[imas69]

Yes sorry i should have suggested these before. I have used the RCA connectors and they're quite a revelation for the price. I did some experimenting over the Xmas break trying to make cable for £50ish that could compete with £200 shop cable. Someone recomended these as being very close to KLE plugs with conductors made from the same Tellurium Copper coated with gold, silver of rhodium. I found the silver versions to sound really good with Neotech NEI 3002 mk3 copper hybrid UPOCC cable which is about 10.6mm, the combination is fantastic for the cash.

Re the AECO XLRs i think the model number only varies according the plating used, otherwise they're all the same. You can buy them on amazon in the UK.

Let me know how you get on

Ignore that, sorry, only saw the pic not the text

 

[chrisdrop]

Regarding this:

my ETI cables don't have the screen connected to the ground from the source. Does anything think they are worth desoldering / trimming/ adding that to the earth? I can't tell if it is a psychoacoustic ghost, but I felt the Aeco cables were every so slightly quieter and I could only attribute it to that. Very likely "in the noise of measurement" but thought I'd mention anyhow.

This quote - I found this interesting (emphasis mine):

I think the shield connected at one end is best, it takes the shield out of the signal path and the shield doesn't do triple duty as signal return, ground connection + shield. The main idea is the shield is connected on the sending end so any noise picked up by the shield doesn't make it to the next component.

In some circumstances you may have better results with the shield connected at both ends, especially if the ground wire is small. Reducing resistance reduces noise voltage as a result of potential differences between component grounds, Ohm's law is V=IR, reduce R, V is reduced as well. Hopefully I is small to begin with, if it is then reducing R may not make much of a difference. But in any case, it's best to reduce R. I do this by making the ground leg much larger than the signal leg and then add shielding if necessary. 99.9% of the time shielding isn't needed with short cables in home systems, it just adds capacitance and dulls the sound.

2 possibly interesting things; 1) it is best to reduce resistance by making the ground fatter than signal, and 2) shielding isn't needed with short cables in home systems.

This guy says something else interesting:

sonically, a single-ended cable with no shield is best. Shielding adds a capacitive element to the cable, a property we generally want to minimize (possible) if not eliminate

Not sure what to do with that, but food for thought.

 

[teknorob23]

DIY cable compare time...

Thanks to @teknorob23's adventures, help and advice I made RCA interconnects for my office; Neotech NEI 3004 copper interconnect cable + Aeco silver-plated connectors. The office setup was moving from cheapo-£5-amazon-special RCAs, so I will say immediately, they were absolutely noticeably much better. They were so enjoyable at work, I felt the need to bring them home and compare vs my main interconnects; ETI Research Plugs mentioned above with NEI-1002 UP-OCC Silver Cable.

I am both sad and happy to say that after 90 minutes of A/B listening - the more expensive setup is the overall winner for me. A few summary comments from my listening notes are below. There are pretty straight themes for all songs in my comparison playlist. Given that 1 is a £300+ DIY cable and one is a £60 DIY cable, I am both happy and sad about the results, but not too surprised. Just the fact that I even thought they were worth comparing says something about how well I like the Aeco cable. Awesome value for money IMO.

These are some of the more negative comments on the Aeco/ Copper cable. There were a load of positive comments too but eliminating for post-length-sake. They are nice cables that I will use daily at my office.

• Subbass there, not crushing, but there
• Mid-bass very slight coarse in the decay of thump?
• Mid enjoyment/ engagement, a bit ’shout coarse' at times
• Slight harshness when louder many instruments playing at once?
  
• Thinner upper range small sounds
• Slight coarseness to vocal upper mids?
• Narrower stage on this song?

These are the more positive comments for the ETI / Silver cable. There weren't too many negative ones.

• Most repated comment: stronger enjoyment/ engagement.
• Revealed lower mids section I hadn’t yet heard
  
• Good bass presence relative to the rest of the sounds
• Louder/ busier guitar solo well managed and coherent, with only very slight shout once or twice
• Pretty coherent when more busy/ sounds. Well-presented whole
• No harshness when the bass gets dominant
• All sounds ‘authentic' even when 'thinner' or smaller sounds, natural presentation
  
• Good imaging in busier sections, clear separation in action
  
• Engaging bass lead section (forced head-bobbing)

(I've not used this language before, but I think when people say PRaT, they may mean what I was experiencing as 'engagement' with the ETI/ silver cables?)

From a DIY perspective, I found the Aeco connectors much more pleasant to solder than the ETIs. Perhaps I just suck less at this point.

