[zmorris]

Does anyone know the specifics or brands of the cables used in Apuresound's V3, Moon-Audio Blue/Black/Silver Dragons, and Stepan Audio Arts' Equinox? I already recabled my D2000 with Mogami Neglex W2534 on my own six months ago, but I'm thinking about recabling them yet again and splurge on the BEST sounding cable available, just so I won't have to look back at this in the future.

So how would you rank the following cables, best to worst, depending on their SQ? I know that most of you probably haven't tested all these, but if you've at least tried more than one and thought a particular cable was better, please share your detailed opinions. This list is just for full headphone recabling, not IC's, and it doesn't include every pre-made or bare cable available but I tried to include all the ones I could think of off the top of my head. From what I know, ALO uses JenaLabs 18G and Vampire 22G, and S2 Audio uses Mogami Neglex, so I didn't include them in this list.

APureSound's V3 pre-made copper cored silver wire
SAA Equinox pre-made pure copper
Moon Audio Blue Dragon pre-made pure copper
Moon Audio Black Dragon pre-made pure copper
Moon Audio Silver Dragon pre-made pure silver
Jena Cryo Wire 18G bare pure copper
Jena Cryo Wire 22G bare pure copper
Vampire 22G bare pure copper
navships or other eBay sellers' bare silver plated copper
Mogami Neglex W2534 bare
Canare L-4E6S bare
Gotham GAC-3 or GAC-4 bare
Belden 1192A bare
Cardas variety bare
Any other bare or premade cable I failed to mention and should be in this list

Cheers

Update: Apuresound's V3 does not use silver plated copper. It uses copper cored silver wire instead and according to the maker, the wire can't be bought separately anywhere else.

 

[FallenAngel]

Add in that list my favorite : Juniper 26AWG solid copper in Teflon, cryo treated. It's a very nice sounding cable, the best I've heard. To say the truth, I wasn't overly impressed with Jenna 18AWG. I made an iPod dock as a gift for a buddy here on head-fi, it's a nice sounding cable, but it's a pain in the butt to work with and I don't think I'll want to pay $6/ft for a single strand. I prefer the Juniper wire to it anyway at 1/4" of the cost.

 

[mojo]

CAT5 is better and cheaper than all of them. Use half descent connectors and you have a top notch cable.

 

[FallenAngel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojo /img/forum/go_quote.gif CAT5 is better and cheaper than all of them. Use half descent connectors and you have a top notch cable.

WHAT!? I don't know what kind of cat5 you've been using, or what you've been smoking, either way, I don't believe it. I've tried a couple of different CAT5 cables (both solid and stranded with PVC and Teflon covering) for IC and once for a KSC75 recable, to put it nicely, it's not good, to put it directly, I thought it sounds like crap compared to cheapest Canare copper or Mil-spec SPC.

 

[TSi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallenAngel /img/forum/go_quote.gif WHAT!? I don't know what kind of cat5 you've been using, or what you've been smoking, either way, I don't believe it. I've tried a couple of different CAT5 cables (both solid and stranded with PVC and Teflon covering) for IC and once for a KSC75 recable, to put it nicely, it's not good, to put it directly, I thought it sounds like crap compared to cheapest Canare copper or Mil-spec SPC.

+1 to that... I have tried using Cat5e cables, its not amazing compared to many other cables.

 

[nikongod]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zmorris /img/forum/go_quote.gif Does anyone know the specifics or brands of the cables used in Apuresound's V3, Moon-Audio Blue/Black/Silver Dragons, and Stepan Audio Arts' Equinox?

alex uses a wire built to his specifications for the aps 3.

moon audio acutally builds a few cables using a few different brands of wire.

stephan audio arts IDK.

you forget clou cable, ohlibach, and a few others not to mention nordst.

my ultimate headphone cable would be 16 or 32 strands of enameled 30ga copper magnet wire braided (woven? maybe JUST wrapped) around a cotton core with a cotton sheath. as with many things DIY, the result is not the cost of the parts, but the time and tools to build it. it would take a goooood long time to make a cable like this by hand

