Home made interconnect

[awkwardbydesign]

"Neutrik NY273 is well regarded as a high quality, low cost RCA connector; their insanely expensive model with a retractable ground....."
My insanity seems to be bigger than your insanity; I think they are quite cheap!

[jlbruyelle]

"Neutrik NY273 is well regarded as a high quality, low cost RCA connector; their insanely expensive model with a retractable ground....."
My insanity seems to be bigger than your insanity; I think they are quite cheap!

Then your pockets are much, much deeper than those of the average pro Or maybe you misunderstood my sentence: I was referring to the NF2C-B/2, not the NYS273 (sorry for the typo in my previous post) which is cheap indeed and does not have a retractable ground contact.

[jlbruyelle]

CL, maybe you should read my post before commenting it, especially using terms such as "rubbish". This sort of attitude does not serve you in the least and only contributes in spoiling the climate of what is supposed to be a well-mannered forum intended to share knowledge and experience - unless I'm mistaken and we are supposed to fight over a piece of wire?

Now for the contents of your reply:

When the distance from the center of the conductors increases the capacitance drops, when it reduces it rises and inductance drops, it is how things work, sorry.

I did not say the geometry does not matter. I did say that many factors matter. In fact I mostly said that not all balanced cables have a higher capacitance than unbalanced ones, to which your sentence above is completely unrelated. Not willing to lecture you, but you should definitely take a course in physics for electronics, as I did. Just reading the data sheets of actual cables would be a good first step towards getting rid of the misconceptions you seem to have on this topic.

Gold is not a good conductor, copper is the second best very very very closely behing silver.

Believe it or not, gold is very widely used to protect connectors from oxidation. It is also good enough for the internal connections of ICs, and many other uses as a conductor. Do the math and you will easily find that the difference between a 1.5m wire made of gold, silver and copper is completely negligible for the kind of application we are talking about - ok, we wouldn't make a cable out of solid gold anyway, but hopefully you get the point: the conductance difference between those materials is attached much, much more importance than it really has.

Capacitance is very very important in phono cables as a high capacitance caple with a MM cart will alter the freq curve of the cart a lot, It is why all carts give a capacitance loading that the cart works best.

Please read my post: where did I say otherwise? I just said it is difficult to make a cable that has both low capacitance and good shielding. Is it so difficult to read?

Now please cool down and let's move on to more useful discussions. Sheesh, I should have listened to my mom when she told me not to discuss cables on an audio forum

[jlbruyelle]

Oops, sorry again, it's NYS373 actually. Need to give up drinking

[awkwardbydesign]

"Neutrik NY273 is well regarded as a high quality, low cost RCA connector; their insanely expensive model with a retractable ground....."
My insanity seems to be bigger than your insanity; I think they are quite cheap!

Then your pockets are much, much deeper than those of the average pro Or maybe you misunderstood my sentence: I was referring to the NF2C-B/2, not the NYS273 (sorry for the typo in my previous post) which is cheap indeed and does not have a retractable ground contact.

Yes, only £14 pair. This is mainly a HI-FI forum; that's not expensive for hi-fi plugs, try WBT, etc.

[jlbruyelle]

Isn't it a strange world where consumer stuff costs much more than pro stuff?

[LPspinner]

Hi, just jumping into the conversation to bring my 2 cents worth of professional knowledge. Such general assertions like "microphone cable has a high capacitance because it is a twisted pair" or "50 ohms cable has a low capacitance because is it is done for HF", very often prove wrong. It entirely depends on manufacturing parameters that vary widely between types.

But then there is a way to actually know: all the cable types have a data sheet available on the manufacturer's site. Check the capacitance in pF/m (or pF/ft depending on the country you live in), multiply it by the length you plan to cut, and voila, you have the capacity of your cable. Contrary to a common belief, a balanced cable can very well have have a low capacitance.

Hi Guys:

Yes: you are correct you are quite correct; I was being a little too general and broad based.

To be specific the CANARE L-2T2S twin-core cable I use for line level interconnects has a capacitance of 33pF per meter between each core and the shield and a capacitance of 22pF per meter between each core of the twisted pair. I use the cable in quasi-balanced configuration, which is one core for the signal, the other core for the earth along with the shield connected to the earth on one plug only. In this configuration the capacitance will be slightly higher. 75-ohm coaxial cable on the other hand is usually about 17 pF per meter.

Like I also said in my previous post, the difference is little more than academic unless you intend running very long lengths of cable from the cartridge to the phono pre-amp. In that case the 75-ohm coax starts to look a little more attractive. But I would also caution against trying to make a cartridge run into long cables, it would be better to locate the phono preamp closer to the turntable.