I'd love to make pure silver Aeco + a proper Silver Neotech cable, but the fat silver neotech cable doesn't fit It could be hacked, but perhaps wouldn't be aesthetically lovely.

Finally, my ETI cables don't have the screen connected to the ground from the source. Does anything think they are worth desoldering / trimming/ adding that to the earth? I can't tell if it is a psychoacoustic ghost, but I felt the Aeco cables were every so slightly quieter and I could only attribute it to that. Very likely "in the noise of measurement" but thought I'd mention anyhow.

Best
Chris

For completeness sake, here is an odd track I have been listening to while typing this post. Not my usual cup of tea, but enjoying despite that fact, quality production in the 2nd half.

https://tidal.com/browse/track/103633273


N.B. Now that I have completed this exercise I think there is an important caveat; that the new cables have 15-20h on them, whereas the other cables have a few hundred hours probably... Hmm.

great write up and I definitely wouldn’t re-solder the eti/silver. It won’t make any difference on short runs of highly shielded cable like (IMO.. of course)

 

[subharmonic]

Sorry for the intrusion folks.

My VERY LONG journey of discovery regarding DIY headphone cables for my Sony SA5000 is at a crunch point.
TechnoRob advised I get some Neotech STDCT cable - I did, and ended up getting some AWG 22 - 10m feet of the stuff.
He reckoned a 4 conductor cable would be perfectly adequate, as did Ian at Cosmic Cable who supplied me with wire.

I've already acquired a Switchcraft TRS plug.
But what to do next isn't easy to figure out.

1) Should I sleeve each individual wire? (will this add a lot to the weight?)
2) Braiding - this has been a real bugbear - I fortunately/unfortunately came across a post somewhere where someone said that braiding is a bit of a waste of time as the lengths used for headphones tends to be so short that the braiding is unimportant (longer cables it can be important though).
If I didn't braid, will the cable look weird? Ie all 4 wires up to the Y sleeved with no braid - after the wire - again no braiding, but sleeved with a thinner gauge paracord?
What I mean is - the paracord inner filler will need to be removed - that space should be filled by the conductors - but the conductors won't fill this space as uniformly as they would if the conductors were braided before sleeving.
Or is braiding before sleeving just going to complicate things?
3) Should I use a Y-splitter (been thinking about using the small Viablue to keep the weight down).
4) Which paracord should I get (esp gauge).
5) Heatshrink? Again - what works best?
6) Solder - should I be concerned about what solder to use? The wire for the new cable is quite pricey - would be daft to screw it up with crap solder - is the solder important?

One of the reasons it's taken me so long to get these cables done is that 4 conductor cables seem to be a bit thin on the ground - it would be AWESOME for new DIYers like me, if the cables in the gallery were categorised by type.
No way we could start something like this on here?

 

[imas69]

Why don't you start off by buying a 2 metre length of Mogami 2893 and stripping the 4 wires from it, buy some cheap connectors, buy some 4mm paracord (8metres) and take the innards out, don't worry too much about solder
at this stage, this should cost less than £20 and you will have all the materials needed to do a practice run and still end up with a functional cable, probably best to sleeve the Neotech wire when you get to it as
this will just look much better. Splitter is not essential but always seems to look better.

 

[subharmonic]

I've actually already got some spare plugs anyway - the current headphone cable is soldered directly to the drivers anyway - so no exotic connectors required at the driver end.
I hadn't really thought about making a demo run cable - I was fairly confident I'd be able to do what was required - but now you've got me thinking lol.
I could do without an additional spend - but it's maybe an interesting idea.

 

[-Hodor-]

1) Should I sleeve each individual wire? (will this add a lot to the weight?)
2) Braiding - this has been a real bugbear - I fortunately/unfortunately came across a post somewhere where someone said that braiding is a bit of a waste of time as the lengths used for headphones tends to be so short that the braiding is unimportant (longer cables it can be important though).
If I didn't braid, will the cable look weird? Ie all 4 wires up to the Y sleeved with no braid - after the wire - again no braiding, but sleeved with a thinner gauge paracord?
What I mean is - the paracord inner filler will need to be removed - that space should be filled by the conductors - but the conductors won't fill this space as uniformly as they would if the conductors were braided before sleeving.
Or is braiding before sleeving just going to complicate things?
3) Should I use a Y-splitter (been thinking about using the small Viablue to keep the weight down).
4) Which paracord should I get (esp gauge).
5) Heatshrink? Again - what works best?
6) Solder - should I be concerned about what solder to use? The wire for the new cable is quite pricey - would be daft to screw it up with crap solder - is the solder important?

