I heard that elevating speaker cables off the floor improves the sound. Regardless, I like the look of elevated cables, and I don't want my cleaning people to vacuum over them (ugh...). So, does anyone have a recommendation for where to go for speaker cable feet?
Leftistelf, one way to suspend your cables is by using string from a nail you put in your wall. I also add a 6" length of surgical tubing for damping. John
Ceramic Insulators for high power power lines work very well. Home Depot sells them .You Just have to losen the bolts that hold them in the metal body. These work very well and are cool looking.
I found an exceedingly cheap and effective way to lift my cables off the floor (carpet). Go to Bed, Bath & Beyond and purchase some white, ceramic creme brulee cups for $1.99 each. Turn them upside down and lay the cable on top of the cup ... for an 8' run of cable, you'll probably need 2 or 3 cups per side. FYI, certain expensive cable elevators that run about $24 a piece are also made of white ceramic. They're much larger, bulkier and more expensive than my solution. Try it.
Buy some doweling. Cut equal pieces about 10 or 12 inches. Bind three pieces together with a HEAVY rubber band about a third down from the top. Spread it out into a tripod. It will equal ceramic or any other material, IMHO! Plus, if you do it neatly, it will about as good as any other solution.
I expect the electric field extends higher than a few inches from carpet (inverse square law), so a thingamabob only a few inches high might not be ideal, depending on strength of the field to begin with. Mapleshade's 8" high dealie makes sense; also, suspending cables makes sense to escape structureborne vibration, which is conceivably more harmful to the sound than the static field.
I just recently elevated my cables about 10" off the floor and the difference was amazing. The clarity improved dramatically. This is an incredibly cheap and effective tweak.
Go to the grocery store and buy a bag of 12" bamboo skewers. $2.09 for a bag here on Maui. (They are incredibly strong).
Take three of them and tightly wrap a 5-6" long piece of yellow gasline teflon tape around them two inches from the top. Now just spread them out like a teepee. I will take a little force to make the teepee, but the tape has just enough stretch to make this work perfectly. Stain them any color you want to match your carpet or flooring and they virtually disappear.
Btw, I would be very careful using the ceramic insulators or creme brulee cups.
The reason for elevating the cables to begin with is to eliminate the dielectric of the carpet, as well as the static.
Without knowing what materials the ceramic is made with, you may be doing more harm than good. Porcelain typically has a high dielectric between 5.0 - 7.0.
Teflon, on the other hand, has a dielectric of 2.0 and I suspect that thoroughly dried bamboo is somewhere between 2.0 - 3.0. Besides, the skewers are so thin, the contact surface is extremely minimal.
I went to an electric utility company and got a dozen ceramic insulators. These were used/replaced but in good condition. If you get the larger insulators, your cables just lay on top in the groove. I have my speakers cables and the interconnects to my monoblocks on these insulators.
Natalie, I think you are very wrong. The dielectric is very important. That's one of the very reasons to get the cables off of the carpet to begin with. And I wish you would do some research before you make absolute pronouncements like "the dialectric makes no difference". There are many, many resources to confirm that dielectrics dramatically affect the signal. Please do some reading and "listening" before you tell everyone else the moon is made of cheese.
And the "ceramic insulators" typically only get the cables off of the carpet 2-3 inches. Static is another big problem with the carpet and I am not sure that 2-3 inches is enough to be effective. Rub a balloon in your hair, hold it a couple of inches away and you can certainly feel the static.
I am sure audioengr or someone else with a better mind can jump in here to expound.
I use cotton ribbon to elevate cables. My setup is a bit unusual, but in normal installations it can be tied to the back of racks, speaker stands, et cetera, or thumb tacked to walls. If some of the ribbon is visible just tie a nice bow and it will look odd but fine (better than having little "tinker toys" all over the floor).
I use heavy wrought iron shelf brackets turned upside down, 2 per side, the cable hangs from some of the ornate work, looks pretty cool. It elevates the cable 8 inches off the carpet. I use MIT so the cable is thick, I elevate the network box with a small 6 inch tall pyramid my wife handmade from zebra wood for an art project years ago, the brackets match my black target rack so they almost look "audiophile." The big news is the improvement in sound! I was just shy of shocked.
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