DIY Power Cables Instead of Used

@sfcfran - 

I recall bumping into a discussion on that quite some time ago

You are correct - I added the Power Helix design in 2015 and made a couple of refeences to it elsewhere on the forums here at that time

I have been promoting more actively the Helix range for the last few months onseveral threads - so you will see them from time to time.

Another fellow DIYer on Audiogon is also developing a "ribbon style" cable - where the conductors are held apart by a "ribbon" of tape. The seperation of the two conductors has the same effect - i.e. much less induced noise, which improves clarity.
- The advantage of the design is that the two conductors are of the same length - unlike the spiral of the helix
- the disadvantage is that the cables can get quite wide when compared to coventional geometries.

Other developments - i have been talking with fellow DIYers in several counties about theHelix geometry. One person has shared an interesting finding, so I have to update the design of all Helix cables on the site

Please check back with the site in a couple of days before building to find out the latest construction details - it's a small change pertaining to the how the helix is wound in, but it takes some explaining without the images

BTW - also take a look at the HELIX speaker cables and IC's - the same geometry is used - i.e. the neutral is a helix spiral wound around the live/signal. The speaker cables proved to provide exceptional improvements across the board over other speaker cables I have tried.

@elizabeth - the silver plated Mil-Spec wire is indeed a bargain and as you pointed out, makes great power cables and speaker cables. 

I am about to try 24 gauge Mil-spec on a pair of IC's as the signal conductor, i.e. in place of the solid silver wire I currently use.

I'll post the results here in a couple of weeks

Stay Tuned - Steve

@williewonka 
Awesome stuff Steve!  Thank you. The fact that you and many such as yourself, take so much time out here to share your knowledge is such a great benefit to others such as myself... truly endearing of the hobby. 

I've encountered the flat ribbon concept as an interconnect.  My initial experimentation 3+ yrs ago with cable upgrades lead me to Mapleshade (amongst others).  His development by "ear" lead him to believe the flat ribbon is the best transport for digital.   I bought a few of his products to include flat ribbon copper digital interconnect.  I truly enjoyed it for a few weeks, until it stoped working when I unplugged and replugged it in, as I shifted my components around... a bit of a quality control issue which he refunded the purchase price on.  While I do get you are referring too a slightly different configuration,  from the moment I pulled the ribbon out of the box, I did find the downside of the configuration to be its frailty.  I would however imagine that could be overcome with design improvement.

I enthuaiastically look forward to your revisions of the helix design.  It will take me time to do It all....so while I may seem rushing to make decisions on things now, it is only because I have a moment in life right now to dedicate to a lot of reading and mapping of plans, etc....by the time the I order products and they arrive, it will be a slower process of assembly and integration into my rig.

@sfcfran - here is the update to the helix design - got it done today.

Just waiting on some feedback from Yordan on his findings, but other than that it is complete

http://image99.net/blog/files/b4d5249616a56bdabfd28b5580db6cec-79.html

As for the frail nature of the ribbon style - yes a little tweaking to the design can solve that.

Just about to start on the cables :-)

Regards - Steve

@sfcfran -  Well last evening I installed the "revised" helix speaker cables with the helix being wound in the opposite direction and it appears that as indicated on my web site - it made a discernable improvements - across the board.

So if you are planning on building the Helix design please ensure you follow the instructions on my site

So far I have only tried the speaker cables, but based on their level of improvement i would recommend taking the same approach on all Helix cables

Regards - Steve

@williewonka 
Good news!  Thanks Steve.  The double helix design is definitely going to happen in my system, amongst other items.  I plan to try multiples across components and play with it all.  Still tinkering with the thought process though, before spending any cash.

I did have a realization regarding my feed cable (which you and some others probably already know...but...to get it out here).  I ordered 12-3 Romex for the new home-run feed to the house electrical service panel.  Upon receiving and opening the package, a revelation hit me...dang it ....3 wire feed splitting into 2 x 2 wire feeds is the wrong answer for audio...ordering 12-3 was the reflex of the electrician in me.  

In a 2 power cable (hot and neutral, or hot and neutral plus ground also being referred to as a 2 wire), the neutral and feed have counter rotating magnetic fields of exactly equal strength, and waves, directly in phase with one another.  The delay between them is unmeasurable by anything less than a physicists lab equipment.  The 2 fields, rotating in opposite directions of one another, cancel each other out in the center, which is why the ground in 12-2 Romex is placed in the center....so no inductive current is created within the ground.  

In a 12-3 (2 hot legs and one neutral, or 2 hot legs plus neutral plus ground wire), the 2 hot legs carry whatever current that circuit is demanding based on the components/load placed on them.  This will never be the exact same, will always be out of phase, and is almost always drastically different from one another.  The neutral/white in the 12-3 carries, not the total of the 2 hot leads, but the difference of them.  So if the black lead is providing 10 amps to amplifiers, and the red lead is providing 3 amps to the television and disc player, their will be a combined concentration of 13 amps of magnetic field at the center of the two hot leads.  The neutral will carry back in the other direction the difference of the 2 hot leads.  In this example, that would be 7 amps.  The counter rotation of the neutral/white magnetic field of 7 amps, will knock the magnetic field of the hot leads down to that of 6 amps, at the center-point of the neutral/white conductor.  This remaining magnetic field, will create an inductive low current in the ground of a 3 wire feed application, with the varying and pulsing fields around it, making it very iratic and out of phase.  That (small) current induced into the ground then has its own field, which interference with the other wires, causing more field issues.  In any kind of appliance, this is no big deal...over years it may have an effect on the life of motors/fans/compressors, to some extent, at worst.  But for sensitive audio equipment, this amounts noise and odd-order distortions within the equipment itself, or at the very least, a less pure, and continually unpredictable strength to the power path, that will vary every microsecond.

The conductors of a 3 wire Romex are wrapped in a slow wind to mitigate this to an extent.  Your helix design, would actually mitigate this quite nicely, but would be very difficult to build around primary feed cables from the house panel, to the audio receptacle.  A quality power conditioner would likely correct most of this issue, but I'm not convinced that phase issues of this complexity can be resolved entirely by power conditioning....though I'll defer to anyone that clearly states that they know for a fact that a power conditioner would.

The moral of the story:  when installing dedicated audio circuits in your home, never use 3 wire feeds.

Regards,
Rich