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

---

[ Follow Ups ] Thread: [ Display  All  Email ] [ Tweakers' Asylum ]

---

[ Alert Moderator ]

---

Interesting

Posted by Jon Risch (B) on March 24, 2007 at 13:39:04

In Reply to: I hit a homerun with my homemade balanced IC's posted by madisonears on March 20, 2007 at 20:52:20:

Very similar to the XLR twisted pair design I propose, except that instead of foamed teflon cores, you used teflon tubing and OCC wire.
You also forgo the shield layer.

While the teflon tubing etc. has the potential to outperform the foamed teflon cores, it is a lot harder to build, less robust unless you do manage to make a very tight fit at the ends, and provide some strain relief, etc.

Materials wise, the OCC is going to be better than the good grade of ETP copper in the 1506A or 1695A cores, and the teflon tubing MIGHT be as good or better than the foamed FEP teflon from the cable cores, but what type of heatshrink did you use on the twisted pair to keep it in place on the teflon tubing? Polyolefin heatshrink wouldn't be too bad, and teflon is available (but very expensive), while PVC would tend to compromise the sonics somewhat.

See:
http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/cables/messages/113781.html
which references two other posts with more details on the wiring and layout.

By spacing the shield out away from the twisted pair, the problems from the presence of the shield are minimized, and the overall cable shielding is much greater than without.

I would say that taken as a whole, the performance is going to be approx. 90-95% that of the more difficult version, and only if you used polyolefin heatshrink or better. If you used PVC, then they might be roughly even, being "6 of one, half dozen of the other". Very close, in any event.

Glad to hear that you are satisfied with your DIY cable, now you know why DIY cables even exist, is is easy to meet or exceed the performance of some quite costly retauil cables for a moderate expenditure of time and money.
Jon Risch

• DIY Cable Info   (Open in New Window)

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

Sonic Craft

---

[ Top of Page ] [ Contact Us ] [ Support/Wish List ] [ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]

---

[ General ] [ Speakers ] [ Tubes ] [ Vinyl ] [ Digital ] [ Hi-Rez ] [ Video Asylum ] [ Cables ] [ Tweaks/DIY ] [ Music ] [ Films ]

---