[fille]

hello everybody, i'm new here, but that didn't stopped me from reading a lot,

i'm in the hot pursue of a real high end cable. And come to the conclusion that is very hard to find one. allright you can pay 200 euro for one, but that's not just my wallet and cup of tea.

please don't shoot me if i go a little to straight forward on this subject, i just wanna see what everybody thinks, and how i should get the best result.

what did i discover
1)what is the best insolation : Teflon (most people agree)
2)what is the best conduction material : something pure, can be copper or silver, but plated can be looked at as a contaminated surface (at least likle jon risch tells on his website: and i believe the man)
3)stranded or not: stranded does boost the surface with the same gauge, so that is good thing; also it is much more flexible.
4)gauge conductor: the bigger the better: i'll stick with 22-24 otherwise it is becoming to heavy.
5)balanced or not: i think i'm going for balanced
6)way of wiring: that's a tricky one, the best way would be to use an twisted pair (unshielded), or i could use one complete star quad cable for one side.

But : i want to make one cable, i mean i hate having two cables to my amp one for each channel i mean;

what i wanna do.
i can get rather cheap solid silver wire : 0.4mm of 2.5 euro and also the teflon tubes. so i can easily make one wire for one channel, just a twisted pair of pure solid wire. but then i have to make an copper isolation around it. can anybody help me how to do that, ro does somebody have better ideas.


i have looked around at other options
i thought of using a star quad cable for each side, but they don't have a "light" verison of it. at least not with belden or canare.
i went practicly through the whole belden catalog.
So in one question: does anybody know a cable wich has the follow properties :

pure stranded 24 gauge(silver or copper), teflon insolation, shielded twisted pair, teflon outer jacket.

ps: everybody rages about star quad, and probably it works very well, still reading the forum everybody uses without the advantages that it has, i mean most people use only one wire per + or - .
ps 2 : a friend of mine made solid core silver interlinks: he used no isolation material, let them just hang free in the air, and the sounded the best he told me, (that's actually what everybody knows: air is a very fine isolator for audio purpuses)

anyway thanx a lot already

 

[Garbz]

I'm sure it does sound good till they touch, or till the silver oxidises. Don't follow in thoes paths you won't be able to hear the difference between air, teflon or PVC simply because there is none. The dielectric in a capacitor has little impact when the distance between wires are sufficient. So it takes a lot of effort to make a cable capacitative enough to cause problems.

Starquad is good. Many people here use it. It's PVC insulated, shielded, and pretty capacitative on the whole, but still works like a treat.

Quote:

pure stranded 24 gauge(silver or copper), teflon insolation, shielded twisted pair, teflon outer jacket.

Cat5e. Some of em come with teflon. It's stranded 24 gauge copper. I'm not sure if you can get STP but it doesn't make much of a difference. Firstly the twists in the cable eliminate interferrence already, and secondly the input impednace of amplifiers are high, and so are headphone cords in the great scheme of things, you won't get noise pickup here.

 

[nikongod]

if you want 1 cable for your headphones, i would recomend the folowing:

a STRANDED wire, 22 or 24ga, whatever insulation.

NOT a solid core wire for a headphone cable. the improvements to sound are probably not worth the compromises in flexibility and duribility in this application. maybe for speakers, and certanly for a non-portable interconect, but not for a headphone cable.

i have not personally heard a good similar gauge very high purity copper wire, so i am at a slight disavantage. i have only seen pure silver wire sold in solid construction. i will say that the silver plated coper cables i have used (and build) have revealed detail and duances in every headphone i have attached them to.

after that, i would recomend using a 4-pin conector on the termination (like akg k-1000, and as they do as a standard option for many others made for the recording industry.) with this conector, you can easily adapt the headphones to single-ended amps, or ballanced drive ones. this conector also alows you to use the very standard single cable with "y" split. building adapters is simple for that conector, and a few amps come prewired for the 4-pin conectors. if you also need the consumer standard 1/4" plug, its easy to wire.

 

[Jam_Master_J]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fille i thought of using a star quad cable for each side, but they don't have a "light" verison of it. at least not with belden or canare. i went practicly through the whole belden catalog.

I believe Mogami has a lighter version of their starquad, and look for mini-starquad by Canare. Just search the forums for "mini-starquad" or something like that.

Quote:

ps 2 : a friend of mine made solid core silver interlinks: he used no isolation material, let them just hang free in the air, and the sounded the best he told me, (that's actually what everybody knows: air is a very fine isolator for audio purpuses)

Do you mean that the cables did not even touch the ground? Because some people say this will improve soundquality by not allowing mechanical vibrations to affect the cables. Not saying it's a fact or anything. But you're right, air is an excellent dielectric, I'd just be concerned with protecting them from shorting.

 

[fille]

thanx guys, for all the information, i'm gonna look further

the guy didn't use the pure silver all the time, he just experimented with it. so it is not in his normal setup.

but how long does it take before silver oxidates ? cause you could use silver with a slight coating like anti-cables do. at least if flexibility isn't a problem

greetings

 

[nikongod]

most people dont use pure silver for headphone/speker cables because it is not available easily stranded, and it is stupid expensive in the necessary gauges.

the comon wires are silver plated coper (usually with teflon insulation) and various grades of coper.

for an interconect (4 strands, 2-3ft long of fine gauge wire) its actually not terribly expensive, jsut hard to work with as you usually have to insulate it yourself.

 

[Super-Gonzo]

If you're looking for something thinner, you might try Canare L-4E5C:

http://www.canare.com/index.cfm?obje...AD046DCA18AAFA

One thing that hasn't been mentioned that I find really important is how well the cable damps microphonic effects. (ie: when the cable hits the side of your chair, or scrapes the ground, how well can you hear the resulting vibrational noise?)

You'll find that stranded cables with a soft outer jacket are beneficial to that problem. Be wary of using techflex in the cable construction. If you do, use the natural fiber type, not the plastic stuff. Plastic techflex is awful on a headphone cable... I know from experience. Every time you move your head you hear a little zipper noise from the techflex rubbing up against something.

 

[Jam_Master_J]

yeah if you want to put covering on the cable, use Nylon covering rather than the normal techflex. Much fewer microphonics with the Nylon.