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Actually I have built some stuff...

-I have custom braided AC cords (just for fun). I got about 1 whole twist per inch into that 12gauge wire!! (I want to experiment with multiple twisted pairs next, or maybe some concentric geometry stuff. Or maybe BOTH as you suggested! Bwah ha ha ha ha!!

-I have custom UTP unbalanced interconnects using various kinds of wire - PVC insulation, FEP Teflon, Kynar, with small gauge / mega-twist construction. No shielding at all. Just UTP. Work great.

-I also have MIL Spec teflon insulated and jacketed silver plated OFC cable for my balanced to unbalanced 6-channel conversion cable/snake for using 3-way stereo digital or analog active crossovers with unbalanced gear. Very pretty.

-I made a digital cable out of 75ohm CATV cable with a nice copper braid (the foil and foil drain wire stuff doesn't solder worth a lick). Added nice nylon braiding and blue heat shrink for added psychoacoustic benefit. Did not use transmission line theory to come up with the length - which I chose to be 3.128954348 feet. SNIP!! Cable is RCA to XLR, pins 1-3 tied, conversion cable for 2-wire SPDIF to 3-wire XLR AES/EBU/SPDIF input. (Works nice with Behringer AES/EBU/SPDIF input)

-I have a nice pair of Allen Wright's braided 2+1 conductor "three-nine" solid silver 'fine-wire' interconnects using teflon tubing (and some air!) as a dielectric (similar geometry Kimber braided stuff in theory).

-I have custom speaker cables, some are from Allen Wright's super-cables cook book (similar to interconnect design) and some CAT V jobbies I whipped up using 3 parallel twisted pairs, re-twisted and re-wrapped in their original skin and sealed up with black expanding nylon brade. Used banana jacks for amp end and Neutrik Speak-On cord ends and sockets for the speakers. Pairs were separated and color matched in true "audio obessive" manner. In the end, I only used the blue and white ones.

C'mon Sean. Does this sound like the work of a desk-jockey propeller head engineer?? No way man. This is shoot-from-the-hip DIY madman stuff done by a technologist caught in the chasm between theory and practive man!

Do these crazy DIY products make a difference? I can't honestly say. Sometimes I believe it does and other times I think lamp cord and $10 interconnects and IEC cords sound just as good. One thing that scares me... if I didn't engineer these products and they sound good it means that either:

a) the basic topologies are of sound design
b) the topoligies used are crap and I just can't hear it
c) the topoligies really don't matter as much as once thought

Which is it?? And for which cables?

Ah... but there is the RUB!

Cheers,
Presto


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