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RE: Ali Express Valhalla, Odin, IC's and Speaker Cables

Posted by Tuckers (M) on September 7, 2022 at 15:05:40

In Reply to: RE: Ali Express Valhalla, Odin, IC's and Speaker Cables posted by Tuckers on September 7, 2022 at 13:34:17:

Disassembly!

Here is the description of the cable and what I can see.

material; high purity 1.003 grade Teflon (FEP) >>perhaps they are talking about the clear jacket you can see in the close up of the wire, thats fine.

Structure: Precise double-layer micro-space insulation structure, TSC full signal control shield >> There is a thin blue jacket directly on the wire, followed by the clear. They both could be teflon. This is followed by the spiral wrap of the silver material. This material is incredibly thin. It could be metal but could also be vapor deposited metalized mylar? Either way, there is no way this could act as an effective shield by its thinness. Also, the way the cable is assembled negates this shield anyways.

Conductor: 12 strands of pure silver >> There are 8 individual wires not 12 that make the spiral form and are soldered to the connector. The conductor is a solid core copper with a plating on top, probably silver as this is common in data conductors.

Transmission speed: 90% light speed >>so do most well designed data cables.

Shield: 100% braid American music ribbon Odin's high-quality 99.999999 single crystal copper and 78 micron extruded silver on the surface of 7N OFC >> The silver colored jacket is super thin, its hard to believe it is solid copper. Perhaps this description is conflating the wire construction with the shield. The wire construction could very well be what is described above.

Overall construction: four wires are soldered onto the outside USB metal jacket/ground. Four wires go into the connector probably connecting two to power, two for data.

Commentary:

The USB spec is for the data wires to be braided in a twisted pair. This cancels noise on the line, even some noise that comes from the equipment it is connected to. The twisted pair also cancels the interference each data + and - generates traveling next to each other. Without braiding, a USB cable does not meet spec, and most will fail unless enormous efforts are made to reduce noise and interference in other ways (this is evident in the description for Nordost Vallhalla USB cable). I don't believe Nordost makes an Odin USB cable, I couldn't find any, nor do I think they would use a spiral wound design for data. A spiral wound geometry can work very well with analog cables however. I used to make a solid silver spiral wound RCA cable that was very open and airy.

The silver colored jacket is so thin its hard to see it shielding much. But the assembly seemed to negate this effect anyways in that the soldering connects both the internal wire and the shield to the connectors. So anything that was captured in that shield was put right back into the signal at the solder joint.

I have a couple of digital cables I like from Ali Express (I've tried about 10 cables in all):

This one is my 2nd favorite cable, it has a wonderful organic sound, open and clear. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2251832497453302.html?

And this HDMI cable I use for i2S. Solid silver conductors, and it beat the cable recommended by Kitsune Audio for my dac by a fair margin. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2255800069559032.html?

Edits: 09/07/22 09/07/22 09/07/22 09/07/22 09/07/22 09/07/22 09/07/22

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Kimber Kable

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