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Coax cable used in interconnects - impedance effect on equipment?


Alexander

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here is a tip. you can use a coax for an interconnect and some will even sound pretty good but they will all sound like a coax cable, a twisted pair will sound better and a solid core twisted pair will sound better than a stranded (22 - 24 gage is fine). I am not a fan of teflon dielectrics and the like I much prefer high speed PVC as used in data cables or PE or PP dielectric use a dielectric with a high thermal melt point so you don/t get shorts soldering it. Don't worry about impedance an RCA connector is a 50 ohm connector and you will have a hard time finding a 50 ohm twisted pair. Why a twisted pair simply because it will reduce picked up noise simple as that (you cab hand twist your own with a drill just be gentle with them use cat6 wires, the more twists per foot the lower the noise).

   This is just my opinion and everybody has them. I have however been building cables since 1988 and I would always choose to listen to a twisted pair over a coax as an analog interconnect. There are a host of things that you can do to change how a cable will sound (things as simple as the direction of the wire to cryogenic treatment) and what you do is far more important than the materials you use to build it. Experimenting is the very best way to learn how to build a good sounding cable. The process is also beneficial to developing your listening skills and organizing your thought process. This all takes time I have done it but I can now build a cable that can stand with the best out there. The other nice thing about building your own cables is that you can build to suit your taste you can make the cable sound the way you want it to. My only other advice to you if you decide to go on a trek of learning how to build good sounding audio cables is not to ever look at what anybody else is doing best to follow your own path. You can learn to do this yourself more effectively than you can by copping the mistakes/work of others. The other advantage of this is that you will never find yourself in court being sued for patent infringement that way and the best reason of all is you can call your work your own and you can be proud of it and that is a feeling you cannot buy.

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12 hours ago, Schu said:

Um... electromagnetic waves...

 

Yep.  And depending on the frequency, we can use them to energize voice coils directly, transport information (near or far, with wires or without), or see them reflected off objects in our environment.  I'm glad we got 'em!  They're pretty useful little buggers.

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16 hours ago, glens said:

Radio (light) waves vs. audio (sound).  20kHz is a long radio wave.

 

That may be well and good, but we are discussing audio interconnects are we not?

 

To me, the larger issue is capacitance, which can cause high freq. rolloff over longer cables.

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27 minutes ago, Coytee said:

 

Are you rounding up or down?

 

 

 

Nice, funny comment.☺️

 

One rule of thumb is to "round to even."  The even number target might required rounding up or rounding down.  But it avoids accumulating errors from always up or always down.

 

WMcD

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  I agree with Moray here. I build my own. For RCA like Eichmann connectors, with twisted pair and a braided shield. 

  There was an article in Stereophile about some interconnects around 1990. The reviewer had a PhD or close in physics. Said that copper interconnects had a propagation velocity of 200 m/sec at 1 KHZ. Then claimed these Lindsey Geyer or something had a propagation velocity of almost the speed of light in a vacuum. This difference in the speed of the waves or electrons was so much different and made the non-copper cables much superior. 

    Typical high end cable review.

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