DIY cables Vs Mass market cables.

Diy is very simple. All you have to do is be able to read and follow instructions. Its easy to diss DIY when you are one of the people who have bought into the Snake Oil that is the cable business. On my first try I replaced a 30.00 Per foot cable with CAT 5 home mades. My cost was 42.00 to make 12 foot runs.

Here's a DIY Wire Gauge Calculator, Damping Factor and SPL Loss Calculator that a nice Agon member sent me.From what I gather.. This is supposed to help you to find the proper damping factor for your speakers by tweaking the cable length and gauge of the wire. Of course you need to know the damping factor the designer suggests using for a particular speaker to use it properly. It's a neat little tool. You need Excel to run the program. Just click on the link at the top of the page to download it.

Gmood1,

How is it cheap to test several different wires and hospital grade components without buying several different sets of wire and several different connectors (hospital grade) to try out, parts and shipping costs? Are you really saving money? And how do you know if it's better than the cables out there if all you try is your own concoction?

I agree that some cable companies sell vanilla cables with nothing special to them and overcharge. I think as a consumer it's your duty to snuff some of that out, but check out Van Den Hul’s website and the fact that they use carbon hybrid design (do you want to try that in your basement?). There are other companies that actually engineer interconnects that aren’t ridiculously priced.

If you can make DIY cables that rival JPS labs for example then you could make piles of money opening a business, but somehow I think you can’t.

If they make snake oil, I’ll buy it by the gallon.

Robm321,
If you've ever tried DIY. You wouldn't be asking me these questions. Again you ask me several questions that aren't logical. How would you know how good any cable is whether homebrewed or store bought against thousands of others? Your point is moot. Where did I say I've only tried DIY?

It would be impossible for you or I to know one way or the other if there was such a thing as a best cable for all systems..that cable DOES NOT EXIST. I only pointed out DIY is a viable solution for the ones that want to take a walk on the wild side and learn something on their own. If your not one of those folks it's fine..no problem. By the way, I considered buying some JPS Labs cables. After listening to equipment with JPS Labs throughout ..it is nothing to write home about ..that's for sure.

I say bottoms up!! :-)