Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit

Dekay, sounds as if you accidentally "bridged" your tonearm with the minus signal from your cartridge. Thus nothing much to do except to repair the tone arm cable or isolate the tone arm from the ground signal.

Slawney: Just had a thought. Think that I will try a tiny "screw" barrier strip to trouble shoot the TT wiring. Might just leave it in (if I figure out the problem) as it will make it easier to try out different DIY IC configurations.

OK, so who is currently offering to sell dome of their extra cable - Id be intrested in maybe 20 ft for speaker cables and four 1-2 meter cables w/ 8 rca for IC's..... Let me know - Art

I recently discovered this thread, and, drawn to the enthusiasm shown by the various parties and desiring to end my quest for the perfect cable, I've plunged in and ordered the $600 Ota kit. And I really do desire to end my quest here, so I don't want to botch things up now that the kit has arrived. Perforce, some questions:

1. Has anyone found that the length of the cables makes any real difference? Folks talk about resistance, capacitance, and so on, and I'm wondering if I need to strive to keep ICs and speaker cables as short as possible.

2. I don't have a Cable Cooker or similar, and I wonder if I can break in the entire 50 meter length of cable most quickly by hooking up the entire length of it to one of my speakers (or half of it to each of my two speakers), before cutting it into appropriate lengths for ICs and speaker cables.

3. Is there directionality to the wire, i.e., should the signal run in the direction of the printing on the wire, or does it matter?

4. I'm still not clear on whether or not the Ota wire is desirable to use as a speaker cable for all frequencies when bi-wired, or if it should be used on the mid/tweeter only, with more of a garden-hose wire handling the woofer. Any well-formed opinions?

I appreciate the knowledge of many in this thread, and I look forward to responses!

Mark

Hey Smilemakr,The OTA sounds great.I should say that I also stuck in a 47 Labs Gaincard along with the OTA so it is not really a "controlled" situation regarding my following opinions.I probably should have left the Levinson in and proceeded in that manner.Oh well. I spoke with Yoshi at Sakura about speaker cable length and his advice was to keep 'em short.I mentioned Mapleshade speaker cables and the 8' length they like to keep as a minimum and he didnt budge on his advice.
My speaker cables are 5'long.Interconnects are 1'long.I am running only OTA.
I didnt determine directionality.I would like to know if it actually is directional also.
My understanding of this is if a wire runs a certain direction for a long enough than that is the direction that it ends up going.The directionality has been created by signal flow.I'm no technician(can you tell?)I didnt want to post until my break in was over but these things are starting to sound so good at 70 Hours I just couldnt hold back.Thanks Bwhite for the great deal btw!The OTA sounds wonderful.
This stuff has a WILD break in.It has been all over the place.Some evenings have been just great.I have also gone to bed scratching my head wondering where the "sound" would end up.A cooker would be nice.Be patient.You will be rewarded.I've heard the break in is 200 hours on interconnects.Not sure on that.The first pair of interconnects that I made didnt work.I didnt follow the example closely enough.I was freaking out.It sounded like I was using a puddle of spit for wire.My wife and dog left the room.Looking back it's funny to me now(not so funny then!).
I am not bi-wiring the OTA.The set of speaker cables that I pulled off were a bi-wired set(DH Labs Q10,woo hoo)I did make a jumper out of the OTA.I like the sound better now.I might try bi-wiring and replacing the internal wire on my Triangles later,who knows.
I apologize for the lack of adjectives regarding sound quality.How can this be described(by me anyway!),I mean really.It just sounds right.It's open ,finely detailed(incredible bass),micro this ,macro that;Its a joy to listen to.Or put it this way,I'm not looking for cable anymore.I appreciate the enormous amount of experience and knowledge that you guys have made available.It sure saved me a lot of time and money!I'm a happy camper.
I think it is a good idea to stick all of the OTA on at the same time.I wish I would have done my interior wiring on my speakers right away but now find myself hesitant to do anything that will slow down the break in process.Sorry for the long wind.