Duelund conversion to DIY Helix Geometry Cabling

@sasho - apologies for not answering sooner

WRT

have you tried 1 x solid core Neoteck Up OCC 12 AWG with original teflon or Cardas Chassis hook up 11.5 AWG wire Instead of 2 x 14 AWG bare OCC for signal In speaker cable

Unfortunately I have not compared these Gauge/wires in speaker cables

• I did try 1 x 12 gauge vs. 2 x 14 gauge Neotech wires in power cables and the 2 x 14 gauge perfromed better
• I did try 1 x 14 gauge Notech with teflon insulation and 1 x 14 gauge bare Neotech in Teflon tube and the bare wire in teflon tube performed better

From what I have read, the Cardas wire is stranded

• I have tried stranded Neotech wire and compared it to solid Neotech wire, both with Teflon insulation
• The bare wire provided the better performance

From what I have been able to discover...

• electrons generally like to stay within a strand of wire, but will "jump" between strands under certain conditions
• jumping strands takes more energy which results in micro distortions
• these distortions manifest as noise in the signal which impacts sound quality

For those reasons I use only bare wires,

I have also tried 3 and 4 wires in Teflon tubes and found no advantage over 2 wires, which is why I use 2 wires for all signal and live conductors

Seems that using two wires with each wire is inside a teflon tube is the optimum soluton, but I have not been able to ascertain why 3 or 4 wires do not sound better

Hope that helps - Steve

Has anyone made an ethernet cable with this design? How would one go about doing so? 

@donnylovely - not to my knowledge.

Not sure there would be any advantage because...

• each twisted pair is a "ballanced architecture" i.e. 
  • one wire carries D+ve signal and one carries the  D-ve signal
  • there is no neutral wire to connect to the Helix coil
    •  CAT 7 does have a shield, but again, I do not think there is a drain pin on the plug for the shield to connect too,
    • so it is only a floating shield (i.e. not grounded)
    • whereas a USB cable does have a neutral pin on the plug, so the helix coil attaches to that

The wire quality in a good ethernet cable and the Ethernet architecture is capable of carrying todays fastest LAN traffic without losses, so I'm ont sure there is a need for a Helix version

Hoper that helps - Steve

@williewonka, Hi Steve,

I have some parts ordered and about to order the bare solid silver which is fairly pricey. Have you any experience using the next size thinner? I am considering using 22AWG instead of the 20AWG for signal that you recommend and also going to 18 AWG for the neutral rather than the 16AWG in your recipe.

You report on Toddverrone using 24AWG for signal. This gauge would represent a significant saving but as my system is borderline entering into over analytical I would not want to push it any further in that direction.

Thanks.

@lemonhaze - I think you will be OK with the thinner wire

• assuming you are building the signal conductor using 2 x 22 gauge with each wire inside it’s own Teflon tube ?
• The 18 gauge neutral should also be OK with the 2 x 22 gauge signal conductor

RE: analytical sound

• If this is your first Helix Interconnect it will prpobably sound quite different from anything else you have tried and it will require about 200-300 hours break in before sounding it’s best
• you will hear more details, dynamics and clarity with the silver wire, but I’m not sure if I would consider this "analytical"
• small sounds like the reverberations of the venue stand out more
• details are "crisper"
• tsome people prefer the more mellow sound of duelund wire
• I’ve found that using UP-OCC copper for the neutral conductor of the speaker wire proved to be more analitical, so I went back to silver plated milspec for the neutral.
• Perhaps using milspec on the neutral of the interconnect might curb this problem ?
• I found using the silver wire with copper neutral resulted in what I thought was a more complete representation of the music across the audio spectrum.
• I think it’s one of those things you have to try in your system first

Hope that helps - Steve