You can make your own anti-cables, save a ton of money, and get to choose the wire gage to boot, by buying what's called 'magnet wire' in bulk.
I believe that the anti-cables are using UP-OCC (Ohno continuous cast) magnet wire, which is a bit harder to find than standard magnet wire, especially in the larger gauges.
strip the lacquer from the ends (surprisingly difficult)
I haven't tried it, but I've seen people recommend burning it off with a lighter.
hi,
for removing the red finish on the wire, i used some coarser sandpaper and it did the trick. i needed to use some of the wire to ground all my components as to eliminate the ground loop that is caused by the interconnect wires. all you do if members do not know, is this. make sure all the wire is the same length. i make sure its long enough to hang to the floor.( 12 awg wire like paul's is great ).use a connector that will slide over one of the metal screws on each component. i had some of PAUL'S speaker wire with spades and just crimped them together to fit over each screw on each component and tightened down. i then took the other end of the wire and clipped off the other speaker spade and used sandpaper to take off the red finish ( about 2-2.5 inches ). i then twisted all the wires together and wrapped it with some electrical tape. i then used a large enough wire nut connector that electricians use to finish twisting the wires together. it comes in many colors. you are finished. what you have now is no ground loop running continous between each component. the ground is were all the noise is. this is why grounding posts were put on preamps with phono stages to connect to the record player. with analog you could hear this noise, it came as hum. with digital, its different, its noise that you cannot hear like hum. its there and effects the sound, so you have to do the same thing that was done to prevent this with the preamp phono stage and the record player. the grounding scheme i mentioned above is the easiest way to assure that you are eliminating that continous ground loop. it should result in a quieter system. you are taking what eliminated the noise in a specific component like the record player and doing it to all the components. in my opinion, all components should have the same metal posts to make this type of grounding easier instead of using a metal screw somewhere on the chasis. the good news i guess is that it works without these metal posts.
i also use paul's speaker wire. one thing that i do is use a equal run of about 22-28 awg silver wire together with it. the silver helps eliminate some grunge at the top end and creates a larger, deeper soundstage, a sweeter top end, as well as helping make your speakers disappear.the effect of the silver wire helps from top to bottom.when you put the silver wire on,do one speaker first and listen. you will hear the slight amount of grunge on one speaker and how improved the sound will be on the other speaker. the first time i tried it, i was 2 feet away from the one speaker and could not identify any sound coming from it. i could hear the sound coming directly from the other speaker although i was closer to the speaker with the silver wire. another thing i do with pauls' wire is double up and twist or overlap them about 2 inches apart until i get to about 5 inches from each end. i have a tri-wired setup ( tyler acoustic speakers, WOODMERE'S with outboard crossovers ) so i only double up on the woofers, but only use single runs of silver to each amp/speaker binding post. talking with ANTHONY over at ABERDEEN COMPONENTS, its the silver that is needed with the copper. if you look at some of the high priced cables, the higher up the price goes, you will notice this is where they start to add in the silver wire. i believe its worth the try to see if you notice a big jump in improvement. i have informed paul of the sonic benefit. he emailed me that he was concentrating on what he has now because of the favorable comments in one of the stereo mags. i hope some try the items i mentioned. the first thing i would do is the grounding scheme, and then go from there.
bill
