[Captainhemo]

Another point  to make about the cheap & cheerful  aspect  for  us  folks  north of the border, possibly   even overses ( not sure on pricing  for Europe)  is  that BJC's shipping charges were very, very reasonably.   If I remember correctly,   they only charged me $5 to ship my LC-1 cable up  and  it didn't take long.  Many  other retailers are charging many times that, can't even coount  how many times  I've been  about to order something  then  cacel the checkout process after  they  show  what shipping will be

-jay

[WireNut]

Unbalanced interconnects, Belden 89259. Bare copper center with foamed teflon insulation, bare copper shield, teflon outer jacket, 17pf/ft.

Balanced interconnects, Belden 89207. 1 Bare copper, 1 tinned copper, teflon insulation, Duofoil + tinned copper braid shield, teflon outer jacket 14pf/ft. 
   
Use good quality connectors, cardas solder, kester or similar, good iron or solder station. I like Hakko soldering stations.

Tip: Right now Handmade Electronics is selling Belden 89259 @ 2.25 p/f.
       

[john dozier]

Wirenut is right on the money. Have found a cheap cable from Gore that is better for balanced systems, but the cable is an instrumentation cable and is not generally available. The two Belden listed are almost as good and you can get them from a number of suppliers. BJ will even make up the 89207 for a reasonable price. Regards

[Speedskater]

There are lots of better Belden balanced interconnect cables than Belden 89207. With 1 bare copper & 1 tinned copper center conductor the symmetry will be impaired.

[S Clark]

Blue Jeans stuff if well made, but I have not been excited about their sound.  You might send our very own Sonny a pm.  He makes a decent IC pretty cheap.  If you are absolutely counting pennies, he will probably give you his recipe for a basic IC (if you ask nicely). 
Or you can buy Electra cables, Morrow, or Straley used for about $100.  All well thought of for lower end cabling.
If you have a decent system, IMO Blue Jeans is not a good solution.

Scott

[Devil Doc]

If you're using cable as a tone control Blue Jeans should not be your first choice. They don't have a sound. They simply carry the signal from one component to another. If it's good enough for Frank, it's good enough for me.

Doc

[S Clark]

If you're using cable as a tone control Blue Jeans should not be your first choice. They don't have a sound. They simply carry the signal from one component to another. If it's good enough for Frank, it's good enough for me.

Doc

Well Doc, I'm not exactly in the "If it's good enough for Frank" group. Not many of his peers agree with him on cabling, and  I can hear the difference.  Good cables can change soundstage and increase detail.  These are not "tone controls" issues or coloration.  My experience with BJ was that, although well made, they smeared the signal reducing detail.  I guess that we'll just have to disagree on this issue. The original poster has speakers and amp that should be able to clearly resolve a difference.
Scott 

[rif]

Well Doc, I'm not exactly in the "If it's good enough for Frank" group. Not many of his peers agree with him on cabling, and  I can hear the difference.  Good cables can change soundstage and increase detail.  These are not "tone controls" issues or coloration.  My experience with BJ was that, although well made, they smeared the signal reducing detail.  I guess that we'll just have to disagree on this issue. The original poster has speakers and amp that should be able to clearly resolve a difference.
Scott

Can you clarify on which bj cable? They carry many different belden coax cables and at least one house formula coax. I think they always use canare RCA's.

Thanks

[S Clark]

It's been several years, but I'm pretty sure I had the LC-1 model in 1m length.  Not bad for the money, but...

[neobop]

I finally tried a pr of Blue Jean LC-1 cables on a MM cart, going to the phono stage where capacitance is critical.  I have to say, results are outstanding.

IMO don't accept anyone else's idea about the ultimate performance of an IC.  Results are anything but universal.  Maybe these cables are only great with extremely low voltage and sound lousy at line level or going to an amp, but I doubt it.  No system, especially speakers is perfect.  You pays your money and choose your coloration.   All these wires are different.  It isn't just capacitance.  In an unbalanced IC the resistance of the center conductor is virtually always different than the shield, way different.  That's where resistance makes a difference.  Don't ask me why, I don't know.

Belden 89259 is a high quality RG59/U.  Insulation is foam fluorinated ethylene propylene.  Looks good:
http://www.belden.com/techdatas/metric/89259.pdf

neo

[john dozier]

There are lots of better Belden balanced interconnect cables than Belden 89207. With 1 bare copper & 1 tinned copper center conductor the symmetry will be impaired.Belden has so many cables, can you give a hint as to which ones you feel would be superior-and some reasons for the choice. Thanks

[john dozier]

For those interested, the Gore cable is an aerospace data one. Uses silver plated copper shield, two silver plated cooper conductors, both insulated with foamed PTFE with PTFE on the outside. Lower capacitance than 89207. I much prefer PTFE to FEP, thus the GORE. Regards

[S Clark]

Interesting, Neo, and honestly not surprising.  Stuff is system dependent.  Sort of like you said, "You pay your money and take your chances".  At least with BJ, you don't pay much money.  For me, I moved on to other IC's.
I've taken to heart what others using similar equipment to mine have said, but nothing is as good as putting it your rig and listening to it.

[Russell Dawkins]

Star-Quad cables and RCA connectors don't mix.

Why is that?

[Speedskater]

Very high capacitance.
Rather high end to end resistance.
Not all that good at low frequency shielding.
High cost.

RCA interconnects need a co-ax cable.

