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DIY Speaker Cable Project

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Posted on March 24, 1999 at 11:40:26
jam


 
I've read quite a few designs for speaker cables and now I'd like to build a set for myself. What I'd like to build is a set of cables that has the weave pattern of Kimber 8TC made from CAT 5 cable. Does anyone out there have a construction details to build this cable?

 

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Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 24, 1999 at 13:28:34
Adam


 
Go to Bigg Matts web page, and look under DIY cables by Chris VH - his speaker cable design is supposed to better AQ Midnight and 8TC.

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 24, 1999 at 14:02:27
jam


 
I saw his design and tried it on a short length. I thought is was difficult to keep the braid even thoughout and thought it looked strange, which is a problem since the speaker wire is visable in my system layout. I much prefer the look of Kimber 8tc, I'd just like to save a few bucks and have the pride of making these myself.

 

Suggestions..., posted on March 24, 1999 at 15:39:07
SFDude


 
I'm currently in the midst of constructing these cables (it's been a month already and I'm taking my good ol time doing it!!!).

Make the braid as tight as possible. You can manipulate the wires a bit after your braiding is complete to make it more uniform throughout the length of the cable. However, it won't be completely perfect (that's why we spend the big bucks on a pair of Kimbers, for their craftsmanship as much as the labour that went into making them).

 

Suggestions..., posted on March 24, 1999 at 15:41:15
SFDude


 
I'm currently in the midst of constructing these cables (it's been a month already and I'm taking my good ol time doing it!!!).

Make the braid as tight as possible. You can manipulate the wires a bit after your braiding is complete to make it more uniform throughout the length of the cable. However, it won't be completely perfect (that's why we spend the big bucks on a pair of Kimbers, for their craftsmanship as much as the labour that went into making them). Twist and stretch and pull on it if you have to.

You may also consider using heatshrink tubing to dress up the cable and make it look more presentable. I don't know what this does to the sound of the cable but Kimber's philosophy is that any shielding around their 4TC/8TC cables causes stray fields to be trapped inside the cable, thereby interfering with the overall signal travelling through the wire.



 

Re: Suggestions..., posted on March 24, 1999 at 16:51:39
jam


 
I messed around with the braiding a lot and can't see any way I can keep things even and tiddy. I thought of heat shrink wrap, but's that's fairly ugly and not cheap.

If no one can post the recipe for the Kimber weave, I may by a foot and try to figure out how to make it. I've found it much eaiser to keep things even and tiddy by twisting rather than braiding. By looking at 8tc, it looks twisted to me.

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 24, 1999 at 19:22:52
Adam


 
Why should the look of the cable bother you, how did it sound???

The only other alternative is to double up on cat 5 and connect appropriate wires in parallel, without braiding.....

Have you thought of using other base cable, Thorstens UBYTE - 2 is VERY impressive IMHO and not very hard to make either...

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 24, 1999 at 19:23:20
Jon Risch


 
The CAT5 cable has inherently smaller gauge wires, duplicating the Kimber would require heavier gauge wires, and even then,m the materials probably wouldn't duplicate the quality level of the Kimber product. He sues seven different steand sizes inside each of the indivudually insualted wires to reduce resonances.

Alos, about the CAT5 wire: not all CAT5 is equal, some has tinned stranded wires, some have bare copper wires, some have PVC insualtion, while some have teflon or polyolefin insulations, etc. You can not take for granted that getting a cable designated as CAT5 compatible will provide the quality levels of the better retail cables like Kimber.

See my DIY Speaker Cable Note (URL in the FAQ section of this board) for details on which part numbers are the good stuff. Tech America had a sale on some of the plenum grade CAT5 cable, it was around 24 cents a foot, reg. 39, and I think it was part #910-1603. The sale ends this month?

Just remember that any of the good constructions will be a lot of labor, and it is foolish to try and save a few dollars when you are going to be spending all that time and effort to make them right. Get the good materials, you won't be sorry.

Jon Risch

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 25, 1999 at 05:04:17
ChrisVH


 
Yeah, it does take a little practice to get the braiding uniform, but I didn't have any problem after the first couple I tried. The Cat 5 I used was from General Cable (teflon insulated, NON-tinned), and had 4 different striped and solid colors- Brown, Orange, Green, and Blue. The end-product looked like "Rainbow Cable" and REALLY looked cool. Although I didn't do it, you could probably use heatshrink over the terminations for a more "finished" look. BTW, don't be concerned if your end result looks "flat" instead of round- for some reason it is next to impossible to get the wire to lay in such a manner as to get a perfect circle when complete. This should not affect the performance, since every strand is constantly moving from the outside of the braid to the inside and then back to the outside. This should help minimize the field interactions. I got this idea from Stereophile's interview with Roger Skoff (XLO) a few years ago. Whatever cable you try- good luck, and good listening!

 

Re: Suggestions..., posted on March 25, 1999 at 05:15:00
ChrisVH


 
I'd be interested in your impression once you get down to listening to these babies after you have completed them. I had some Kimber 8TC in my system when I was constructing these and tried to figure out the braiding technique used- but it was next to impossible. I even did research on the NET about long lost braiding techniques in different areas of the world. In the end I decided to subscribe to the K.I.S.S. theory :-)

At any rate, the end result supplanted my 8TC's (which replaced my AQ Midnight's), and remained King until I made Allen Wright's (slightly modified) silver foil design.

Good luck- you were probably smart in not trying to tackle this project all in one weekend (as I did)- it took a while before my fingers felt "right" again ;-)

ChrisVH

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 25, 1999 at 11:43:57
Thorsten


 
Hi there,

I understand you want a neat looking Cable that is as good or better than Kimber.

