Your favorite OCC speaker cable

petg60, I was just reading up on that they're not more advanced or better they're just a different way of making OCC single Crystal one is not better than the other.

On Friday of this week a opportunity was taken to visit a friend now we can visit to anothers Home in the UK.
COVID restrictions on Travel are eased and well received.

During this Visit the Resident HiFi was on the agenda, as well as Cables.
Three Cables were put to use as Tonearm Phono Cables.

OCC is the resident Cable Wire, D.U.C.C Wireand PC Triple C Wire were to be compared to OCC and each other.

OCC was first in use and it was delivering the performance to the ususal very high standard.

The exchange to D.U.C.C was immediately noticeable, there was a clearer insight to the presentation.
The Vocal became noticeably separated and the space around certain instruments was present.
A richness was also perceived, which was a addition to the authority of the performance. 

The PC Triple C was the last up for the demonstration.
This was even more noticeable for the Clarity Perceived over the OCC.
There was a lift and lightness/finesse noticed to be present across the frequency range.
The off centre seat was also offering a insight into the performance with an added information, when not in the Centre Seat the performance did not appear to be at a loss.
The sound stage had taken on a new dimension.
Both the system owner and myself were of the opinion that the
PC Triple C has produced a delivery that is feeling much more real and honest when compared to OCC.
We were as a end discussion wondering how the combination of
PC Triple C and D.U.C.C would combine.
The thoughts were the Clarity of the two wires are very similar, the extra lift and dimension of the soundstage of PC Triple C, along with separation ability and rich tone offering from the D.U.C.C could be a wonderful marriage.   

The chosen materials can be put on the work bench and once done have a continuity test with a multimetre.

Unfortunately a multimeter is not sensitive enough to detect a crudely terminated connection which will deteriorate the sound, it will only detect non contact or gross defects. In the end it all comes down to experience and knowing how a good solder joint flows and what it looks like.

Having the right iron, the right temperature, the right solder and everything held solid in some kind of a jig are fundamental to achieving success.

As there has been a suggestion that DIY Cable 'might' be a consideration, even though the quality of the Termination might not match a professional Quality.
To produce a solder joint can be practiced on any cheapo wire with a cheap Solder.
It won't take long before the handling of the materials and reactions of the materials to heat are understood.
At this stage a clean looking even coated joint is not far away.

The chosen materials can be put on the work bench and once done have a continuity test with a multimetre.
Once that the Bleep is continuous the cables are good to use as are,
or  have a cosmetic finish used on the joint if wanted.

The Double Helix Thread on the Cables Section is sure to inspire.     

@mesch Glad it's beneficial. The quality of the company is still high enough! No sociopaths ruling the thread, yet.

AP OFC VS. OCC (Crystal)

Comparing the Analysis Plus OFC (Copper Oval-In Micro) cable versus the next-level-up Analysis Plus OCC (Crystal), there is an audible difference for sure. I have both types and compare both periodically. Both are nice cables and do sound quite different from one another.

AP Crystal OCC:
On my system, not only is the occ crystal version more open and wider as noted by @hilde45, these cables also have:

-more low end extension of BASS
-SMOOTHER sound, no edge or grain
-larger/wider SOUNDSTAGE (yes)

Woah:
The first time I tried a pair of the AP "Crystal" OCC cables it was so different for a split second I thought an input tube on one of my mono tube amps had gone microphonic or something. Switched back to OFC, nope. They OCC cable is just so much lager, wider, spatial.  Kind of intimidating at first and they do need lots of settling in.
At first, It took a while to comprehend and appreciate the difference after having used all sorts of different OFC, pure copper, silver over copper cables from other top manufacturers. They pass-thru what is there from the source, good or bad. If you want a veiled over passive filter type interconnect or speaker cable, the AP "Crystal" OCC cables are not it.  After getting use to the occ crystal cables ended up going back and swapping CAPs on my DAC and re-rolling a bunch of different input tubes on my preamplifier and amplifiers, now hearing input tube changes more than ever with AP OCC Crystal cables. Would have not believed it myself until I finally demoed a few pairs and bought some.

navships, have his wire throughout entire system, Best bang for the buck. and  very low priced, $50-$100, 
high tech aero space/navy wire

@hide45, Glad you did not jump off. I am much interested in this thread. 