As Henry W. Ott wrote:

Second, minimize the resistance of the interconnecting cable shield. Use cables with a
copper braid (or even spiral copper) shield instead of a foil shield. Use cables with the
heaviest shield possible, or with double shields in order to minimize cable shield
resistance. Do not use cables with aluminum foil shields, since their resistances are much
higher. (Note: A foil-braid combination shield is fine, as long as the low resistance
copper braid is present). Also keep cables as short as possible, since this will also reduce
the total shield resistance.

15. Balanced vs. Unbalanced Audio System Interconnections (pdf file)
http://www.hottconsultants.com/tips.html

[neobop]

"RCA interconnects need a co-ax cable."

No they don't.  Quite a few manufacturers are using balanced microphone type cable for RCA interconnects.  One center conductor goes to hot and the other is ground on each end of the cable.  The shield is hooked up to the ground on the source end of the cable and not connected at the receiving end.  This works.  The 2 conductors are identical and there seems to be less common mode noise between components.  Many brands of directional RCA cables are hooked up in this manner.
neo

[WireNut]

There are lots of better Belden balanced interconnect cables than Belden 89207. With 1 bare copper & 1 tinned copper center conductor the symmetry will be impaired.

can you give a hint as to which ones you feel would be superior-and some reasons for the choice. Thanks

If you know of a Belden twinax cable that's better then 89207 please let us know.

[Speedskater]

If you know of a Belden twinax cable that's better then 89207 please let us know.

Well Belden makes a long list of two conductor shielded cables and often mechanical features govern the final choice.

Model numbers like 1800F, 8412, 8413, 2221, come to mind.  First choice is probably the 1800F.

added content

Jim Brown along with Bill Whitlock and David Josephson did a great amount of balanced cable testing and published several in-depth AES papers.  Of course none of the cable modle numbers are listed but the construction is.

'A Novel Method of Testing for Susceptibility of Audio Equipment to Interference from Medium and High Frequency Radio Transmitters'
http://www.audiosystemsgroup.com/AESPaperNY-SCIN-ASGWeb.pdf

'Testing for Radio-Frequency Common Impedance Coupling (the "Pin 1 Problem") in Microphones and Other Audio Equipment'
http://www.audiosystemsgroup.com/AESPaperNYPin1-ASGWeb.pdf

'Common-Mode to Differential-Mode Conversion in Shielded Twisted-pair Cables (Shield-Current-Induced Noise)'
http://www.audiosystemsgroup.com/AES-SCIN-ASGWeb.pdf

'Cables, Transmission Lines, and Shielding for Audio and Video Systems'
http://www.audiosystemsgroup.com/TransLines.pdf

[Russell Dawkins]

"RCA interconnects need a co-ax cable."

No they don't.  Quite a few manufacturers are using balanced microphone type cable for RCA interconnects.  One center conductor goes to hot and the other is ground on each end of the cable.  The shield is hooked up to the ground on the source end of the cable and not connected at the receiving end.  This works.  The 2 conductors are identical and there seems to be less common mode noise between components.  Many brands of directional RCA cables are hooked up in this manner.
neo

My thoughts exactly; this is exactly how I configure my in-studio RCA to RCA interconnects for audio frequencies - floating the shield at one end. I don't like the asymmetry of using the shield as a signal conductor.
I do use starquad cable for mic cable and even with the 50 foot runs I routinely use have never in 20 years had an RF contamination problem, nor hum. The loss of highs due to capacitance does concern me, though, and I think I will build a few specifically chosen for low capacitance if I can find a good source for bulk wire. Apparently Vovox is a very fine sounding wire, recommended by Brauner, but it appears their mic cable is unshielded 
I usually use a Canare Starquad for my main mic for the convenience, since the mic is a stereo Royer SF24 with a 5 pin XLR output. This enables me to use a single cable. My best cable for this mic is basically a 35' long Y cord with two conventional two conductor cables emanating from the XLR5F and terminating 35' later in two XLR3Ms.

You can imagine how much high frequency energy I lost in this situation (photo taken from recording position) where the cables from the main mic hung over and just behind the conductor (just visible as a black object in the centre of the third column from the right) went up to the transverse support cable then across to the right hand tower and down to the ground and along the right side of the audience and then back across towards me. I estimate the run was around 300 feet plus. The result as a soundtrack to the video still worked well, though.

[Wayner]

I believe that coax cable is popular for interconnects because the design usually results in lower capacitance, in the case of BJC stuff, usually 12-13 pf per foot (not including RCAs). That means that a typical 1 meter cable would probably have around 60pf. I've measured other twisted pair cables from other manufacturers like Monster, and have measured much higher values.

Just so happens that the other day I was measuring the Canare 4S11 speaker cable, about 3 meters long and was shocked by the reading of 550nf. Whereas, some plain old 2 conductor, side by side cables had a value of about 300pf.

Now if you have a touchy amp with some extra long speaker cables, the higher capacitance might be a not-so-happy companion, perhaps putting the amp into oscillation in the upper ultra high frequencies.

I think the whole cable thing is still a mystery to all. Bill Low, Cardas, Kimber and others all have different approaches to the design. So, to me, that means one of two things, either it really doesn't matter, or it's so complex that the differences in designs are masked by their differences. While one design might lower the capacitance, it may increase the induction or resistance, so it ends up to be the dog chasing the tail.

And perhaps it's simpler then that and many of the known notions don't have really anything to do with transmitting a small, complex signal over a distance, without bad alterations.

Wayner