Looking for really fine cables at really low price

Metman & Nonoise,
I like your description and tend to agree with Nonoise earlier comment, tinned stranded copper, Supra/WE, "kissing cousins" is likely right. It has such an organic natural flow, less the electronic artifacts, full, texture, color, provides a nice emotion connection to the musicians. Everything is in balance. No etch, glare, quiet. Dynamics can be startling. I just love the tone. Rob

I'm also very impressed with the depth and layering of the music as well as the other attributes you mentioned. Any diy experience out there with the Belden's?

I am going down the same road with the WE16ga speaker cable and the Belden 8402 / Switchcraft ICs. If nothing else, should be a fun experiment. I really like my current Zu Events and MAC ICs (Palladium and Mystics), but I have an open mind!

2 questions that come to mind:
- On the Belden, is it best to connect the shield to one RCA (on the source side), or to both sides?
- On the WE16ga, to twist + and - together, and if so, # of twists / ft. or just leave them parallel?

It may take trial on error on both scenarios to figure out the best, but that will take time. Looking for some thoughts here, since sound will be affected based on the above.

Hello 1markr,
Please read the Jeff Day Wordpress blog, those questions are answered there. Most people just loosely twist the plus and minus together, not necessary though, some folks seem leave them parallel. Trial and error in your system likely the way to go. I bought both the red and black, loosely twisted the plus/minus together and gave the bare tinned copper ends some twists.

With respect to the Belden I believ Yazaki-san dropped the shield entirely, I'll have to go back and check. Of course other folks did one or the other. Go read the blog to make sure for yourself, I could be mistaken. Best, Rob

1markr, guys,
Here is what you are looking for regarding the RCAs:
I asked Yazaki-san how he planned to construct the interconnects, as there are a couple of different conventions for connecting a shielded two-conductor cable to RCA plugs. Yazaki-san told me, “One conductor is connected to the hot of the RCA plug. And the one more conductor is connected to the grounding of RCA plug with the shield of the cable. In my opinion, the audio signal has AC component, overlapped with DC component and AC current flows forward and backward. And so the conductor to the hot could flow AC forward current and the other conductor to the grounding could flow AC backward current under the same condition. And also grounding, one conductor and the shield could bring out the lower impedance for grounding.”

So in Yazaki-san’s method, one conductor goes to the RCA pins (hot), the other conductor goes to the plug housings (ground), and the shield is connected at each end to the ground. This is a little different connection method than is traditional here in the USA, where the norm is to connect one conductor to hot (pins), one conductor to ground (plug housings), and connect the shield only on one end (normally the preamplifier end) to the ground. Connecting the shield to ground on both ends has some potential risks, decreasing the effect of the shielding slightly, creating the possibility of a ground loop in some applications, and creating the possibility that noise voltages or currents from the shield can get on the signal conductor (Henry Ott, Reducing Noise in Electronic Systems, second edition, page 58). However, I found no issues at all with Yazaki-san’s connection method in my system, and as you’ll read in a moment, it sounded fantastic.