hard to capture the colour but its a mix of black and red pigment in resin along with a pearl mica. It looks black but actually shimmers as the light catches it and looks pretty neat in the flesh.

 

[Paladin79]

Very artistic, and as I recall you have some great looking headphone stands as well. It is always impressive to me when people have such skills and take the time to make something unique and well thought out.

 

[Whitigir]

Well, I went ahead and upgraded the inner wires to 23AWG Silver UPOCC Grade. The pins inside were so flimsy, and then the internal wires is like 28Awg or whatever tsk...tsk...Sennheiser. Everything is so well built and engineered, except wires lol

 

[Paladin79]

If I may ask, where did you get your wire? I am testing all types of wire right now.

 

[Whitigir]

UPOCC solidcore wires ? Check out SonicCraft (USA), hifi-collective (UK)

 

[Paladin79]

I will order some in. IMHO I will have to jump to silver compared to copper for some folks to detect audible difference in wire, and then the number could still be small. Stranded or solid will not matter much in my testing.

 

[Whitigir]

I love solid wires for chassis wiring, and internal wires are considered chassis wiring by me. I tested them and observed them very closely, and I love Silver for the best. The external wires can always be different and various materials. The reason why I want and love solid silver in the chassis are

1/ superior conductivity, it should allow any flavor of upgraded external cables to take further effects
2/ Solid Silver doesn’t have the edginess and harsh-lines in performances. But that is just my own opinions and experiences.

Regardless of #2, I still love Chassis wires to be solid silver as regarding to #1

 

[Paladin79]

I love solid wires for chassis wiring, and internal wires are considered chassis wiring by me. I tested them and observed them very closely, and I love Silver for the best. The external wires can always be different and various materials. The reason why I want and love solid silver in the chassis are

1/ superior conductivity, it should allow any flavor of upgraded external cables to take further effects
2/ Solid Silver doesn’t have the edginess and harsh-lines in performances. But that is just my own opinions and experiences.



There is no doubt about #1, it is quantifiable and I have heard many people talk about hearing a difference between silver and copper so I definitely want choices of each. I have silver plated litz for the heck of it, occ litz no less, but i will never know when it goes into my group of test wires. I am remaining in the dark myself.

 

[JamieMcC]

Interested to hear your thoughts on the cotton sleeving I would really like to try doing a sleeved cable next maybe cotton but am very tempted to try the silk sleeving from hifi collective and experimenting with tie dyeing as was mentioned a little while back.

Also how practical would it be to use some thin say 30 AWG wire for a cable?

I found this place https://www.wires.co.uk/index.html they have a quiet a range of interesting hybrid wires like gold plated silver. Gold plated copper etc that look inexpensive enough to experiment a bit with.

 

[Whitigir]

Interested to hear your thoughts on the cotton sleeving I would really like to try doing a sleeved cable next maybe cotton but am very tempted to try the silk sleeving from hifi collective and experimenting with tie dyeing as was mentioned a little while back.

Also how practical would it be to use some thin say 30 AWG wire for a cable?

I found this place https://www.wires.co.uk/index.html they have a quiet a range of interesting hybrid wires like gold plated silver. Gold plated copper etc that look inexpensive enough to experiment a bit with.

30 Awg is very filmy and small. I would minimize full size headphones cables wires to be at the least 26awg. But I prefer 23awg as minimum

 

[Paladin79]

I generally use 24 awg but that is quite close to 23. I might try some gold plated silver just to keep down tarnishing but as I have mentioned before, copper is a better conductor than gold.

 

[Whitigir]

I generally use 24 awg but that is quite close to 23. I might try some gold plated silver just to keep down tarnishing but as I have mentioned before, copper is a better conductor than gold.

Silver don’t typically tarnish the way copper does. I use them in my T2 and countless of many items I built over the year. Silver is still silver where as copper would have turned green

The only copper that doesn’t turn green over a period of a year or so is Litz or unless you tinned it all the way

 

[Paladin79]

I would say that is silver in a clear pvc jacket so that in itself helps copper as well. I have seen just pure silver wire with no jacket, in that case I would go with another form of plating to keep down oxidation. I may not have made myself clear, sorry.

Stax T2 kit build?

I do have some solid, high purity silver wire on the way, 24 awg. It does get pricey but at least for my test purposes solid wire will work well. I do have some clear heat shrink tubing that should fit over it perfectly.

 

[JamieMcC]

Slightly off topic but decided on my 2018 Whiskey choice today and blew the savings I made from diying my replacement hd800 cable to continue with my journey round the Scottish Island distilleries (Islay this time) and an Ardbeg ten year old.

First impression is its a pretty serious and complex dram (much more than I am used to) with a smokey ash finish that goes on and on.