Cat 5/7, et al. revisited...

Tweakers' Asylum

Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

128.227.47.242

There has been alot of discussion about how to best make a nice DIY cable from Cat 5/7 cable. Here are a few things from my experience:
1. Use plenum grade cable. This should be apparent to all by now, but it goes without saying. I personally use the Hitachi Category 7 plenum cable, available for $0.31/ft from www.cablestogo.com. What is the difference between Cat 5 and Cat 7 (6e, etc.)? Much tighter tolerances! The catergory 7 cable that I bought had _very_ consistent spacing for the twists, vastly improved over Cat 5 (anyone tried Belden MediaTwist yet?). Some vendors even use a teflon, +-shaped spacer to keep the individual twisted pairs seperate from each other.
2. How do you string all the runs together? I have heard (and experimented) with about 9 different constructions, putting all of them through an extensive listening test. The best _overall_ construction is that which does the following:
a. you wire the pairs +/-. This minimizes the inductance
b. you use _four_ runs per speaker. not three, not two, not five, four..this is done for a reason which will soon be very obvious.
c. QUAD BRAID the four runs together. I cannot stress this enough. I know there is nothing posted out there about properly doing a 4 strand braid, so let me try and explain it. Group the four runs together under the edge of something heavy (we will call these A-B-C-D). Runs A and C will be your 'horizontal' runs. Runs B and D will be your 'vertical' runs. Seperate out the runs into this configuration (at this point, I have one under my knee, one in my mouth, and one in each hand). Begin crossing A over C, then B over D, then C over A, then D over B, etc. Pay VERY careful attention to making the same logical side the 'top' of the cross EACH TIME. If you do it wrong, the whole cable becomes two twisted pairs spiralled around each other. If you do it right, it turns into a VERY nice looking, highly flexible construction. I use this construction because it generates the best sound by far, is very neat, and quite flexible.
d. don't braid all the individual twisted pairs together!!! This is very important. The individual strands are already under a great deal of stress from the high-speed mechanical twisting process. Braiding and rebraiding these fragile connectors causes all kinds of problematic stresses on the crystal itself. The quad braid eliminates the neatness problem and gives you a noticable improvement in sound over the multi-braids so popular these days...
I hope this helps,
rob

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

VH Audio

Topic - Cat 5/7, et al. revisited... - Rob 13:11:32 05/07/99 (6)

Re: Cat 5/7, et al. revisited... - Allan 07:14:42 05/10/99 (0)

Re: Cat 5/7, et al. revisited... - Frank 05:54:44 05/10/99 (1)

Re: Cat 5/7, et al. revisited... - Conduit 13:41:34 05/10/99 (0)

Re: Cat 5/7, et al. revisited... - Allan 10:23:29 05/08/99 (2)

Re: Cat 5/7, et al. revisited... - Jon Risch 21:29:58 05/09/99 (1)

Re: Thanks Jon - that's what I thought he meant... - Allan 07:10:14 05/10/99 (0)

You can not post to an archived thread.