 

[FallenAngel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod /img/forum/go_quote.gif alex uses a wire built to his specifications for the aps 3. moon audio acutally builds a few cables using a few different brands of wire. stephan audio arts IDK. you forget clou cable, ohlibach, and a few others not to mention nordst. my ultimate headphone cable would be 16 or 32 strands of enameled 30ga copper magnet wire braided (woven? maybe JUST wrapped) around a cotton core with a cotton sheath. as with many things DIY, the result is not the cost of the parts, but the time and tools to build it. it would take a goooood long time to make a cable like this by hand

Uhm... 16 strands of 30AWG is 18AWG!

, that's quite thick for a headphone cable, but I do understand and totally agree with your ideology.

 

[error401]

Wouldn't such a cable construction result in very high capacitance?

 

[mojo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallenAngel /img/forum/go_quote.gif WHAT!? I don't know what kind of cat5 you've been using, or what you've been smoking, either way, I don't believe it. I've tried a couple of different CAT5 cables (both solid and stranded with PVC and Teflon covering) for IC and once for a KSC75 recable, to put it nicely, it's not good, to put it directly, I thought it sounds like crap compared to cheapest Canare copper or Mil-spec SPC.

If they were stranded, they were not CAT5 cables. CAT5 specifies solid core.

Get some genuine stuff and try that. I have had good results with flat "CAT5" network cable too.

It does also depend on how you wire them. Make sure you get the pairs correctly wired up.

For speaker cables they can't be beat. For interconnects, I have military spec SPC and it sounds exactly the same. Tried StarQuad too and that made no difference. All were better than 20p cables, of course.

 

[Fitz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojo /img/forum/go_quote.gif If they were stranded, they were not CAT5 cables. CAT5 specifies solid core. Get some genuine stuff and try that. I have had good results with flat "CAT5" network cable too. It does also depend on how you wire them. Make sure you get the pairs correctly wired up. For speaker cables they can't be beat. For interconnects, I have military spec SPC and it sounds exactly the same. Tried StarQuad too and that made no difference. All were better than 20p cables, of course.

I could be wrong, but I think TIA/EIA-568-B only specifies that horizontal cabling has to be solid, and stranded cable (for patch cables) still counts as Cat-5e if it meets the other specifications. I've pulled hundreds of miles of it, and every bit of it has been solid, so I never needed to really know for sure on that.

However, it is probably the last thing I would want to use for interconnects if I had a choice. Solid 24awg is too delicate for me, I would rather use some dirt cheap stranded copper appliance hookup wire.

 

[FallenAngel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojo /img/forum/go_quote.gif If they were stranded, they were not CAT5 cables. CAT5 specifies solid core. Get some genuine stuff and try that. I have had good results with flat "CAT5" network cable too. It does also depend on how you wire them. Make sure you get the pairs correctly wired up. For speaker cables they can't be beat. For interconnects, I have military spec SPC and it sounds exactly the same. Tried StarQuad too and that made no difference. All were better than 20p cables, of course.

Yeah, some no-name "cat5" cables we stranded, I actually have 72 strands of solid core stuff in front of me right now, I bought 2000' of twisted pairs from a computer store liquidation for super cheap so I'm redoing speaker cables now. I'm redoing my speaker wire but to check, I'll build a Mini-Mini and compare to the stuff I have around already and post back in a couple of days. Last time I checked, I was highly under-impressed.

What are "20p cables"

 

[error401]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojo /img/forum/go_quote.gif If they were stranded, they were not CAT5 cables. CAT5 specifies solid core.

No. The specification allows either. Legit, standards-compliant cable is available in either variety. Either variety can be used anywhere along a run, as appropriate.

Solid core is generally used for everything but patch cables; it's cheaper and easier to pull. It doesn't have to be though, if you've got a spool of stranded and need to do a few runs, it will work fine and be in-spec.

