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Braid your speaker cable
Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 9:45 pm
by William from NOLA
Anyone who has CAT-5 cable laying around and has free time may want to try this out.
http://www.venhaus1.com/diycatfivecables.html
Supposively, CAT-5 braided the way this guy has said will actually sonically sound better than high end cabling companies.
All interesting nonetheless.
Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 10:22 pm
by 71buickfreak
This is using some principles of electrical theory that have some merit. I personally have used wire like this in my house for years, and with the right equipment, it will make a difference. but you have to be able to hear the differences. it is not going to be something that jumps out at you and says HEY I'M BETTER! it will be the subtle nuances and "feel" of the music. Using equipment that is easily purchased in a local A/V shop (read not Krell, Mark Levinson, ultra high end stuff), its not going to make a big enough difference for you to go out and blow $100 on a box of cat5. A lot of this stuff is gimmicky and when you hear the difference, its just your mind playing tricks. How many times have you heard a salesman telling you that these $500 RCAs with directional dielectric coatings and twisted pair cores sound better than cheap taiwan crap? well test a pair. I have set of $1000 1 meter IXOS Gamma rcas. If I had a regular cd player that I wasn't using Toslink on, I would have them hooked up. as it is they are sitting in a drawer. I use Tara Labs rca cables where I do use them in home. I use 16/4 twisted pair 14ga pvc jacketed wire in my walls to my equipment room. It all depends on what you are listening to and why you are listening to it. if you go to a true audiophiles house and listen to music on his Krell cd player and martin logans or mcintosh or B&Ws (yuck!) then you will most likely find $50,000 worth of amp and cd transport sitting on the floor with wires running directly over the floor and a chair sitting in the sweetspot. for car audio, anything gained by the expensive wires would be lost in the noise floor. its not worth the expense.
In my car, I use twisted pair Gamma braided rcas, which are basically 3 wires, pos, neg and a teflon jacketed dieletric core which is losely braided to induce a cancelling effect on inducted noise. these sound awesome, and can be made at home with some 18ga primary wire and solder-on rca tips. I got mine for Rockford (whom I am sponsered by). I also use the same Gamma braided speaker wire, in 12 ga. the idea behind Gamma braids is that the 3rd core creates spacing between the wires so as they cross, they do so at or close to 90 degrees, which is yields the least amount of space where the wires touch, lowering the ability of noise to bleed into the signal. To make a long story short (too late), yes it does make a difference (although I wouldn't use cat5, I would use OFC oxygen free copper and do a simple braid) but it can be bought that way and going to such great lengths in car audio for a driving system and not a sit still engine off, SQ competition car, most of it would be lost.
Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 4:47 am
by GlassWolf
braided cables use a specific number of twists per meter based on the wavelength of the frequency of signal the cables will be carrying, so you can't just braid any two wires and expect instant improvement. It doesn't work that way.
As Buick pointed out, you need wires that are engineered to cancel noise for the given application.
Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 6:54 pm
by Audiophile
*goes to garage...remembers that dad is telecommunications guy...sees 7 boxes of cat-5 and cat-7 (i think)*
I'm off to braid the wires, the wonderful wires of cat! lol
Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 7:02 pm
by Audiophile
Hmmm I forgot to ask...does anyone know anything about Technics home speakers? I know they make super-high end (or so I hear) turntables and the like, but I've never heard about the speakers...