1) Up to you, keep in mind that depending on which connector you are using, you might not fit individually sleeved wires with their sleeve into the connector, meaning youll need to hide the ugly transition under Heatshrink
2) I would braid the cable. Sure this is not really necessary but it looks alot nicer and helps the cable keep its form. If you sleeve before braiding (individually) or braid first and sleeve them all together after braiding is down to the look you want for your cable
3) Y-Splitters are a purely cosmetic choice - a piece of heatshrink or a braided Split works just as good (like you said they do however add some weight and can get caught on the corner of a desk etc)

4) https://www.paracord.eu/ is the best source for Paracord in the EU. They even have support via WhatsApp. If you send them a message that you want to sleeve wire with a 1.45mmØ theyll let you know what size you need. (Im not exactly sure if 425 will still work for you)
5) Get some 4/1 or 3/1 Heatshrink from a decent supplier with a low wall thickness - dont get the cheapest stuff available (also dont go overboard and buy 40€/m hellermanntyton) - personally I use stuff thats ~3-6€/m
6) Personally I use VIABLUE 4% Silver unleaded solder - I'm from the EU and sell my cables so I have to use ROHS Compliant stuff. Soldering with leaded solder is easier and doesnt require as much heat - if your starting out that might be worth a try. In my opinion its better to have a proper solder connection than having fancier solder

 

[v3kt0r]

Guys, could please someone recommend a decent 8 or 4 conductors 28-30AWG wire? Something from USA is preferably since had few times delivery issues from China. Will be doing JH-4pin cable without bass attenuator. It requires 3 conductors per side since highs and mids inputs could be really shorted but I prefer use 4. I tried Mogami W2697 per side but it's kinda bulky for iems. I wold also consider 1 conductor and braid it by myself but it should be something as 28-30AWG, not more or less. Thank you in advance.

 

[imas69]

Hi all, I'm looking to make a type a to type b usb cable for my dac, I would like reasonable quality connectors and cable, could anyone please
let me know or link me to some nice connectors and decent quality cable and if possible let me know the wiring process, all help is really
appreciated. Thank you

 

[Airutra]

Hey all, I'm planning to attempt to build my first headphone cable. I have no experience in anything related so I have a couple questions after reading through several guides and a bit of this thread.


1. I'm planning to use the wires from the Mogami w2893 cable. Other than the color of the insulation material, the four wires are all the same right?

2. wire <- if I use something like this, I would need 4 x 3ft to make a ~3ft quad braided cable right? And this is also just wire covered with an insulation material so I would be able to use it in the same way as the wires in the Mogami cable?

3. iem cable <- are iem cables that look like these just braided insulated wire with no additional sleeving?

4. What would the diameter of a four strand round braid cable be: if each strand were 2mm diameter, they would have a 4.82mm diameter if it was just in a star shape, would it have a smaller, same, or larger diameter after doing a round braid?

5. I have an earbud terminated to 2.5mm TRRS balanced plug. I want to reterminate it to a 3.5mm TRS plug since I don't have a balanced amp anymore. if I just cut the wire right before the plug and soldered the wires to a 3.5mm TRS plug is that all that needs to be done?


Thanks in advance.

 

[imas69]

Yes the wires are the same other than colour however the wires are very thin, do you plan to sleeve them before you braid.
Wire, you would need to order slightly more, perhaps a foot or two because it will shorten after braiding.
iem, yes
The wire is not 2mm but 1.3mm and four of them braided is about 3.2mm
yes, you would just join the two ground- wires and solder them to ground on the 3.5mm.
The Norne wire is nice and if you are in Europe cosmic cables have similar high end wire https://www.cosmic-cables.co.uk/wire-and-cable

Good luck and happy building

 

[Airutra]

Thanks for the help!

So a few of the 1/4 and 1/8 inch plugs I ordered just arrived and one of them has this extra flap that the others don't. What is this for?

 

[imas69]

To cover the grounds wires over the solder

 

[BowWazoo]

Can someone give me the pinout, of the Mr. Speakers Aeon connector?

 

[teknorob23]

Hey All, quick question re wiring a BNC plug on to digital audio coax. I'm converting my existing coax cable to RCA - BNC and i cant find a wiring diagram for an audio cable. i'm guessing its the same as the any other coax but i'm hoping someone can sense check this for me.

The connector is a Furutech FP3-117 and heres pic of it dismantled. I can see the signal wire attached to the central contact pin but do i connect the shield and if so where? Thanks in advance for any suggestions