I do want to know about the capacitance issue with using multiple strands of individually insulated wire. It would seem to me that this is exactly the construction of a capacitor, which isn't really something you want to be building inside your cable. I can see it being fine for low-impedance speaker cables, but I think the capacitance would be enough to have a (negative) effect on high-impedance interconnects. Anyone have thoughts, it seems some people like this construction a lot?

 

[mojo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by FallenAngel /img/forum/go_quote.gif What are "20p cables"

Cables that cost 20p (£0.20) - i.e. the really cheap ones that come in bundles of five for a pound. Generally speaking, wet string performs better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by error401 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I do want to know about the capacitance issue with using multiple strands of individually insulated wire. It would seem to me that this is exactly the construction of a capacitor, which isn't really something you want to be building inside your cable. I can see it being fine for low-impedance speaker cables, but I think the capacitance would be enough to have a (negative) effect on high-impedance interconnects. Anyone have thoughts, it seems some people like this construction a lot?

Well, the official CAT5 spec states no more than 200pF per 100m at 1kHz, and CAT5e/CAT6 are even better. Cardance Quadlink is over 7000pF for the same distance.

Remember to wire it up correctly if you are making them. Each twisted pair should have one live and one ground. Use four pairs per channel, or just use all pairs and make two cables.

 

[[AK]Zip]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zmorris /img/forum/go_quote.gif Does anyone know the specifics or brands of the cables used in Apuresound's V3, Moon-Audio Blue/Black/Silver Dragons, and Stepan Audio Arts' Equinox? I already recabled my D2000 with Mogami Neglex W2534 on my own six months ago, but I'm thinking about recabling them yet again and splurge on the BEST sounding cable available, just so I won't have to look back at this in the future. So how would you rank the following cables, best to worst, depending on their SQ? I know that most of you probably haven't tested all these, but if you've at least tried more than one and thought a particular cable was better, please share your detailed opinions. This list is just for full headphone recabling, not IC's, and it doesn't include every pre-made or bare cable available but I tried to include all the ones I could think of off the top of my head. From what I know, ALO uses JenaLabs 18G and Vampire 22G, and S2 Audio uses Mogami Neglex, so I didn't include them in this list. APureSound's V3 pre-made silver plated copper SAA Equinox pre-made pure copper Moon Audio Blue Dragon pre-made pure copper Moon Audio Black Dragon pre-made pure copper Moon Audio Silver Dragon pre-made pure silver Jena Cryo Wire 18G bare pure copper Jena Cryo Wire 22G bare pure copper Vampire 22G bare pure copper navships or other eBay sellers' bare silver plated copper Mogami Neglex W2534 bare Canare L-4E6S bare Gotham GAC-3 or GAC-4 bare Belden 1192A bare Cardas variety bare Any other bare or premade cable I failed to mention and should be in this list Cheers

For the APureSound V3 cable we use copper cored silver wire. This is not the same as silver plated copper. I would appreciate if you update your list correctly.

We do not use any brand. It was custom designed and ordered by APureSound and is not available anywhere else.

Thanks,
Alex

 

[error401]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mojo /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, the official CAT5 spec states no more than 200pF per 100m at 1kHz, and CAT5e/CAT6 are even better. Cardance Quadlink is over 7000pF for the same distance. Remember to wire it up correctly if you are making them. Each twisted pair should have one live and one ground. Use four pairs per channel, or just use all pairs and make two cables.

Sorry, that question was a bit ambiguous. I was referring to bundling large numbers of either CAT5e conductors or magnet wire as was suggested before. A single twisted pair should have pretty low capacitance, but as the number of insulated conductors increases, so would capacitance. If we're talking 24 insulated conductors in a bundle, it could be pretty severe. For example, those many-strand DIY speaker cables are reported to have high capacitance and can be a problem for some amps to drive and stay stable. I imagine at high-impedance this issue would be worsened, as would the RC filtering that would occur.

And the only real theoretical gain I can think of for doing this rather than going for a larger conductor is increased current carrying capacity (due to skin effect) at high frequencies - which I don't think is a major design goal for audio ICs.

Like I said though, I don't really know, so wondering if these are real issues, or if the effects are at such HF that they might even be desirable.