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Help me build speaker cables please!

Howdy!
I’m looking for input on some home brewed speaker cables. I’m currently using cables I made from braiding 8 lengths of CAT 5 plenum cable together. They’re terminated in silver plated BFA bananas and set up as a biwire configuration at the speaker end. I love their sound, but think I’m ready to try something made from higher grade metal. I’ve been doing a lot with silver in my system and have loved the change in sound almost every time I’ve gone from Cu to Ag. The only place I like Cu better is in the PCs for my amps. That said, I’m leaning heavily towards making a set of solid silver speaker cables, using .999 silver wire from Rio grande. I’ll insulated them with teflon spaghetti tubing and possibly terminate them with silver plated BFAs.

Where I’d love some input is here: do I do one run of 10awg, or biwire 12awg to the woofers, 14awg to the tweeters and mids? I’m using a dared tube preamp and monoblock Ghent audio class D amps (500w into 4 ohm) which drive floor standing RBH 1266 SE/R speakers. They are 4 ohm and have side firing 12" speakers. They like a lot of juice and sound their best when given what they want, hence my desire for large diameter cables.

Cost wise, it’s only $50 more expensive to biwire. I liked the change in sound when I first biwired, but I also went from blue jeans twisted pair 12 awg to my braided CAT 5, which has a combined 9 awg. So I’m not sure if it was the biwiring or all the other differences that improved the sound.

Also, any other ideas for superb sounding DIY SCs are welcome.

Danke!
128x128toddverrone
toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone OP
840 posts
 
I was thinking of actually doing the math and calculating how much neutral I'll need. I'll be assuming a radius of 1" for the helix.. and yeah, I was thinking of just make jumpers out of whatever wire I end up using in the end, since biwire is not practical with this design

I'll definitely be leaving a nice straight end for each conductor. You can see how I terminated my current cables on my system page. 
williewonka
3,063 posts
 
@toddverrone - for IC’s I use a ratio of 3.0 times the length of the signal wire.

For the latest Power cable I increased that to 2.6 because I used a smaller gauge (14) neutral conductor and wanted maximum coverage to maximize the screening ability of the 9ft cable. Generally, all of the other Power cables have been around 2.3 because of the thicker gauge conductor being used

For the speaker cables I will be making this week I will be reducing that ratio to 2.0, since screening is not as important with a cable carrying a signal that will not be amplified any further. I see no point in wasting money on wire that has minimal effect :-)

My take on it is ...
- if the signal is going to be amplified at all then use more neutral conductor
- otherwise reduce the amount of neutral - i.e. within reason

My early Helix IC’s and power cables were probably all closer to 1.8, but I can’t say I noticed any difference in the noise floor between those and the later versions with more neutral - I guess I am just playing it safe with the ratios above.

Increasing the ratios to greater than 2,6 (power) and 3.0 (IC’s) by too much more is not possible due to the thickness of the conductors in play - the helix ends up being longer than the signal.

Hope that helps
williewonka
3,063 posts
 
@toddverrone FYI - I just purchased these bananas - I think they do spades as well.

http://www.audiophileanswers.com/Nerve_Audio_Silver_Ultra_Low_Mass_Banana_Z_plug_Co_p/931-090.htm

Another spade/banana option is Furez - great quality and the do work exceptionally well - but a little more expensive,

I have something similar on the gZero6's and they appear to work very well

I like the fact they are silver plated

Regards - Steve


toddverrone's avatar
toddverrone OP
840 posts
 
Steve - great minds! My current cat 5 speaker cables are terminated with those exact same bananas. I bought some copper crimp sleeves from Lowes to put over the bananas, as I prefer a crimp connection to a solder when dealing with many individually insulated conductors.

I think, though, this time I’ll terminate the speaker end in spades and use the bananas to make jumpers, since biwiring is not an option.
williewonka
3,063 posts
 
@toddverrone - UPDATE...

Todd - I’ve built one of the cables with the conductors that I have identified above and I encountered some minor annoyances...

Construction...
  1. - I used two layers of 1/4 inch shrink tube to protect the 16 gauge mil-spec signal wire and put some added "distance" between it and the neutral
  2. - Being a twisted conductor, the 20ft neutral (i.e. on a 10 ft signal wire) only allowed for one wrap every inch. I guess the 1/4" shrink tube required more neutral than I had anticipated I was looking for 2 winds every inch, but I do not believe it will impact the sound.
  3. - Once I had it tightly twisted around the dowel, I secured it at both ends and then warmed the wire with a hair dryer to make it more malleable and then rolled it with the palm of my hand on a flat surface to tighten the wrap and ensure there was minimal unrolling once the the tape securing the ends was removed - this is something you might not encounter to the same degree using two single conductors for the neutral
  4. I then left it for a couple of hours to settle
  5. I inserted the signal wire into the shrink tube, inserted that assembly into the helix coil and secured the ends of the neutral and signal with some dabs of hot glue and shrink wrap - it stops the neutral from unwrapping and sliding up and down the signal wire
Using the twisted neutral was a lot harder to coil and was much more "springy" than I had anticipated - not something I’d suggest to others - unless it provides significant benefits - but it does look quite striking with an orange and black twisted neutral wrapped around the black shrink tube

I’ll let you know how they sound once I’ve installed the bananas (still in transit) and allowed some burn-in

Chat Later






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