the best OTA digital cable that I have come up with in the past three months.
members.aol.com/trstrap/ota.jpg (this is a photo of it, just copy and paste)
I take no credit for this configuration (other than the lazy eight half knots:-) as my direction on this cable came from Richard @ Vantage Audio, but on the other hand if it does not meet your greatest expectations upon wasting many precious feet (and inches) of the OTA, then I take full responsibility as this is my adaptation of the basic principals which were graciously supplied to me. The hot lead is 60" in length and the cold lead is 30". Better yet might be lengths of 80" and 40", but I barely had enough cable left to make up phono cables (a work in progress), so I made them 60/30 which is the bare minimum for this design, I am told. The cable is tunable (per my experience) by changing the number and size of the half knots (along with the spacing of them) on the longer lead. The "loops" that I am using are approx. 2" to 3" in diameter, but these are based on my personal taste and my setup (experimentation is advised when using this cable in other systems as nothing is ever easy). The higher the quantity of "half knots" (loops) and the smaller the diameter the tighter the imaging. The drawback is that with this tighter imaging (which is not unlike that of traditional cable), the more closed in the sound becomes (this closed in sound is also similar to that of traditional cable and defeats the "openness" that is the main purpose of using the OTA cable in my system), thus the "wild" look of the cable. I had almost given up on using the OTA as a digital cable until I tried this design (thank you Richard) as I was never able to surpass the sound of the standard Mapleshade Double Helix digital cable that I used before. I have already tried adapting this design to something that would be generally acceptable in appearance, the longer lead being "tightly" coiled around the shorter lead with a tidy Teflon surround enclosing the two (even tried the same with cotton surrounds/insulation between the cables), but the variations all basically sucked as far as the sound went (I am still using the "ugly duckling" cable as pictured). I started off with leads of equal length and then tried staggering the various leads (one being longer and one being shorter). These cables were OK, but no cigar as they did not best the Mapleshade digital cable. Anyway, this is my best effort, so far, as digital cables go and I am very content with the sound.
As far as "contact area" goes, I have only discussed this in the past with Red, Brulee and Kitch. My take is that the smaller the contact area, the better the sound. Wrapping the OTA around a binding post on the amplifier and/or the speaker has a tendency to muck up the sound from the mid bass down, IMO. Making a small contact area by just threading the wire through the hole in a binding post and then tightening down within reason leaves the sound more open in my setup and enhances bass and mid bass bloom. I have also used the OTA as hookup wire (in a TDS Passive Audiophile and once again in this application "less was more" as the best sound came from almost solderless connections (just enough solder to get the job done, as one would use when soldering to a circuit board).
As far as oxidation goes I have been using Kontak (a generous gift from Brulee) with excellent results on everything in my system, including the OTA. However due to the nature of the OTA contacts I find it necessary to redress the ends of the IC's and speaker cables after they have been taken on and off more than 3-4 times as the wire has a tendency to flatten out. I have also broken 3 of the white center posts on the plastic RCA's to date (mainly due to taking them on and off constantly while experimenting with the cable in IC form) and hopefully this will not be a problem when things settle down. I did purchase another set of the RCA's, but since I have broken so many, I have been forced to make a few hard connections on my setup (which bypass the RCA's altogether). I cannot really hear a difference between the hard connection and the OTA RCA connection, though I had thought that I would. This is the only negative aspect that I find of the product and for those who just install the cable (IC's) only to remove them for periodic cleaning (once or twice a year) I do not see this as being a big deal, though additional RCA's may still come in handy if there is a mishap.
On a whole, I love this stuff and with the guidance of "Palmnell", who posted above, (yes, we are a close knit group:-) I hope to knock off a pair of phono IC's next.