Please just try the following:

(Quoted)

"BTW, I built myself a set of FFRC last evening using 4 equal lengths of 550Mhz certified Category 7 plenum cable (4 per speaker). The results caused me to blink my eyes in wonder as I got better audible results then I did from my Kimber 8TC.

Your pages have powerfully inspired me, thanks for all the insight...
rob

Robert Bird, Senior Network Engineer"

This was one of the responses I got on the FFRC DIY Cable project published on the TNT-Audio website:

http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ffrc_e.html

I have so far replaced all sorts of Cables (in other peoples systems) with this type of Cable, going from Kimber to Van denHul and Audioquest (in all cases their more budget oriented stuff). The improvement in all cases was significant....

However the cable I use myself is the "UBYTE-2". It's even better. A lot better.

Either Cable can be made up using this expandable nylon braided Sleeving.

Optics the are as they are for many very expensive High-End Cables. I'm selling these Cablese here in the greater London Area, so I MUST have good optics.....

Later Thorsten

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 25, 1999 at 17:12:14
jam


 
I read the instructions for the UBYTE-2 project. I'm a novice when it come to DYI speaker cable projects. Isn't the cable compromised by the leadouts, why not just use the leadout design for the entire cable?

I may try the FFRC DIY Cable project. What's the differnece between cat 5 and cat 7 in this application?

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 25, 1999 at 17:45:32
Jon Risch


 
If you try the FFRC design, I urge you to properly terminate it by using the wire pairings rather than just connecting the whole run of wires in each jacket together. This will lower inductance, and reduce the effect of the jacket material as a dielectric. Wiring it as indicated in the TNT article will maximize the amount of dielectric involvement of the jackets, which may not be made of a good material if you don't get the Plenum grade CAT5 cables. Also be warned, that in the US, the most common CAT5 cables are PVC insulated for the individual wires, which is a very poor insulator. The only way to be sure to get the good insulator materials is to be sure to get a specific model of CAT5 cables, see my DIY Speaker cable note for the part #s. Some of the CAT5 cables have a foil shield, this IS NOT good for a speaker cable, and will screw up the sound.

Tech America is currently selling Belden CAT5 cables for 31 cents a foot, I think it is on sale till the end of the month for 24 cents a foot. This is their part #910-1603, and Belden #1585A. Teflon for the individual wire insulation.

Jon Risch

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 25, 1999 at 17:54:10
jam


 
Thanks for the help. It looks like I get the exact wire you described, run three lengths of it for each cable, wire all the pair together, but some heatshrink on, terminate and I'm done. I think I can do this. What size heat shrink is correct for three cat 5 cables to go inside? I read you article and I don't understand the 2:1 ratio. Does that mean get half the length of heatshrink for the length of cable, or get heatshrink that is twice the diameter of three cat 5 cables? I'm sure this is clear, I just don't get it.

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 25, 1999 at 19:27:13
ChrisVH


 
The reason I orginally bought the CAT 5 cable was to make cables similar to the ones you describe. I got the idea from SpeakerBuilder magazine about 2 1/2 years ago. The sound improved vastly with the (blue) outer jackets removed. I tried braiding with the jackets on and the difference between jacket vs. no jacket was NOT subtle. Try for yourself though, it is easy to remove the jacket if you aren't satisfied with the result. Good luck.

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 26, 1999 at 08:44:53
Thorsten


 
Hi again,

Jon wrote:

>>>If you try the FFRC design, I urge you to properly terminate it by using the wire pairings rather than just connecting the whole run of wires in each jacket together. This will lower inductance, and reduce the effect of the jacket material as a dielectric. Wiring it as indicated in the TNT article will maximize the amount of dielectric involvement of the jackets, which may not be made of a good material if you don't get the Plenum grade CAT5 cables.<<<

Jon, please note that the Cable is actually designed for Bi-Wiring and that the Tweeter section (where it matters) is wired in pairings, and only the Woofer-connection uses the wires per jacket.

This was done to reduce (very succesfully) the Capacitance of the cable to neccesary minimum. Many solid-state "HiFi" and "High-End" Amplifiers I have come across have poor stability into capacitive loads, hence this compromise.

If your Amplifier will be stable into capacitive loads, go with Jon's recommendation.

As for Jon's comments on the makeup of the Cables, I completely agree with his comments. As the "common" insulation for Cat 5 in Europe is polyolefin (and not PVC) I extraplolated that that would be the case everywhere.

As this is not the case, PLEASE use Plenum rated Cat 5 UNSHIELDED Cable only.

Later Thorsten

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 26, 1999 at 08:48:01
Thorsten


 
Hi there,

>>>I read the instructions for the UBYTE-2 project. I'm a novice when it come to DYI speaker cable projects. Isn't the cable compromised by the leadouts, why not just use the leadout design for the entire cable?<<<

I agree that the leadouts are a small compromise for making the cable easier to handle. The reason that I dod not use this type of Cable for any length more than appx. 1m is simply the difficulty in making it....

I will not twist together the overall 22m of 49 individual Strands of Wirewrap wire I would need for my own Speaker-Cables.... If you want to go ahead - have fun.....

Later Thorsten

 

Re: DIY Speaker Cable Project, posted on March 26, 1999 at 10:27:18
Jon Risch


 
The 2:1 ratio describe frot he heatshrink is the ID before shrink to the ID after shrink. In order for the heatshrink to be tight, it should be shrinking tdown to an ID that is slightly smaller than the bundled wires, not the same.

With each CAT5 cable being about 0.2" dia., and they will nest into each other for three, I would get some 1/2 inch nominal heatshrink, if you don't over heat it, it should be OK.

Jon Risch

 

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