DIY Cable Questions and Comments Thread

[Gignac]

  4 weeks if you're lucky. I ordered some Sennheiser connectors from them and ended up selling my HD600 over a month later, then the connectors came in the mail. I had totally forgot about ordering them. Haha

Ebay it is then.  I've come across these connectors before and have reused some, but never purchased any...the ones I had didn't actually have a brand name on it (could have rubbed off), so it's nice to know where to get more - I enjoyed working with them.
 
Thanks all!
 
Edit: By 'connectors', I meant the Pailiccs.
 
Also, has anyone picked up their RCA connectors, they look nice as well (if maybe a little large):
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/150881257986

 

[AnakChan]

   
Congrats on your first DIY LOD. It looks great. Need to try that plug at one point.
 
BTW, What is the sleeve you used for the cable??

 
Cheers!
 
I must say I don't know what sleeve I used. It was some generic shinkwrap thing? I didn't use anything special.

 

[JoeDoe]

Finished my first DIY cable this evening. Canare mini quad inside black paracord with 1/4" Amphenol plug. Certainly was a learning experience, but very gratifying. It's crazy to think that cable-makers charge upwards of $75 for a 5 foot copper cable, and I just made my own for less than $5...

 

[65535]

How long did it take you?

 

[DMinor]

I start thinking that audio may respond differently to stressed and unstressed wires. Also I am going to try using solid-core wires of the highest gauge possible for a LOD. Just Curious.
 
Are DH Lab wires are quality wires?

 

[65535]

Stressed and unstressed? You mean tensioning the wires? Other than risking breaking mechanical joints and damaging insulation it won't have an affect.

 

[DMinor]

  Stressed and unstressed? You mean tensioning the wires? Other than risking breaking mechanical joints and damaging insulation it won't have an affect.

Not necessarily direct/axial tension. I am more talking about the bending stresses when the wires are bent. That bending stress depends on the wire/cable jacketing and bend radius.

 

[luisdent]

 
Stressed and unstressed? You mean tensioning the wires? Other than risking breaking mechanical joints and damaging insulation it won't have an affect.

Not necessarily direct/axial tension. I am more talking about the bending stresses when the wires are bent. That bending stress depends on the wire/cable jacketing and bend radius.

This would have zero effect on the sound.

 

[TrollDragon]

Now if you were to somehow cut the cord off of a fortress phone you could put any solid wire you wanted in that and it would not break.

German Maestro has a BX type (fortress phone) cable that they put on their GMP 8.35's for public Kiosk use, they might sell that cable separately...

 

[larken]

I have a question I was hoping that the experts could help with. When using a cable like mogami 2534 for a cable with 3 pin mini xlr on one end and 3.5mm on the other, should I be using the shield wire (meaning the copper wires wrapped around the 4 conductors) as a ground and give both left and right channels 2 conductors each? Or should I just leave the shield unused and go with 1 conductor each for left and right signals and 2 conductors for the ground?

 

[ostewart]

All those combinations will work.
Personally I use 1 for each channel, then if its a 4 core cable use 2 for ground.

Some people like to make mini-mini and lods with 4 cables, personally I dont see the point as 1 for ground is sufficient. But I understand some use 4 for looks.

I make cables with single wires, not premade mogami though.

 

[Gignac]

  I have a question I was hoping that the experts could help with. When using a cable like mogami 2534 for a cable with 3 pin mini xlr on one end and 3.5mm on the other, should I be using the shield wire (meaning the copper wires wrapped around the 4 conductors) as a ground and give both left and right channels 2 conductors each? Or should I just leave the shield unused and go with 1 conductor each for left and right signals and 2 conductors for the ground?

You'll undoubtedly find it a lot easier to ignore the shield and use the 2 wire ground approach.
 
I've heard someone here mention once about connecting the shield to ground at the source as well, but I've never done this, and am not sure exactly what benefit that would provide.

 

[nikongod]

  I've heard someone here mention once about connecting the shield to ground at the source as well, but I've never done this, and am not sure exactly what benefit that would provide.

 
Grounding the shield at the source end provides some RF blocking, at the expense of increased cable capacitance. 
 
It is somewhat hit or miss, although I am biased towards doing it.
 
The "hit" is: Why bother with RF when "all" we care about is the audio-band? Simple - your amp may care about RF. If your amp is using all of its energy to amplify RF, what does it have left for audio? 
 
The "miss" is: the increased parallel capacitance may muck up the stability of some amps. 

 

[Gignac]

   
Grounding the shield at the source end provides some RF blocking, at the expense of increased cable capacitance. 
 
It is somewhat hit or miss, although I am biased towards doing it.
 
The "hit" is: Why bother with RF when "all" we care about is the audio-band? Simple - your amp may care about RF. If your amp is using all of its energy to amplify RF, what does it have left for audio? 
 
The "miss" is: the increased parallel capacitance may muck up the stability of some amps. 

 
Interesting.  I knew RF factored in here, but didn't really know the 'plus / minus' side of things, nor that the amp itself made a difference in terms of deciding to terminate the shielding at the source.
 
I'm not quite sure what you mean by the statement " If your amp is using all of its energy to amplify RF, what does it have left for audio? "
 
Thanks for the info, I'll have to look into all of this further!

 

[nikongod]

  I'm not quite sure what you mean by the statement " If your amp is using all of its energy to amplify RF, what does it have left for audio? "
 

 
RF can get into the amp through the outputs. 
When you look at the feedback loop, with a nice cap across the feedback resistor, there is a path from the output of the amp straight to the input - at RF anyways. At that point the RF gets amplified by the open loop gain of the amp. 
 
Without this cap the amp may not run stable at all! So your kind of in a bind. 
 
Alternate solutions are to put a ferrite bead on the cable, or add some output resistance outside of the feedback loop, but people freak out like what when you do that.