Adding shielding to existing cables

Kudos to your DIY spirit!!

Thanks for letting me know what happened.

How is the sound, do you feel like you lost any treble or mids??

Yep.  That would work.

You will be adding some capacitance, be interesting if this changes the quality of your cables. :)

@dgarretson knows his stuff.

All I want to suggest is, maybe don't hack your favorite ICs as your first one? :)

@millercarbon is not only a creepy online stalker but he is my biographer.

He’s referring to a learning experience I had with DIY cables. Yes, I broke something using single stranded pure silver interconnects. I shared the experience with others about what to be careful of.

In this particular thread, Miller failed in any meaningful way to address my suggestion, but instead has to go way back to remember something I said he can use against me.

The suggestion I made is a good one. I know this because I made my own cables and did the research. I also made a mistake here and there. That’s proof of experience.

Best,
E

To be clear I have an existing Decware cable that sounds great, but is unshielded. I’m not trying to DIY a new cable from scratch. I just want to add shielding to see if that solves my noise problem.

Right, so .... if you like your cables, don't hack them yet.

Use inexpensive shielded first. That is, use the Belden as a prototype. If you like your results, then you know what direction you want to go in.  The goal here is not sublime purity of essence, but to prove/disprove your ideas of noise elimination. Do it cheaply with cables you don't mind throwing away before you hack things you love.

Best,

E

Here is a great candidate.

https://www.parts-express.com/belden-brilliance-8451-22-awg-2c-mic-line-instrument-cable-beldfoil-sh...

The foil is a little better than braid at shielding.

Oh, pro tip:

Building your own cables, use balanced cabled + a shield.

The inner conductors form the center and outer jacket connections.  The foil shield is connected only at the source jacket.

Lemming,

My "no" was to the extreme level of visually unappealing hackery here.

I mean, sure, add a shield and see where grounding it works best for you if that’s what you want to do.

From a "looks nice" and "doesn’t look like a mad scientists creation" point of view though, if you are going to start cutting off ends, why not just use some nice looking, shielded interconnect cables with new plugs? That may be all you need to stop the noise, and it will look nice and clean.

In other words, you are overthinking the solution already. Start with the normally suggested approach: Use foil shielded interconnects. You can make them yourself inexpensively.

THEN and only then if you still can't get relief start experimenting with novel grounding.

Um, no, my friend.  No...

Just build them with the right construction to begin with. Use Belden balanced wires with foil shield and inexpensive RCA jacks first, see if that fixes your problem.