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Has anyone compared the DIY HomeDepot Outdoor Orange Power Cord turned into speaker cable to the Walmart White Lighting Yard Master patio cable. Same results or are there different results? I was surprised at how well the HomeDepot cables worked with my old speakers when compared to some Kimber and Straight Wire. But with some new speakers they failed in contrast to the other cables. If the White Lightnings are going to be no different than the HomeDepot cables, than I guess I have to drop some bucks for quality cables. Running Merlin TSM MMM Black Magic monitors. Thanks in advance.
Follow Ups:
If you want inexpensive great sounding cables with quality construction try Signal cable. I use Transparent Reference G5 stuff, but not everyone can afford such trifles!
dave_b
+1 on Signal Cable! Frank Dia builds a high quality great sounding product that won't bankrupt you.
Cheers,
Al
I'm eyeballing this stuff:
At the very least i would look at some of the Mogami speaker cable offerings or even rat shack
Mega cables before messing with extension cord cable.
Lots of used stuff along with every price line.
Plus one on this great stuff on the cheap
Bill
The big problem here is that Home Despot and WalMart and the rest, are ALWAYS searching for a better deal. That is, to INCREASE profit at nearly any expense. The chance of the 'AudioPhile Approved' extnesion cord being available in 6 months is slim. In a year? Almost guaranteed to have been replaced by a model that makes 'em more profit.
Too much is never enough
I've lived with White Lightening for a few years now. It held off a multitude a cables ranging from cheap to expensive ($1000 and up).
I think a white lightening cord is around $20, so trying it is kind of a no-brainer. You can always make interconnects out of it for the office system or subwoofer (like I did w the left over).
Anyway, audiophile nervosa is getting to me again and I'm wanting to try some Supra's.
With my older Merlin TSM MMM's, the DIY HomeDepot cable clearly beat out the Supra 6.0 Classic cable. But with the newer TSM MMM Black Magic speakers, the Supra clearly won out. Plus it beat out the lower end Kimber Kable and Straight Wire (which is very old).
I made some very nice sounding cables with Home Depot's plenum rated Cat5 cable. I used one cable for hot and another for ground. I twisted all the strands together at the ends and soldered on a banana connector. It was a pain in the teeth stripping the ends of all those strands, though.
Home Depot has a blue outdoor cord with rubber insulation. The rubber is to be more flexible at low temps. Sounds pretty good. Maybe the rubber insulation has better sonics than plastic?
Well, the cord I bought was orange with a black strip.
That would be Halloween Cable. There was a lot posted about it years ago.
Dave
I still have it in my system, in a shotgun configuration.I am looking to upgrade in the near-term, as well.
I would be interested to see in what direction (i.e., to what cables) others have gone.
axolotl
Edits: 12/09/14
The cool thing about HD-14 is that you can burn it in with you circular saw!
Dave
Well, we learn something every day :) Great, excellent, fabulous input. Now how long do we need to burn the cable in on that circular saw? And if we use a Black & Decker vs a Dewalt does it make a difference ;) Yeah, I've had a glass of wine tonight.
Use Black and Decker for a leaner more accurate balance. Use Dewalt for a lusher more organic presentation. Proper burn-in is achieved buy building one shed.
Dave
I am not doing a DIY shed. Ever.
axolotl
Be careful of Home Depot wires! I bought some of their house brand 10ga. bulk speaker cable about ten years ago. Looked identical to Monster (boo, hiss). It was okay for a couple of years, then oxidized (turned green) and the sound went to hell. They were buying it from a knock-off source in China at the time.
A waste of money :-(
Note that I'm not trying to slam Home Depot. I've been getting much of my home remodeling stuff from them for years, and they've always went out of their way to help me out if I encountered any problems.
Cheers,
Al
Me 2 even shorter time period
Bill
That used to happen to Monster Cable too, but they seem to have fixed it.
Dave
I'm trying to be smart with the DIY approach over buying the rather expensive Cardas cables that Bobby from Merlin highly recommends (another way of saying being frugal - or shall we say I'm a cheap). And I'd like to avoid the hassle of making the White Lighting Cables if they are not going to be any better than the HomeDepot DIY cables. So if there is a known difference, I'll give the White Lightenings a try. But if not and I can gain say a 30% or more improvement with a quality cable, than I guess I need to jump off the pier into the water.
BP thinks folks are made of money given his 'hand in your wallet' upgrade scheme. Do what you need to do. Lots of other options. I hope Duster chimes in. He always has value driven experience advice.
"It's all fun and games until someone doesn't pick up on the sarcasm"
Edits: 12/08/14
I've always greatly appreciated Bobby of Merlin going way out of his way to talk with me, and I think he makes an exceptional speakers. And I think the speaker Cardas cable he recommends will deliver excellent results. But I see cables as an accessory, not a major component as say my ARC Preamp. Cables just seemed severely over priced to me, and you have no idea how they will work with your system until you buy them. I do not mean to minimize the effort to come up with a good quality cable design, but I don't see the manufacturing cost any where near what it takes to make a good major component like a DAC or Preamp.
There is a huge gap between using shit wire from discount retailers and paying big bucks for Cardas. There are lots of recipes and outlets for quality cable and connectors for you to fashion your own, or you can buy pieces of OCC copper wire and really start from scratch to make cables that will be just as good, at far less expense, as anything Cardas has to offer. I was never too impressed with any of their cables.
So do you really want to be smart, or merely foolishly frugal? You have multi-thousand dollar speakers. Why scrimp now on cables?
Peace,
Tom E
mm
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" -Michael McClure
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