[rollo]

 For DIY or premade the Supra line is a good start.



charles
SMA

[shawbros3]

Morrow MA-1 interconnects throw a huge sound-stage and sound super pleasing

[Johnny2Bad]

For relatively easy to find mass-manufactured "commodity" cables that are still of adequate quality I like the AR cables (Acoustic Research). You can buy them at retail in a lot of places (in North America, at least).


I recommend these to friends who have no HiFi pretensions but who don't want "junk" and whom I want to recommend a no-issue, reliable, commodity cable. They are not expensive compared to others in the marketplace.


Next step would be DIY cables with Canare connectors and Canare or Mogami star-quad mic cable. These will run you about $6~10 for two RCAs and 30~50c a foot (Canare L4E6S) to 70c~$1 a foot (Mogami 2534 and 2893). If you want to use a more generic RCA you can easily get your cable costs down to the silly cheap range, but  personally I am suspicious of many of the low cost "audiophile" RCAs out there. Why argue with Teflon and an established manufacturer to save $2 a connector?

I prefer the Mogami cable but it is somewhat harder to source, although far from impossible. You may be able to buy it locally at a music store (as in musical instrument retailer).


Although I don't presume that these are the ultimate cables, they are none the less very good sounding, very quiet, extremely low handling noise, low capacitance, and excellent at RF rejection. The vast majority of recording studios, radio and television installations and mobiles, sound stages, theatres, and live event setups have one or both of the Mogami's in the installation for audio.


For home audio build them floating (shield connected at one end only) and that end to the RCA output.


There are many other possible DIY configurations, but if a cable can't beat a well made, low capacitance, shielded non-coaxial $25 DIY cable it's back to the drawing board, guaranteed.


As far as I'm concerned when it gets to more than $50 a stereo pair for RCA-RCA audio cables, you've moved out of the "cheap and cheerful HiFi" category, and there are plenty of other options if you want to spend more.


Really, the difficulty of "cheap and cheerful" is keeping the costs down and quality up to a point where value consists of maximum bang for the buck.


Many report star-quad construction cables built with boutique wire, which is 5~10x more per foot, sound better, or more specifically sound different. I haven't tried them. If your budget allows, you can try Oyaide or Cardas variants, which should still be around $50-ish in a 1/2 meter variant.


Also, as a bulk cable, you could strip these and use the individual cables to build other configurations at a very reasonable cost; extremely high quality copper wire, and excellent electrical and handling quality dielectrics.


The Canare L4E6S is 4x 24AWG (40 strands per) w/ braided copper 95% coverage shield and in unbalanced configuration with each pair combined is 2x 21 AWG; 46pf/ft (between conductor pairs) 57 pf/ft (cond pair to shield)


Canare also makes a L4E5C which I haven't tried; it is similar but 4x 26 AWG (30 strands per) and combined for stereo audio is 2x 23 AWG + 50 pf/ft cp-cp; 61 pf/ft cp-s


Mogami has more extensive capacitance values (all possible parameters) but Canare equivalent parameters are listed below.


Mogami 2534 is 4x 24 AWG (20 strands per) and combined is 2x 21 AWG; served copper 95%c; and 29.6 pf/ft cp-cp and 33.6 pf/ft cp-s


Mogami 2893 is 4x 26 AWG (30 strands per) and combined is 2x 23 AWG, served copper 95%c; and 40 pf/ft cp-cp and 54 pf/ft cp-s

[Æ]

Next step would be DIY cables with Canare connectors and Canare or Mogami star-quad mic cable. These will run you about $6~10 for two RCAs and 30~50c a foot (Canare L4E6S) to 70c~$1 a foot (Mogami 2534 and 2893). If you want to use a more generic RCA you can easily get your cable costs down to the silly cheap range, but  personally I am suspicious of many of the low cost "audiophile" RCAs out there. Why argue with Teflon and an established manufacturer to save $2 a connector?

I prefer the Mogami cable but it is somewhat harder to source, although far from impossible. You may be able to buy it locally at a music store (as in musical instrument retailer).


Although I don't presume that these are the ultimate cables, they are none the less very good sounding, very quiet, extremely low handling noise, low capacitance, and excellent at RF rejection. The vast majority of recording studios, radio and television installations and mobiles, sound stages, theatres, and live event setups have one or both of the Mogami's in the installation for audio.


For home audio build them floating (shield connected at one end only) and that end to the RCA output.

DIY is what I did in one scenario, needing a slightly longer pair. Some people scorn because the cable was bought at RadioShack, but RadioShack didn't make the cable, they only paid to have their brand name printed on the jacket.

It is actually just plain raw microphone cable, some really flexible stuff which looks a whole lot like some Mogami I had bought a long, long time ago. And when I say flexible, I mean flexible like a wet noodle. Anyway it's not crap cable. It has separate spiral wound conductors, braided shield and top quality insulation both inside and outside the conducting pair.

So what I have are two identical conductors from end to end with the outer shield connected only at one end. Some gold plated RCAs courtesy of Monster and some ferrite beads for good measure. I measured the built cable resistance and capacitance, very, very low in both categories.

Was it cheap, well not exactly. But it was reasonably affordable due to the fact that I had to build it myself. The microphone cable was reduced in price, being on a clearance table, a no longer stocked item.