Let's build a subwoofer interconnect

Why not just buy Bettercables for that application? It uses the bullet termination and is 5 nines copper with teflon dielectric. They make one specific for subs. It's a no-frills kind of company. Good quality, good pricing. It's not the end all in cables, but it seems for your application and budget it would be a good choice. I have used their blue truth interconnects with great results, and all of my video cables are made by them.

www.catcables.com

excellent quality for the $$ - highly recommend.

Doug (Lex) is a pleasure to deal with. Youtell him your electronics and what you want to achieve and he will give you his recommendation.

Given your budget you can eiher have fancy connectors like Next Gens or better cable. Spending your money on NextGen's which are designed to get you the last nth of detail in the mids and highs hardly makes sense. IMHO what you need is a well shielded cable - in fact, many companies offer a coax design for this application.

VH Audio makes terrific stuff - drop Chris an email and ask him for his RCA recommendation. Miner42 and Rives have also provided very good recommendations.

Check the Gon too - use advanced search Cables/Subwoofer - tonight there is a very serviceable 3m Analysis Plus subwoofer cable for $55.00 As a happy AP customer I am pretty sure it will do the job... you can always have it reterminated

Thanks for the ideas thus far. I'm still waiting to hear from Chris at VH Audio. At this point, for me, the minimum acceptable connector would be the Bullet copper. This would also allow extra $$ for a nice shielded wire. I've 'gotten by' with a sub par interconnect to my sub for years. Perhaps I'm trying to over compensate now. That's fine with me.

This sub par Blue jean subwoofer cable is as good as any subwoofer cable on the market.
I have to agree with the other guys. The cable needs only to pass 80hz and down, while keeping out the hum. Not a tough job for the crummiest cable or connector. It is your money though..so what ever makes you feel better ..go for it.:-)

Just so you understand most audiophile cable makers buy their supplies from companies like Belden,Canare and only a few other large wire providers. The odds are your $300 wires will come from the same place as the $25.00 wire.
Buy some Canare LV-77S.. add your bullet plugs and have a terrific cable.And don't forget an isolation transformer if you need one. That will give you $200 to spend on something else.

Good listening

I didn't mean to imply a low cost recommendation would be considered sub par. I was simply saying the old microphone cable currently feeding my sub is sub par and I'd like to replace it with something exceptional that includes very good connectors like the Bullets or NextGen. The Canare LV-77S mated with Bullets sounds like a good option. I'll look into that particular Canare cable. Thanks.

I would use the Canare L4E6S.

RH

You will have ZERO benefit from Super connectors in this application unless you are looking for audio jewelry... The 80 hz signal going to a Sub I don't care what people try to prove or you try to prove to yourself, will be near impossible to hear the differences feeding a sub.. Unless one cable vs. the other is so resistive that it puts less voltage out to the sub somehow from the processor. Go buy a top of the Line Cardas or whatever and then take a cheap Video cable from Rat Shack, and you will never spend the money on a super pricey connector or cable for that application sorry, try it. I use Locking WBT's on fairly pricey cables, but this is effective in a Full range signal interconnect or Digital cable but next to 0% or 5% difference in the application you are looking for.

By the way okay if you were running a FAR longer length than 3 meters than you could get better shielding and connectors, but I swear you will have probably no difference in your case. Save your money, by a cable for 30 bucks and try to find a weakness seriously. http://bluejeanscable.com/store/subwoofer/index.htm
will have your best hi-end sub cable with canare connectors etc.. If you must, and they will still only cost you 22 bucks for a 9 ft and 25 bucks for a 12 ft.

The Belden 89259 is also an affordable option. Same idea as above though, you don't need to go nuts to have an uncompromising solution.

I'm learning a lot from our members in the course of this discussion. I assumed great connectors and great wire were required to attain great subwoofer performance. It seems that premise would result in over kill. I'm exploring the options shared thus far. I haven't heard back from Chris at VH Audio. Perhaps he's vacationing. I'll try again. In the meantime feel free to share if you haven't yet. Thanks.

If you accept the idea that any cable can do the job, why spend $25? You can get shielded subwoofer cables from http://accessories4less.com for 7 bucks. Why pay someone $20 to put techflex over Canare/Belden?

Funny thing, I just went through this same excercise. I opted for Blue jeans cables and I used the subwoofer interconnect they recommend. After doing the math, I came to the same conclusion they did.

I do agree with the comment above about the subwoofer cable only passing frequencies below your subwoofer crossover point. Since no one is, or should be, using a brick wall filter you can expect another couple or three octaves of information above the crossover point to pass along with the lower frequencies. Once the signal is more than 20 to 25 dB down below the crossover point you can ignore the remainder.

Keep in mind the shielding has to do more than just shield 60Hz hum. It also has to keep out EMI and other non audio band nasties. A good low impedance shield will do a very good job of this, even if it isn't a foil shield. Hum is an irrating but leaves the music untouched. RFI will absolutely destroy music in all of the octaves. The real rub comes in from the fact if you have hum leaking in through your interconnects you also have RFI leaking in as well.

A lot of folks believe that a distortions in cables are due to unexplained mysterious things happening within the conduction of the wire or loss in the dielectric. Although this is true to some extent, all of these losses are very small in comparison to the biggies of RFI, inductance, and capacitance.

In the past few months, I am begining to understand that most of what audiophiles hear as "improvements" from cables are really improvements in RFI suspectability.

Comments invited,

Per Rives suggestion, I checked out the BetterCables website. However, teir new subwoofer cable is stranded, silver plated copper w/ foamed insulation. I'd go for the VenHaus Pulsar, since it's solid core copper, with solid (instead of foamed) insulation. You can buy the cable for $4.99/ft and buy your own rca plugs.

Spatialking,

While I mostly agree, I find it hard to separate the negative audible effects that shielding has when in proximity to signal carrying conductors from any positive audible effects gained from a reduction in RFI/EMI.