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Will I hear a difference with these cables?

I'm almost finished making my own Cat5 based speaker cables. They will be between 6 and 7 feet long and will have four runs of Cat 5 per speaker. I left all of the shielding in place for the majority of the run and simply put some 15mm heat shrink on them to keep the four cables together. I am using some monoprice.com banana connectors to terminate the 16 strands of solid core 24 AWG wire. I've grouped the colors and white together to maintain the advantage of the twisted pairs. One of the two is complete other than the final heat shrink covering the ends to make sure nothing touches that shouldn't.

My current speaker wires are the basic original Monster Cable with some angled pin connectors on the receiver end and bare wire at the speaker.

I don't really have an expectation one way or the other, just an experiment and something to do for entertainment.

Anyone care to make a prediction of what I'll hear, if anything?
mceljo
mceljo OP
1,357 posts
 
Here's my fisrt impressions of my new DIY speaker cables after a few hours of listening.

I am convinced that my system has never sounded better, but that's very different that saying that sounds better than it ever has.

If I were forced to describe a few specifics of things that think I can hear that is different I would say the following:

(1) On several songs I've heard some additional details that I don't remember hearing in the past. An example was a flute deep in the background of a song.

(2) The higher frequencies seem a little more crisp on certain songs.

(3) The lower frequencies seem a bit more defined.

(4) Some of my CDs that have a harsh tone in the highs seem to be less harsh even though I can still hear the harshness. Maybe a better way to describe it is that I can hear the harshness but it's not as distracting or objectionable now.

(5) It seems that I'm listening to things will a little more volume now which indicates that the overall sound results is less listening fatigue.
jedinite24's avatar
jedinite24
1,503 posts
 
Hi Mceljo

As you have spent more time with your DIY Cat5e speaker wire what do you think? Anything to add in addition to what you mention above? Also what Cat5e cable did you use?

I'm going to try Belden 1701A cable.

Thanks
mceljo OP
1,357 posts
 
Jedinite24 - I have no idea what type of cable I'm useing because it came from the scrap bin at work. It's Cat5 with foil shielding so it should be a decent product. A week ago Monday I attempted to do an A/B comparison between my Cat5 based cables and the old Monster Original cables, but gave up before having success. After listening to about six songs with the Cat5 based cables and taking notes on specific songs and receiver volumes I attempted to switch cables and had the crimp on banana plugs start pulling off. The back of my receiver is difficult to access so after a few tries to salvage the connectors I gave up for the day and will try again when the better quality connectors that I have on order arrive.

All I can tell you is that more than once I've found myself listening to a level of detail that I had not previously noticed. This has happened during both critical listening and also when I'm listening while reading of playing on the internet. They certainly didn't hurt the sound in any way.
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