SOTA diy speaker cables

Recipe?

Are you asking for suggestions of cable "ingredients" Iike - for example the construction of cables using cat5 telecoms or network cable and how to braid them for best results etc...

Something like this..-

http://www.mejiatryti.com/SpeakerCable/fivebraid.html

Thanks

You got it. I'm sure there are many diy cables members have tried and I'm interested in the results compared to the products offered by the various manufacturers. I'm particularly curious about the U-Byte2 cables talked about on TNT Audio.

One thing to remember - some amps do not like high capacitance speaker cables - it can cause some of them to oscillate, degrading the sound

In the u-byte2 article I looked at, the cables were rated at 800pf for a 5.5 meter cable - that's 145pf/meter

By comparison my DIY Van den Hul D-352 cables would be approximately 180pf for 5.5 meter cable - that's 32.5pf/meter.

Naim is one of those amps that performs better with low capacitance cables and they state this on their web site. Naim speaker cable is slightly lower - I believe around 20pf/meter

I did email Naim about the D-352 and they confirmed that although it was higher than their cable it was well within the operating limits of the amp

Just something to consider.

Hi capacitance wires normally sound very good with high current solid state, but can cause a few problems with speaker phase angles and tubes just don't like it. The cat 5 example above is a very high capacitance design.

Is anyone able to any identify any brands for which high or low capacitance cables present problems?

My own personal belief is that some amps sound best with low capacitance cables and some amps sound best with higher capacitance cables regardless of whether they are solid state or tube.

But the type of speaker cable an amp works best with is seldom identified by amp manufacturers and this is one factor when trying to decide on which cable to purchase that should be understood by the owner of the amp before they commit.

To serve as a benchmark...
- Naim speaker cable is low capacitance rated at 20 pf/meter
- Kimber Kable - 8TC is high capacitance rated at 320 pf/meter
(Based on their web site - 2.5 meter is 820 pf)

I know you should always try to audition first, but as an example - Naim owners should not buy Kimber Kable based on Naim's own web site!

Or is Naim just trying to put the frightners on owners of their amps?

Are there any Naim amp owners running Kimber Kable out there?

Back to the music :-)