MusicByTheFire Posted January 2, 2021 Share Posted January 2, 2021 Hello Stereo enthusiast, Firstly, happy new year to all. I am searching for opinions or technical reasons for the use of plaited speaker cables that are on the market or home made versions of said speaker cables. The system I have and trying to improve is as follows; Oldish AV amp running in bi-amp mode with all tone control, processing disabled. Yamaha speakers with bi-wire binding posts removed. 16 gauge Monster cable (supposedly single direction as per label and photo. Hmmmm) One speaker needs 4.4 meters of cable, the other speaker needs 2 meters. The length of cable that I own would be sufficient for home-grown plaiting. Does the plaiting improve sound, and if so how? One plaited headphone cable manufacturer claims it is to do with the feedback loop on final drive output transistors within amplifier. He said headphone cables or speaker cables act as an aerial and cases the feedback loop to introduce unwanted sounds. If i was to home-grown plait, the cable could be four core or as two seperate two cores. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwhouston Posted January 2, 2021 Share Posted January 2, 2021 I use Cat 5 solid core and split the mates and colours then a double run. Works for me and dead cheap. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steffen Posted January 2, 2021 Share Posted January 2, 2021 Plaiting will reduce the cable’s inductance, if the leads get close enough to each other. With network cable, most of the job has already been done for you, via the twisting of the pairs. For plaiting/braiding to improve on this, you’d have to take the pairs out of the cable sheath. That’s incidentally just what I’ve done for my home-brew speaker cables. I’ve taken 20 twisted pairs out of five runs of Cat-6 cable (solid copper, 23 gauge), and braided them together using a kumihimo disk. The result was an effective gauge of 10 and an inductance of 0.11µH/m. It is also quite pretty That said, for a 2m run, the zip cord pictured above is unlikely to perform audibly worse 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MusicByTheFire Posted January 2, 2021 Author Share Posted January 2, 2021 Hello Steffen and MWHousten, Thanks for your ideas, appreciated 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decky Posted January 2, 2021 Share Posted January 2, 2021 Don't play with monsters - they will eat your music away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mwhouston Posted January 2, 2021 Share Posted January 2, 2021 1 hour ago, Steffen said: Plaiting will reduce the cable’s inductance, if the leads get close enough to each other. With network cable, most of the job has already been done for you, via the twisting of the pairs. For plaiting/braiding to improve on this, you’d have to take the pairs out of the cable sheath. That’s incidentally just what I’ve done for my home-brew speaker cables. I’ve taken 20 twisted pairs out of five runs of Cat-6 cable (solid copper, 23 gauge), and braided them together using a kumihimo disk. The result was an effective gauge of 10 and an inductance of 0.11µH/m. It is also quite pretty That said, for a 2m run, the zip cord pictured above is unlikely to perform audibly worse Good to see you went for the solid core also. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LHC Posted January 2, 2021 Share Posted January 2, 2021 Here is a video demonstrating the 'aerial' effect. (However it is not a direct demonstration that one cable sounds better than another) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MusicByTheFire Posted January 4, 2021 Author Share Posted January 4, 2021 Thanks LHC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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