I am quite sold on the idea to keep on with the PC Triple C vs OCC Comparisons.
D.U.C.C is more difficult to source at a price that makes the initial investigations cost effective.
I have a D.U.C.C being returned to me this week it has been out on loan, and had a extended loan due to the COVID Restrictions on travel.
When this is returned I will reinstate a Dual Mono Volume Control Pre Amp' > Mono Block Power Amp's.
This set up will allow me to create the same trial conditions that produced the evidence that OFC was bettered by OCC in my system.
A Wire Type can be used as a Single Wire per channel and evaluated as a single channel.
The Channels can be closely balanced to see where the Centre is set.
With Different Wires in use there is rarely a equal setting on a VC Knob to produce a Centre Image.
The Wires can then be Matched Per Channel and assessed as a Single Channel only and then brought to a Stereo Setting with a Centre Image.
It don't take long to find a Cable that can offer a good impression using this method.
It will progress to be a exercise at all Interfaces with a IC Connection. 

To date the impressions being made are very good and in favour of
PC Triple C on my system.
The Tag Wires was an immediate Keeper experience.
The PC Triple C Power Chord has got me, I am keen to introduce this wire to all my devices.   
The recently introduced Din Plug PC Triple C Phono Cable in place of OCC Silver is immediate, the PC Triple C is a Keeper, the added dimension of perceived realism is very attractive.
The perception went from knowing a breath was being taken to visualising the Breath, from knowing there is a audience on a recording to perceiving the shape of the audience from the front to rear rows and into the stalls.

I like the idea that with the New PC Triple C Cables becoming available and the already owned OCC Cables a method might also be adopted where the different Wire is used at different interfaces allowing for a Tuning of the SQ to suit a preference.

The Stock of PC triple C in use and to be put into use, has now increased.
There is now a Head Shell Tag Wire, Din Plug Phono Cable with the same wire as the earth, Solid Core Speaker Cable,
20 AWG Stranded Wire, 18 AWG Stranded Wire Power Cable and a length of PC Triple C/EX Stranded Wire this one is costly.
 

So it appears that the claims of super purification appear to be valid. At their time of release there were naysayers (even metallurgists) claiming that five and six nines copper could not actually be formulated at a non astronomical cost, and that the whole concept was all a big scam.

PC Triple-C copper is what Yamaha uses in their A-S3200 and A-S2200 integrateds. They claim it sounds much better with that cabling.

All the best,
Nonoise

@pindac Totally agree. I did A/B between Analysis Plus OFC and OCC and the difference was stark. I had a friend switch without me knowing. I could always tell. Upper range opened up, got wider and clearer. I understand the difference now and won't go back. This was true with both digital cable and also with interconnects. 

OCC is from my experience a much improved wire over OFC, and over the years I have exchanged from OFC to OCC in Copper and Silver on most IC's.
I use Mapleshade Speaker Cable and can't vouch if this is a OCC Wire.

In recent months I have commenced with trials on PC Triple C and D.U.C.C Wire.
At present the PC Triple C Wire is remaining in the positions I have used it, and when attached to other devices there is noticeable changes, that I am coming to terms with.
I need more PC Triple C cables to fully understand the overall benefits throughout the system.    

Furukawa stopped manufacturing PCOCC some years ago, so Furutech, Acoustic Revive Oyaide, Acrolink, are now using PC Triple C or OCC-DUCC for their better products.
Both are more advanced methods in metallurgy than PCOCC.

The "PC" just stands for pure copper pre-pended to OCC, and possibly different source providers of the copper itself. A 6moons article for reference, and who knows where the real story originated or what is true. The conductor is part of the design, not all of it. Designs, dielectrics, connector ends vary from one mfg to the next. Demo & listen if you can!    

Clip;

"For many years the copper wire used in Oyaide cables was supplied by Furukawa famed for their PCOCC copper. That stands for pure copper Ohno continuous cast. It’s a method developed in 1986 by Dr. Atsumi Ohno at the Chiba Institute."...

https://6moons.com/audioreviews2/oyaide/1.html

What about PCOCC vs OCC? Real or merely a marketing ploy? Does that claimed super purity actually exist, and if so, does it make a difference?

@hilde45, another alternative could be Furutech’s FS-alpha, a discontinued product that could be found at very reasonable pricing. The successor is FS-a36, still OCC. 

And once again, I jump off a thread I started because the capacity of civil dialogue falls apart. Thanks to those who gave serious and polite replies.

Just make sure to use the plastic coated ones if you adopt a twisted pair configuration.

In outback Australia coat hangers are considered a bit OTT and recycled fencing wire is usually considered perfectly adequate. Wasting ya’ money @cmarineri.

@cmariner1 Wow, what a crew of deluded nit pickers. I'll bet a leg that not one of you could tell the difference in a coat hanger or one of these rip off cables.

Some people can hear a notable difference. Some cannot, with no need beyond zip cord or a coat hanger for speaker cables. Good for them!   

