DIY speaker: braid vs twist vs straight

Dekay, my big tubing is from Lowe's. I think it is polyethelene. I would have liked to have gotten Teflon, but I wanted to get the wires done, and didn't want to wait for mail order. Also, I figured that if the wire was not having alot of contact with the tubing that it wouldn't matter as much. I used 22ga, because my reading of the skin-effect literature said that 22ga is still under the skin-effect depth of copper. Single conductor runs reduce smear. To separate the runs, I used plastic Tee nipples about every 18" and connected them with a 2" piece of tube. This creates a kind of "ladder" appearance to the speaker cables, with the 2 runs staying about 2 1/2" apart. I guesstimated that 2 1/2" spacing would eliminate/reduce field interaction between the feed and return. If this is increasing the inductance, I sure can't hear it in any loss of high freq's. They look pretty exotic.I really don't know how much all this affected the sound, as I didn't A/B them without the tubing, and then with it. I just did it because I thought it would work out right. I am happy with the result. I will say this much: If these wires are holding any of my signal back, then I will sh!t bricks when I hear it with better cables. It is sounding REAL good right now.

This has been a very helpful thread.
Audioquest says "Simple evaluation of multiple sizes reveals that audible skin-effect induced anomalies begin with a strand (or conductor) larger than .8mm. A much smaller strand yields no benefits but encourages the problems discussed below....".
http://www.audioquest.com/theory/theory2.html

.8mm = .0315" dia = 20 gauge wire = maximum size wire to use

I don't know about the benefits of lacquer vs. enamel but since the magnet wire I found is enamel so I'll go with that. Enamel should be more durable and less prone to cracking than lacquer.

Dekay, large diameter teflon tubing is expensive. Here are prices for 3/8" i.d. x 1/32" wall teflon tubing from http://www.mscdirect.com. You may need to buy 100 feet at a time.
Part number.....type of teflon.....price per foot
48700090........PTFE teflon..........1.66
48702096.........FEP.................1.83
48701098.........PFA.................3.40
heavy wall - 1/16 thick
48702591..........FEP................3.99
48701593..........PFA................5.96

Dekay, do you have a link for Michael Percy magnet wire?

If you want heat shrink teflon tubing:
http://www.mcmaster.com has teflon moisture proof tubing for $10.00 for 4 foot length. .015" wall thickness. P/N 7960K31.
"The PTFE outer layer shrinks for a tight fit and the FEP inner layer melts to provide a moisture-proof seal."

You could build up a couple of layers and get a similar construction as the 47 Labs OTA stuff.

Hi CDC: A couple of layers is $5/ft (I would just purchase another 47 Labs kit, which is less expensive, if I could budget this:-).

Michael Percy is @ percyaudio.com and he has a catalogue download (I use PayPal when ordering).

Glad to hear that the new cables sound good (give them 50 hours, or so, of playing time and don't get upset if they have their ups and downs during this period of time). Not having HF/LF rolloff, means that you are within the realms/synergy of your system, good go.

I don't really know the difference between lacquer/enamel though such is detailed in a thread @ A'gon by a member named Tesla. If the RS wire uses enamel then this is OK (I like the sound of them).

The tubing sounds like "lab" tubing. I used this for bare wire IC's and it sounded very nice. Guess that it depends on how much wire contact is taking place?

Yes, the tubing is funky looking (kind of hard to sell such a commercial cable:-), but who cares if it sounds good and meets one's budget?

I have a 35 ft roll of thick 18 gauge Teflon tubing from Fry's, a local store, that was $7.95 (can't remember what I bought it for). I will check to see if they have a larger size then next time I am in the area.

Any thoughts on silver or square magnet wire?
Naim uses square wire for some reason.
http://www.audiotweaks.com had people using 18 ga silver wire for $1.50/ft from http://www.tobackgold.com and putting 100% cotton shoe lace over it. Less resistance so can use a smaller guage wire for skin effect but less resistance than copper.