DIY cables Vs Mass market cables.

Hey, use whatever you like. (And, in particular, use what you already have.) Bare wire connections are fine in most cases. I have non-standard terminals on both my speakers and amp, so bananas work best for me.

Hmmm...8 feet of 24 AWG silver has a resistance of about 0.2 ohms. That's some 15 times the resistance of 12 AWG copper. It also costs about 10 times as much. Something to think about as you proceed.

Yeah, I was responding to Mapleleaf's recommendation. I just replaced a set of copper cables I'd been using for about 20 years. Extent of copper oxidation: trivial. The only bit that oxidizes is what's immediately exposed to air. Assuming your connections are tight, that's not a concern. Of course, people who want to sell you silver cables will tell you different. Consider the source.

You can have oxidation inside cables, if oxygen gets in there. (Duh.) The solution is to buy decent cabling. I use the Belden cable sold by Blue Jeans Cable Co., and it is really fine stuff, starting at <40 cents/ft. Throw in some banana plugs and you can have top-notch cables for $20 plus shipping.

Lord only knows what "Alumiloy" is. It's just a trademark. (Which, if it were ever challenged, might have a hard time holding up, since it's also the name of a solder-like aluminum compound used in automotive repair, among other things.) But as Trelja says, JPS just buys whatever it is from someplace like Belden (which undoubtedly calls it something different), probably for pennies a foot--or a bit more if you want a custom insulation job, which is where that extra-special "dialectric" comes in.

That's the game: You order generic cable with some fancy-looking insulation on it, printed with your logo if you like (or just use "cable pants" when you terminate). Then you put up a website with a lot of blather about proprietary materials and processes (not to mention all the R&D work that's involved in scanning Belden's catalog!). Audiophiles shouldn't fall for this.

There is no intellectual property here. You buy some cable from Belden. You solder some spades on the end. That's the formula.

Robm: I can almost guarantee you two things:

1) DIY cables will not sound as good to you as the ones you have now.

2) We could secretly swap DIYs for your current cables, and you'd never know the difference.

And, no, those two statements are not contradictory.