Silver DIY Interconnects

There are a lot if interesting observations and cable recipies on Jon Risch's web site:
http://www.geocities.com/jonrisch/
Jon posts a lot in the cable forum at Audio Asylum. He definitely prefers teflon as a dielectric, and I think he has a link where you can buy teflon tube for not much $$.

As to other discussion above, I always enjoy Sean's posts. I am an engineer, and I like to apply science where ever possible. But I find the issue of audio wire and cable to be very humbling. No matter how good the theory may be, in the end it needs to soung good to Albert (and the rest of us) or we need new theory!

Cheers,
Charlie

Other than ebay, the cheapest place I found for teflon tubing and cardas RCA connectors is http://www.hndme.com/
You can also buy the "color coded" teflon tubing for smoother sound
They ship the same day.
Use teflon tape from Home depot. You'll need 520" roll per 4 ft of the cable you're making.
I also use the pure silver 99.9% from the jewelry store and it works fine for me.

I agree with Sean, 22 gauge will be fine, however, smaller is better when it comes to silver. Silver's skin-effect is more pronounced than copper.

Be aware that you might be able to achieve some of the parametrics, such as RLC, but your DIY IC will not sound like a high-end cable such as Empirical, Purenote or Acoustic Zen. This is because the silver purity and processing steps are what sets the better cables apart from the rest.

Jewelry store silver will be "fine silver", which is 99.95% pure at best. Much lower purity than that used in most high-end cables.

I've very much enjoyed the insight provided by these discussions, especially when they remain civil, as this thread has; and appreciate Sean and others who try to explain how different parameters influence sound without getting into "my way is better than your way" matches.

Now, I'm fairly new to this and am still trying to learn; but here is where I'm at along the DIY IC path:

My system tends to be bit too bright, probably due to the NHT 2.9's that I'm using (Rotel power, Chiro pre, Cambridge Audio CD500SE), and the tile floor that they're sitting on; so my objective is to bring in a little more bass and mid-warmth. Actually, achieving more bass and warmth is probably the result of reining in the highs, rather than an increase in the former.

1) I've become indoctrinated in the signal jumping problems of stranded wire theory, primarily from Greg Weaver's writings, so I've stuck to solid core wires. I realize that there's no consensus on this.

2) I'm using copper, again for warmth.

3) I often read that capacitance is bad for IC's, though some respected commercial cables have fairly high capacitance. I believe in another thread that Sean indicated more capacitance provides more warmth; so it seems that maybe some capacitance is OK for some situations. I've tried Weaver's RS wire and tape IC's, and Chris's recipe substituting copper for silver. Both approaches result in cables which are very low in capacitance; but they're both too bright in my system.

So, the geometry that I'm using now (not my idea, but I'm not sure who to credit) is cross-wrapping two 30 ga. teflon insulated copper wires on a 10 gauge teflon core, with about a thumbnail's spacing in between each coil. For now I'm just using the cheap plastic RS RCA's, figuring that once I get a geometry that works well in my system, I can upgrade the plugs. For me, this has helped the bass/mid-range without any noticeable detriment to detail. I'm thinking about adding two more runs of the 30 ga. along the same cores, offset 90º from the existing two, to see how far I can go before capacitance, time smears, or whatever else might cause a problem, surfaces.

It's enjoyable to me anyway, and inexpensive, to try different geometries with essentially the same materials and achieve different results.