At the end of the day, for general line level use the twin core and shield microphone cable I use is easy to work with, quite reasonably priced ($Aus 2.50 per meter) and sounds just as good as any other Mega-dollar cable that you care to mention.

As for the Neutrik connector, yes they do look kind of cool, but they are more than twice the cost of the metal bodies plugs I use and I really can’t see (or hear) any benefit … sorry.



LPSpinner

[jlbruyelle]

Hi LPspinner. I know well your Canare cable, I use it for mic and line use and it is one of the best all-around types I've met so far

OTOH the capacitance figures you gave are in pF/ft, not in pF/m. The correct figures are 3.3 times higher.

As for the Neutrik connector, yes they do look kind of cool, but they are more than twice the cost of the metal bodies plugs I use and I really can’t see (or hear) any benefit … sorry.

You are referring to the NF2C, which I too find way overkill for ordinary use. The NYS373 I talked about is very similar to the one on your photo, and costs 2 euros each. Not a bad deal for the quality.

[cafe latte]

CL, maybe you should read my post before commenting it, especially using terms such as "rubbish". This sort of attitude does not serve you in the least and only contributes in spoiling the climate of what is supposed to be a well-mannered forum intended to share knowledge and experience - unless I'm mistaken and we are supposed to fight over a piece of wire?

Now for the contents of your reply:

When the distance from the center of the conductors increases the capacitance drops, when it reduces it rises and inductance drops, it is how things work, sorry.

I did not say the geometry does not matter. I did say that many factors matter. In fact I mostly said that not all balanced cables have a higher capacitance than unbalanced ones, to which your sentence above is completely unrelated. Not willing to lecture you, but you should definitely take a course in physics for electronics, as I did. Just reading the data sheets of actual cables would be a good first step towards getting rid of the misconceptions you seem to have on this topic.

Gold is not a good conductor, copper is the second best very very very closely behing silver.

Believe it or not, gold is very widely used to protect connectors from oxidation. It is also good enough for the internal connections of ICs, and many other uses as a conductor. Do the math and you will easily find that the difference between a 1.5m wire made of gold, silver and copper is completely negligible for the kind of application we are talking about - ok, we wouldn't make a cable out of solid gold anyway, but hopefully you get the point: the conductance difference between those materials is attached much, much more importance than it really has.

Capacitance is very very important in phono cables as a high capacitance caple with a MM cart will alter the freq curve of the cart a lot, It is why all carts give a capacitance loading that the cart works best.

Please read my post: where did I say otherwise? I just said it is difficult to make a cable that has both low capacitance and good shielding. Is it so difficult to read?

Now please cool down and let's move on to more useful discussions. Sheesh, I should have listened to my mom when she told me not to discuss cables on an audio forum

Apologies I was rather tired and I missed the bit were you said low capacitance for phono sections, and only read the bit were you said capacitance did not matter. Opps
Regards
CL

[LPspinner]

Hi LPspinner. I know well your Canare cable, I use it for mic and line use and it is one of the best all-around types I've met so far

OTOH the capacitance figures you gave are in pF/ft, not in pF/m. The correct figures are 3.3 times higher...

Ooops - My Bad

you are quite right ... must read the catalogue more carfully...

[timbloke]

Lets say I wanted to make a really good set of phono leads for my turntable, a really good set of interconnects for line level sources and a really good set to go between my pre and my power amp. What would the best choice of cable for each run?

Don't worry too much much about ease of soldering or connector types as I'm pretty good with a soldering iron and already know what connectors I'm going to use.

[cafe latte]

Lets say I wanted to make a really good set of phono leads for my turntable, a really good set of interconnects for line level sources and a really good set to go between my pre and my power amp. What would the best choice of cable for each run?

Don't worry too much much about ease of soldering or connector types as I'm pretty good with a soldering iron and already know what connectors I'm going to use.

Capacitance is only really an issue with phono leads. I buy soundlink as my friend sells it and he uses it for professional audio instalations (studios ect) so if it is good enough for them it is good enough for me. It is low capacitance and has a foil screening as well as the normal. It is a multi stranded core, not soild. I use if for everything with good quality plugs, it is supposed to be diectional, but I dont worry about that.
Regards
CL

[hoolio]

I got talked into using RG6 75 ohm cable by a good friend of mine for interconnect between pre and power amp, a 7 metre run. It's a single solid conductor heavily screened. I argued against it as the negative side of the signal uses all that screen, plenty of foil and mesh.

Well they are staying. I'm surprised, even though the pro's use it in home theater installations.

You just don't know until you try it.

[Alec124c41]

I had about the same length of that running from a tape out to my computer in another room. It worked well.

Cheers,
Alec