Cable supports on the cheap...


Has anyone in audio tweak land tried using post tension cable chairs or rebar chairs for audio cable supports?

audi-owe

Yes. Pretty much everyone I would suspect....

I mean, if you're willing to try to elevate the cables, just about anything would work. I know Danny at GR Research has mentioned using kids' Tinkertoys. Not sure how that would look, but again, I imagine anything would get the job done.

 

I bought plastic rebar chairs for 20 cents each and hot glued them to 4" squares of wood.  I also bought steel rods from Amazon and bent them and poked them into the same squares.  For heavy cables you will want bigger squares.  But I've never heard a difference with mine or anybody else's cable lifters.   You can come up with reasons why they should work including vibration, static, capacitance etc. etc.. but I hear no difference with or without them

Thr cables should sit on a means of suspension like a rubber band or damping material like thick sealing foam tape.

A late friend with sensitive ears used the cardboard tubes from used-up toilet-paper rolls.

AudioQuest Fog Lifters are pretty inexpensive (8-$149) look kinda cool and seem to work pretty well.

ozzy

On a budget?

  • take a trip to a dollar store
  • buy childrens alphabet bricks e.g. A, B, C, .....Z
  • buy some craft sticks
  • hot glue a piece of the craft stick to opposite sides to stop the cable sliding off the block
  • if your cables are heavy/stiff, then glue the block onto a 2" or 3" ceramic backsplash tile to stop it tipping over

Nice thing about this solution, being wood they are non conductive and non capacitive - zero ipact on the signal

If desired, add the foam strip as mentioned above or use a rubber band across the two craft stick uprights to support the cables

I decided to try these because I have man-made fiber broadloom on the floor and figured this may impact the capacitive effect of the overall cable performance - lifting them off the broadloom mitigates that problem.

Since I was not conviced it would have an impact I opted for a very affordable solution. They are still there and seem to do the trick.

People are "amused" at yet another crazy (but very affordable) solution

Regards - Steve

Use egg cartons. Shaped perfectly and everyone has'em.

Take the eggs out first.

I have found that when my system was in the basement, I could easily hear a difference ,  but now that my system is upstairs, it makes no difference at all!  Dollar stores are a great place for finding what you need.  you can use pretty much anything that’s not metal to lift you speaker cables off the floor.

When I first tested this I took paper towel and toilet paper insides and cut them down to a few inches then cut out a groove in the middle and set them up to get my cables off the ground.  Using the paper towel cylinder allowed me to cut different heights.  This worked and I used this for about a year then I upgraded to the Audioquest Fog Lifters.

According to Synergistic research aluminum is the material of choice. 

cable riser demo

these aren't on the cheap: but Money back guarantee- I didn't hear a difference on my macbook with my $2 dollar speakers and $10 DAC :) 

But this would be an easy blind test- for those of you whose computer is hooked up to your hifi- have someone else hide the computer from view, and have them click the video back and forth on the with/without risers sections and see if you can tell the difference 9/10 times. 

Lets make this easy AND cheap - just take a cd jewel box, open it up, turn it on the side and you have a good cable support and almost everyone has some of those!

For all the anal-retentive cable lifter audiophiles, just lay your cables on a bunch of Charmin Ultrasoft rolls.  If you can't hear a difference, then you haven't wasted any money.