What to recable with?

[nightanole]

I gotta get some cabling for inside my amp, and soon once my cable breaks, for my q40's as well. I was wondering what i should use for both internal and external for less then 2 bucks a foot. I was also wondering about cross talk having 3-4 conductors.

standard here i guess is Mogami W2534 and Canare L-4E5C starquad. However for cross talk i wondered what you guys thought of the Mogami w3106 stereo mic stuff?

Mogami w3106


I hate to say it but i also have about 20ft of monstercable microxln stereo interconnect stuff. its a double layer jacket with 2 pair of foil wrapped 24 gauge in it thats very flexible.

 

[pistolsnipe]

considered silver plated copper? its well received here and fairly affordable, search ebay for "silver teflon"

 

[mugdecoffee]

I just did a recable with the silver plated copper wire from the seller navships on ebay. 50 feet of wire comes in at less than $10 shipped and I noticed some improvement over the stock cable. If you're going to use it to make recable headphones, I recommend getting some techflex off ebay as well which is about $6 shipped for 25 feet (seller: furryletters). It makes the cable look a lot more finished and feel sturdier than just a braid.

 

[TimmyMac]

10AWG pure solid silver with 1mm gold plating covered in RFI absorbing paper or no care

 

[qusp]

I would recommend the navships coaxial cable he has some nice SPC mini coax that will combat the crosstalk nicely. all the navships stuff is a little stoff though as the insulation tends to be a little thick. otherwise 2 twisted pairs of vampire 22AWG

 

[Bonthouse]

qusp, you're in the anti-crosstalk camp as well? What's the big difference?
I recommend the Vampire 22AWG, it's very lovely wire and great to work with, but not so portable

If you want portable, take the Canare L-4E5C. It's flexible, sounds nice and will take a beating.

 

[qusp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bonthouse /img/forum/go_quote.gif qusp, you're in the anti-crosstalk camp as well? What's the big difference? I recommend the Vampire 22AWG, it's very lovely wire and great to work with, but not so portable If you want portable, take the Canare L-4E5C. It's flexible, sounds nice and will take a beating.

well i'm in any camp that strives towards better SQ, TBH without long runs of braided cable I havent heard much difference, but the potential for difference is huge

I played around with using 2 twisted pairs or seperate braids some time ago and decided the difference in SQ wasnt enough for the percieved benefit, but with some new designs i've been working on it makes it a lot easier to achieve. I will say that the best wire i've ever used or heard is coax (piccolino) with a noticablly blacker backround. although still, if its more practical to use a single 4 wire braid I will do it, as the audible difference to me is only very slight with most wires. most amps/sources themselves (unless monoblock) have a small amount of crosstalk that is far more than any cable will give. all the same, all of the portable cables i'm currently working on are either dual twisted pair or dual 3 wire braids. its easier with LODs because they will sit together nicely with a small peice of shrink at the begginning and end of the cable. headphone cables have to be sleeved though, to keep them together, so anyone who wants the exposed wire look will have to put up with that or a stiffer cable with clear shrink over the whole thang or a little band every 10cm or so. its really not a huge deal, but still worth thinking about IMO

 

[olblueyez]

Never heard anything worse than silver plater copper, on both IC's and a headphone cable. Solid core copper will sound dynamic and natural.

 

[Good Times]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nightanole /img/forum/go_quote.gif i wondered what you guys thought of the Mogami w3106 stereo mic stuff? Mogami w3106

The downside to that cable is the OD (4.8mm per channel) - otherwise build-wise it seems good to me.

 

[Peyotero]

Woha 4.8mm per channel.. That's pretty much the size of the Canare L-4E6S and similar. It looked smaller on the pics. I was intrested in that one aswell since it looks almost perfect for a simple yet proffesional recable but I didn't pay much attention to the size. That might be great for an interconnect but for an hp recable, IMO, that's a serious overkill.

What I'd really like to see is a nice flexible solid core coax cable. Thin, too. But those coaxes were originally designed for interconnects so I'm prolly just dreaming here...

 

[compuryan]

ya if its inside your amp, definitely just use solid core copper wire. VH audio sells a really nice OCC variety coated in teflon if you really want to go all out. If you are making headphone cables or interconnects, then use a stranded cable, because solid core would eventually break.

 

[qusp]

^^ agreed, for all solid cores sonic advantages; it has some serious liabilities for anything that has to move around a lot.

 

[Peyotero]

...unless we think we care about "skin-effect"

 

[HiFi1972]

I recently made a cable for my HD650s with 18awg silver plated copper and it sounds a lot better than the stock cable.

I'm going to be doing my DT 770s really soon, but will be using Canare StarQuad for that as flexibility is more important (my 18awg cable for my 650s sounds amazing but it's not flexible, litz-braided).

For ICs, I recommend solid core copper (I use silver plated). I just built a passive headphone switcher and used solid core for both the inside wiring and IC and there's no signal loss or introduced noise, could not ask for anything better.

 

[Zaubertuba]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Peyotero /img/forum/go_quote.gif Woha 4.8mm per channel.. That's pretty much the size of the Canare L-4E6S and similar. It looked smaller on the pics. I was intrested in that one aswell since it looks almost perfect for a simple yet proffesional recable but I didn't pay much attention to the size. That might be great for an interconnect but for an hp recable, IMO, that's a serious overkill. What I'd really like to see is a nice flexible solid core coax cable. Thin, too. But those coaxes were originally designed for interconnects so I'm prolly just dreaming here...

I dunno. If you consider some of the DIY builds I've seen with a gazillion braided wires all covered with techflex, 4.8mm per channel doesn't sound that bad--especially considering it's only 9.6 mm in one dimension.

The low microphonics/high flexibility of the jacket on the W3106 leads me to believe it may actually "handle" nicely for a recable. Planning on trying it the next time I have some spare change.

I always kinda thought the impedance of a standard coax cable would raise heck with the damping factor of your amp, but that's just my opinion.