Headphone cables

This week I made up a 5 metre cable to connect my LCD-2's directly to my Solo UL. One TP (twisted pair) per channel and an unused one to complete the braiding. The capacitance with connectors is about 300pF, which is 1/3 lower than stock cable and extension I was using. The resistance is higher at 0.8 Ohm but they are 50 Ohm headphones so I can live with that.

 

 

With speakers it would be a different story, using many more TP's to lower the resistance to say 0.1 Ohm the capacitance considerably to several nano-Farads or more. Graham has explained why this is very bad for the amplifier and the music.

 

 

The stranded copper cable did a decent job on the sound over 5 metres. So I think the 50 (or 32) Ohm headphones may the point where the capacitance/resistance works. My multimeter doesn't measure inductance so I am not able to quote any figures or comment, other than the assumption of very low inductance in the TP.

 

 

There's a DIY thread in Head-fi if anyone wants to know more about the construction. It was certainly a novel experience braiding up the cables, I can see why companies use machines for this!

 

 

Has anyone else here tried anything like this?

 

 

The original posts were in March if memory serves:

 

Fatmangolf wrote: Graham Slee wrote: The CAT5, almost "knitted", cables I've heard about on the 'net measure incredibly high capacitance. These and similar proprietary speaker cables do change the sound! If you take an amp close to instability you get "ringing" ("hanging onto the note"), which does emphasize spatial content, giving the feel of super hi-fi/enhanced "holography" - but it's simply not real, and if it's not real it cannot be high fidelity. At the same time people are risking their amps, but then again, I guess they can play dumb and let the dealer/distributor/manufacturer pick up the tab...   Graham, I was considering braiding an old cat 5 cable into short speaker cables to see what the fuss was about. Now I won't bother because you have explained the effect involved.  I shall stick to my figure 8 cables!   Even if it's just me that found your post very useful, thank you Graham.

Edited by Fatmangolf - 27 Jun 2011 at 9:23pm