BS Neanderthal. The shoulders on your jacket would be a lot more droopy if you used the cables. 

Where's the battery cable/welder's cable for SCs guy when you need him?

Thanks @lalitk 

I've got a solution. Found a 14 ft single cable of AP Solo Crystal Oval 8 used at The Music Room for $699. I checked with Analysis Plus and I can send them the cable to be cut and re-terminated for $39. TMR was willing to go down to $599. Bottom line is I can have two approximately 7 ft. speaker cables for $650. These would normally go for $2200. I'm done. Oh, FYI, here's the 14ft cable at full price:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/132966226074?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&campid=5338381866&toolid=10001&customid=38501ac4-bbc2-11eb-b2fa-366436396438

“The idea of finding it bulk seems like a good way to go, though I am not sure my DIY efforts would be as good as a cable I’d buy!”

@hilde45,
DIY cables don’t make any more sense since there are wide range of professionally made OCC cables available at reasonable prices. When it’s all said and done, that ‘Belkin’ bulk cable won’t look better or offer discernible differences (if any) than a zip cord from Home Depot.

Don’t overlook the benefits of anti-static, anti-vibration and Litz construction offered by professionally made OCC cables. My two cents.

@mijostyn
Would you recommend  12TC, 8TC or 4TC for mids and tweeters in an active system where a 2A3 drives tweeters above 1600Hz, and another drives mids from 275 to 1600Hz?
12TC is advertised as being capable of high power delivery, but in my application it would be different.
Thank you!

8ga. Wire amp to speakers!

   Barely fits in plugs!
amp to speaker run is about 1.5 feet.  Good wire. 
Years back, bought 20 feet 8ga wire.  Have a nice roll in drawer in case....

@fuzztone Analysis Plus wants 1000% more $$$ for AG balanced ICs than Dyson Audio asks. Hard to believe that they sound 10 X better. Looks like they are recouping funds for the patent.

Patent was paid long ago, and now it’s called profit. Home Audio cables is just one channel of the business along with products and services for NASA. Analysis Plus sells a lot to the pro audio industry. Famous musicians and particularly some well known guitar players prefer their cables.

Made in America, successful, profitable, creating jobs. Great designs and high quality materials, with quality of service  Survives and thrives. How it should be.

@teo_audio - Can you share what Belkin means when they advertise "hybrid-conductor technology"? What is hybrid? Are there a mixture of OCC and OFC wires, a mix of stranded and solid core wire, is the wire tinned or silver plated, is the negative wire a different material or different size, or is "hybrid" something else altogether. Also, can you share whether the PE insulation is foamed or not? I could not find answers to these questions in their product literature. Thanks.

Wireworld Eclipse has several models ,and patentedlowest dielectric and ,very important No brass connectors like most ,Silver over Solid Copper .

cut the outer skins off and use the inner insulated conductors only. one step better again...
There is a neg and pos run for each foot of it. all packed in an outer skin. cut that outer skin off...
or, to say it differently, for clarity...with the single 30 foot roll, you actually have 60 ft of a single conductor. 30ft of red colored insulated wire --  and 30 ft of black colored insulated wire

@teo_audio.   
Thank you for those links! So, basically, a $10.00 roll of the wire, which is 30’ long, will provide enough wire to make a single 8’ braided 6 lead wire. Two rolls, two 8’ runs, get some heat shrink, some sleeving, a bunch of audio note banana connectors and you should have a very nice pair of cables for very little money. 
Certainly a worthwhile and inexpensive experiment. 

Thanks for the suggestions. The Fidelium cables seem interesting. The language on the website doesn’t tell me much about their invented alloy, but I suppose hearing is believing. I know OCC has worked well for many people and the list of companies using is it impressive, too. The idea of finding it bulk seems like a good way to go, though I am not sure my DIY efforts would be as good as a cable I’d buy! 

+1 mglik on the Fideliums. Amazing cable: component level upgrade over SR Foundations (which I liked)

if looking to be the cheapest OOC barsteward in the given audio forum police line-up, do internet searches for:

" Belkin Pure AV av53102-XX "
(the xx part being the length)

That is Belkin’s attempt to capture the AV audio cable market, back before the 2008 crash, when the engine of the economy was running amok. So everybody tried to get into everything.

In this case, Belkin manufacturing quite a bit of OCC speaker cable.

This came in rolls. 50 foot and 25 foot rolls, IIRC. 16g, multi strand and multi strand type (foil-ish and round wire)..pure OCC copper wire.

I bought 20x 50 ft rolls at $14.95 each, back when it was widely being dumped in all kinds of places.... and still have 10 of them.

