[serenith]

I had this question posted in the DIY section and it went unanswered :
 
Is there any advantage to making a cable out of individually insulated strands of metal wire in, for say, cotton tubing ? What is the downside to twisting multiple strands of wire together in a cotton tube vs insulating each strands individually ?
 
I have some 28 AWG 5N silver wire in the mail and plenty of cotton tubing, but i'd rather pack multiple strands per tubing to reduce the size of the final cable, if that doesn't downgrade the audio quality. The purpose is to rebuild my headphone cable up to the bottom of the neck Y section.

 

[MaciekN]

Are you thinking about something like this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litz_wire ?

 

[serenith]

I was planning on using 4 wire per channel polarity (8 per channel, 16 total) in some kind of braid.  Either 1 wire, 2 wires or 4 wire per cotton tubing for a 8-tubing braid, 4-tubing braid or 2-tubing twisted cable.  Obviously, the simpler the better since more tubing will just increase the bulk size of my final cable.

 

[MaciekN]

If it's "some kind of braid" then going for 16 separate conductors is unceccessary. 2-tubing twisted cable is most usually enough. The benefits of insulating each conductor are explained in the article I linked to above.