Anti-cables alternatives

There are your own... i.e. buy magnet wire 20-22g for IC and 16-18 for spkr, AND, twist the IC, attach connectors and there you are!

Just bought a set last month.

try http://www.anticables.com/order.html

A good match for my maggies, but not so great with my North Creek Catamounts.

YMMV

Chimera cable is made from long crystal magnet wire. I don't know if I'd call it anti-wire. He's goes to great lengths to make the best interconnect or speaker wire possible. But there are no secrets. He tells you every thing that he does. It is good enough that I've stopped shopping for cable
Steve

i'm still at a loss as to why people are paying $10 per foot for 12 guage magnet wire that retails for about $3-4 per pound. a 10 foot pair costing $200 is about 10x what you would pay for an entire spool of this stuff, which has 100 feet or better. there's no magic here, it's just magnet wire. sure it works and sounds great, but people need to do their homework and save some serious money. those isoblocks sold for $25 to $50 for a set are the same ones you can get at a furniture store or appliance store for about $1 each or less. and no, they are not "specially tuned" or formulated in any way by the resellers.

All cables work...
And the point is that, when you have really very good speakers, amplifiers- pre and sources, the cables able to be up to them are quite expensive.
If not, you still will have something good.
But not great - and not as good as you could have.
Eventually, a kind of loss of money on very good and expensive outfit.

Anticables ?
For me, a joke !
But just for me... as I only want to speak on my own...

I just changed Cardas Neutral Reference speaker cables (bi-wired) for a Kimber Select 3035 (copper-silver), and the improvement is amazing !
(I don't say that the Cardas was not good : it was a good/ very good cable, but at least not a great cable with my outfit. That's the big point !)

But, whatever the oufit, the differences are important... unless people are deaf...

There are several cables that use magnet wire - but most use long crystal high purity copper of course. Having them waving in the breeze rather that put alongside bad stuff like Teflon is a very good idea if you ask me, and have been able to verify the benefits of doing so with home made cables. Almost all cables are compromised by the need to wrap them up to make them acceptable to consumers, and none of those wrappings improve the sound. I am not saying anti-cables are any better than any other cable, but I am saying being derisory about the lack of sound destroying insulation and wrapping is somewhat dopey, and deriding magnet wire is at least a little misguided since there are a few good cables that use it (though you might never know without cutting them open).

Redkiwi: nothing wrong with magnet wire thickness for interconnects. It's actually preferable to high gauge (say #14) wire in general, from my experience. The "wrapping" should serve several good purposes. First is the mechanical stability by absorbing vibrations. Second is the practical implementation of shielding, which is a necessary evil with some cables. Last is for protection of the actual wires. Then there is also the aesthetic side of things, which is important to most of us for WAF...
But I won't argue with "success". If bare wires do the best job in your system and you can live with them - so be it.

I don't use the anti-cables, but yes I do find bare cable or enamelled cable to perform very well in some circumstances and to be more naturally dynamic and more neutral than the effect of poly whatsit or teflon. Absorbing vibration is an issue but teflon is rubbish for that job.

Absorbing vibration is an issue but teflon is rubbish for that job.

Quite. For mechanical support one can use wide masking tape (paper, one side adhesive). Both JD & I have done this and it's fine (rather than have the wires dangling in the air).

Does anyone know of a source for bulk OFC magnet wire?

What size wire is used in the anti-cable IC?
What is the geometry?

10-18-06: Gregm

: Absorbing vibration is an issue but teflon is rubbish for that job.

Quite. For mechanical support one can use wide masking tape (paper, one side adhesive). Both JD & I have done this and it's fine (rather than have the wires dangling in the air).
Gregm

Greg, not sure what you mean.....so are you using bits of tape every x inches to prevent flapping or using copius amounts of tape to wrap entire length of wires?

Go to home depot (etc.) and buy a 500 ft spool of solid copper wire with the shiny thin red insulation. Get: 12 SOL THHN or THWN RED T90 NYLON or TWN75 600V, made in USA. American Insulated Wire Corp. THen go to, say parts express or Michael Percy and get some basic spades. Solder, twist, and enjoy. Pretty much the exact same stuff.

Have Fun!

I'm pretty happy with the Anti-Cables and have no problems with their price. In fact, I wish Paul would offer to sell them twisted (properly and evenly) for an upcharge. The reason I might be interested in an alternative is that, because they are so stiff, it's difficult or impossible to make them unobtrusive in the living room. I guess there's no getting around that with heavy guage solid wire, though.

I spent quite some time looking for magnet wire and did not find a source that met my criteria. Since this wire is not normally marketed to audiophiles, the sellers are often not aware of some of the basic design features.

I want an "annealed" wire [dead soft] -
and high purity copper - doesn't have to be six nines, but some of these websites don't even address the metal content/alloys of their wire.

So - I have to assume that not all magnet wire is created equal - and I don't have the patience to try out too many experiments. I did make magnetwire interconnects with the radio wire shack [3-spools for 5 bucks] and it seems to work pretty good. But I do not want to blow money on 100+ feet of speaker wire if I'm not even sure of the wire content.

Subdued: I'm using wide tape along the length of the cable, keeping the conductors ~2" apart along the way. COnductors are, of course, on the sticky side of the tape.

Please note that this creates some capacitance and, being unshielded, can pick up EMI.

I used the standard paper backed masking tape.
Cheers

This is an old thread. I am also interested in alternative to Anti Cables. Anybody has any idea if this wire is any good? One reviewer says he does use it for audio.

TEMCo 12 AWG Copper Magnet Wire - 1 lb 50 ft 200°C Magnetic Coil Winding https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LV8YMN6/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_-GwkzbD3J6D4K

Using anti cable level 3 speaker cable/wire FANTASTIC!! For the money worth every penny! Will not change for a long time.No it's not a scam! They do work very well if you can't hear how good these are that's to bad for you.