Ah. here we go:
https://angelelectronics.ca/shop/cables/speaker-wire?product_id=11163
or longer uncut runs of 100 ft rolls, for HT, or...whatever:
https://www.officespecialties.com/belkin_av53102_100_pureav_silver_series_high_performance_speaker_w...

keep looking. it’s out there. but not forever.

Should we notify MC that his account has been hacked? Looks like one of the naysayers is trying to discredit him.

Ive been reading about the occ tech for a while. There is much information to back up your SQ findings. Been wanting to try them, but they are further down my list of current priorities :)

@yogiboy I plan to suspend the cables from the ceiling with "spider string," a special nylon made from free-range, baby spiders which nest near the famous Easter Island statues. Apparently, spider string provides 87.3% better isolation than cable risers, while keeping the floor clear. I need the floor uncluttered so that my specially equipped Roomba can roam the floor vacuuming up the dust which dampens lower register harmonics.

No cable lifters?

If your deal falls through...GR Research sells some do it your self cables.....that look a lot like kimber cables....

My Cabledyne SCs (both pair) are OCC silver and my only exposure to OCC cables. They aren't going anywhere. 

All the best,
Nonoise

Not sure it is occ but cardas cross and kimber 4tc are the best copper wires i have had in my systems and they sound good on a variety of gear and speakers but make sure you get the old blue black tc.

Since I started the thread, I will answer for myself, and others can chime in. First, let me stand up on this Townshend podium so I can isolate myself from people who don’t think because there are too many imperceptible vibrations coming up through this concrete floor.

1. I’m interested in getting a better than average speaker cable. Because, I heard, everything matters.
2. I’ve gotten advice from a few people who have been trying cables and listening for the differences between cables over three decades. With their guidance, I compared OCC interconnects, digital and analog, with others. With OCC, I heard a clear improvement. I’ll spare you the details. I had friends listen and they heard it too.
3. When I decided to try for a better speaker cable, I figured I’d try for something with similar properties as the other cables which worked. This seemed like a good first step.
4. But because I don’t believe that these things make a world of difference, only some, I wanted to collect a variety of OCC brands that others had tried and liked. I ruled out spending thousands on speaker wire.
5. The final step is to watch and wait for the right used option to come along. Indeed, I believe I found that today. In fact, I may have found a $2300 option for a mere $650. That’s about what I wanted to spend.

It’s called being provocative. As in trying to provoke thought. An uphill battle. The way it is supposed to work, a light goes on in someone’s head as they think yeah, what the heck is OCC anyway? And why does it matter? This we hope leads to the reader thinking of all the many times they have heard it is long grain, or skin effect, or geometry, or dielectric, or any of a million other stories. All of which, if they do think about it, they start to realize that each time the stories seemed really good and compelling. Like they made perfect sense. Until a month later they find something sounds way better even in spite of doing none of those things. So the stories are just stories.

Which is why in all seriousness, not only do I not know what OCC is, I care even less to find out. All I want is for maybe someone to stop for one second and think, instead of going on and on mindlessly repeating all these stories as if they determine sound quality. That’s all.

MC If you feign ignorance to the topic all you are doing is trolling as usual.

Analysis Plus wants 1000% of Dyson Audio $$ for balanced AG ICs.
It's not believable to me that they sound 10 X better.

Doh MC.
Analysis Plus wants 1000% more $$$ for AG balanced ICs than Dyson Audio asks.
Hard to believe that they sound 10 X better. Looks like they are recouping funds for the patent.

What is OCC? And why does it matter??

@mitch2 Thank you so much!

@hilde45 
The phrase "internal bi-wire" refers to having the four bi-wire conductors (HF/MF pos and neg, and LF pos and neg) encased in one cable compared to bi-wiring using two separate cables that each have a single positive and negative conductor, in which case you would need two of those cables to bi-wire a speaker with four binding posts.
Each HT Pro 9 series cable has four internal conductors, each with multiple, individually insulated wires.  The Pro 9 series also uses multiple wire gauges and a different aggregate gauge for two of the internal conductors compared to the other two.  The two smaller conductors are for the HF/MF posts and the larger conductors for the LF posts when the cable is used internally bi-wired.   The Pro-9 series cables can also have two of the four conductors connected together at both ends, with a single pair of connectors at each end.  That is how mine are configured and so I use two independent Pro-9+ cables to bi-wire my speakers rather than a single cable that is internally bi-wired.  The Pro-9 series cables are the same whether used as a single-wired cable or internally bi-wired with the only difference being the number of terminations at the speaker end.  You could purchase the cable you linked and re-terminate the speaker end with two connectors (instead of four) and they would work great for your speakers.

Thanks for the continued replies and offers of help.