Best wires for cost


What are the best wires/interconnects for the lowest cost!?
chuck_cawthra

Showing 2 responses by ehider

If you are willing to make your own cables, this one may be the best sound for the buck (by a wide margin). Procure some belden 1701A cat5 data cable (this is their best cat5 : pure teflon dielectric, perfect bonded coductor pairs, extremely consistent capacitance for any length). Take apart the outer jacket exposing the inner teflon bonded conuctors. Configure eight bonded pairs (two full original 1701A cables worth), tightly heat shrink all 8 pairs in Canare shrink tubing, then strip each bonded wire's insulator, connect the solid color wires together for positive , the banded color coductors for negative. Amazingly, this works just as well for both speaker and interconnect cables. ( For the final touch, you can also psuedo chryo freeze the cables with dry ice in a sealed styrofoam container, placed overnight in your freezer. This adds a bit of smoothness to their overall sound..i.e., more analog sounding) The sound of this cable has beat the following cables in comparison tests: Transparent,Music meter, Wire world, Monster's best and XLO. This is saying something since the overall construction cost is less than $3.00 per foot. (I should note that this design was a serious effort, that involved 18 audiophiles and 3 high end audio designers, over a two year period)
You can buy Belden from Tech America. Everyone that attempts to build this cable, please note the following: Do not consider constructing the cat5 cable with more than 8 pairs of conductors, this is critical to the wires' performance. These conductors are very small (24 gauge), but the 8 pair conductor design is the best of any variations.(Many people think that a good cable needs to have lots and lots of copper, so they try bundle 12,16 and even 20 pairs of conductors. Unfortunately, these configurations sound pretty awful). When you hear how good the bass and dynamics are with the 8 conductor pair configuration, you will scratch your head to why many commercially available cables are so damn big and heavy. Additionally, the wires need a minimum of 80 hours of break-in before you make any serious comparisons with other cables.