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I’m curious why you terminate them yourself rather than ordering them already terminated with your selected connectors?
Hey this is awesome guys, lots of great information. I'll respond to individual responses as time goes on. But it does seem there is some interest in some blind tests being done on said cables. The problem is, time and money to pull that off. But if there is enough interest, I may take the time and put together something as scientific as I can. But the problem would be budget. It would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time to do a shootout of even a marginally sized shootout unless I can get manufacturers to loan me cables to use as part of said test.
Because it is cheaper doing it this way. For a 12' terminated pair it is $92pr vs diy for $49pr. And I can reuse the cables and cut them to a shorter length if needed in the future.And when I bought my Belden 10g from BJC's it was 1/2 the price per foot that it is now and the connectors were cheaper as well.
I will be happy to share results. After an "audiophile" RCA interconnect failed recently decided to make my own. When cut open shocking how small the center conductor, 26 or 28 gauge. Will be using Cordial CMK222. Two OFC Copper conductors with copper weave shield. The two conductors will carry signal and return. The shield will be terminated to return on one end of the cable.
I will just address speaker cables. A few months, the local audio club had a guy in town to demonstrate Iconoclast speaker cables. It was done as an A-B comparison with Mogami speaker cables. The associated equipment was top of the line. Revel speakers. The Iconoclast speaker cables did sound better. They were expensive cables. It is something of a mystery why it should make a difference because there were plenty of inductors in the signal path, and the signal must pass through all of that wire. I had no intention of paying the price for the Iconoclast cables. I have my own experience with speaker cables over the years. I read that a telephone cable could work well. Until recently, I have been using Cat 6 telephone cable, and I had been satisfied with that. After the show, I decided to try an experiment. I prepared some cables using the Cat 6 wire. I also bought some Cat 8 ethernet cable on Amazon. That was 50 feet for about $25. I cut the Cat 8 into 4 equal lengths. The way I do all of these cables is to strip the insulation and twist all of the small wires together in a bundle. That gives a fairly fat wire. I estimate that the Cat 6 telephone cable comes out to about 12 gauge and the Cat 8 ethernet to about 14 gauge. I contacted my host for the Iconoclast demonstration and asked if I could come over and do a comparison. He agreed. He had the Iconoclast cables. I think that our evaluation was similar. He thought that my Cat 6 cables were about equivalent to the Mogami. The Cat 8 cables played in the same ballpark as the Iconoclast. The sonic signature was a little different. I thought that the Iconoclast had a bit fuller and richer sound and Cat 8 had better rhythm and pace. Some Cat 6 telephone cable is copper-plated aluminum. Don't get that. Get solid copper. I'd just order some Cat 8 ethernet cable from Amazon or wherever and cut it up. You can get 4 12.5 foot cables out of one 50 foot ethernet cable.
You could ask AC members to send you/let you borrow inexpensive IC's for the test.
JLM brought up an interesting point that I've wondered about for a long time. I can't locate the forum or the thread but basically one of the Bryston engineers confirmed they use a Van Damme wire in their manufacturing process that is not ultra high end. I've also seen that they sell the tour mic xlr as an interconnect. Again, nothing fancy. I use BJC Belden 10 ga and I it seems to work very well. I guess people adjust lots of different things to color or change sound and perhaps cables are a way of doing this? My goal has been to make everything as transparent as possible so that the only changes I make are with my preamp tubes to affect sound. I feel like I can purchase a wide variety of tubes for less than the cost of some of the super expensive cables. I think I will order some of the van damme interconnects and give it a go since you guys started this discussion and have me thinking. Not trying to hijack op, but if someone knows whether the BJC or Van Damme interconnect is most transparent please pass along. Thank you.
On Cat cable speaker cables. Look for old Cat3 or Cat5 cable. The price is often low or free and there is nothing to be gained with higher Cat numbers.So with 24AWG Cat3 or Cat5.4 cables will have 16 high and 16 low conductors. equal to a 12AEG conductor.connect all the solids to one terminal and all the stripes to the other.
If you compare the standards between Cat 3, Cat5, 5E, 6, etc, each was designed with the idea that they have to reject interference from the other wires in the cable and outside sources. As the spec is revised, they increase the density of twists, add more shielding allowing higher data rates down the cable, etc. Cat 3 has the twists every few inches, where cat 5 is like multiples in an inch. Cat 6 takes that even further. Since those techniques are designed for EFI rejection, I can't see the benefit of Cat3 over Cat 5 or later (Cat 4 is a non starter). I would make the assumption that if network cables make good speaker wire (and I will state for the record, I have my doubt), Cat 3 would likely be the worst of the options out there. Again, i'm not even convinced that network cables would make good speaker wires, but the logic to me is that with each version of cables being better and better for rejecting interference it would stand to reason that those newer specced cables (Cat 5, 6, 7, etc) would be better for that application. But, I am keeping an open mind, and will do my own comparisons. But if I do that, I feel obliged to try out the good ol coat hanger routine, which I fully expect to sound the worst of any given wires out there.
That thought had crossed my mind. Any AC members here willing to loan cables for some tests?
