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In the Forum: Audio Discussions
In the Thread: Crossover Design
Post Subject: Some thoughts on cables Posted by Bud on: 12/6/2005
Rich,
I have been experimenting with true Litz magnet wire (we use it in our transformers occaisionally) and have discovered that you can use discreete amounts of plastic dielectric material, spaced down the length of the wire, to "tune" the dynamic color and phase / time smear of the signals.

In a 1 meter cable, for interconnects, I use two 18 ga equivalent Litz cables (144 strands of #40 SPN coated mag wire) in seperate cotton shoelace cases with 1" of polyethelyne heat shrink tubing, big enough in diameter to fully shrink to a size that just grasps the two cotton covered cables, and slide it to the middle of the length of cable. Then, I slit this 1" piece along the length in a 1/3 slit, 1/3 unslit, 1/3 slit pattern. This gives me extremely neutral sound with most RCA end terminators. Longer cables need a different mix of shunted to unshunted capacative storage wells, along the length of the cable for neutral balance.

The length of unslit material to cable length controls dynamcs across the full spectrum. The length of slit material to cable length controls dynamic color up to about 4 k Hz. For a 4 meter speaker cable you need about 6 inches of slit tubing and about a 1 inch  length of unslit of tubing. You do need to distribute this along the length of cable at 1/2 meter intervals.

There are two amazing things to this foolishness. The first is a complete insensitivity to external capacitances, signals and their carriers. The second is the ability to change the amount and ratio of dynamic color from highly detailed brownian noise, without any plastic, to Ringling Bros circus orchestra dynamic color.

I would of course make you some cables for reasonable sums of money, but not until Romy's and my mutual friend has had a chance to listen and confirm that I am or am not blowing smoke here.... or we could just ask Island Pink for his opinion.

Bud

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