High quality interconnect cables

Encyclopedia of radio electronics and electrical engineering / Audio equipment

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As a rule, the connection between the DVD player and the receiver is made via digital channels, optical or coaxial cable. The signal goes to the 6-channel decoder of the receiver and ... I will make a reservation right away: these types of cables are not considered in this article. If you are using an external decoder, a decoder built into the player, or other sound sources (eg CD, MD) are present in your system, then you will undoubtedly need low-frequency connecting cables.

Opening the box

Manufacturers often complete their products with such cables, such cables can be bought inexpensively in commercial tents. It is a thin shielded wire with "tulip" connectors in a plastic case (often non-separable) at the ends.

Such a cable is very good to make sure that the device is working, and nothing more. It completely kills the sound, although you can try to use them to connect the translation channel to a TV, boombox or music center. However, the best solution is to leave them in the box of the device and send them to the mezzanine, so that when selling this device in the future, they will be transferred to the next happy owner. Manufacturers are not interested in unnecessarily overestimating the cost of their equipment, because the kit always comes with the cheapest primitive cable. So, our way lies to the store...

We buy a cable

Let's take a look at a store that sells more serious cables. The first thing that will grab our attention are the relatively inexpensive cables from Vivanco and Hama. Outwardly similar cables in boxes with inscriptions Video, Audio and even Audio gold look a bit more impressive than thin laces in the packages of devices. And here is a rack with "Monsters" and "Audio Links", a thick cable, metal connectors, but prices, prices... Not everyone has the courage to immediately buy a cable at a price of $50 - $100 per pair. But when connecting the decoder built into the player, you will need three pairs of cables at once. Looking back to the Hama counter, they don't look as impressive, but the prices are much lower. Only plastic non-separable connector housings leave doubts.

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This is where the memories come that sometimes I had to hold a soldering iron in my hands, and maybe what is expensive to buy can be done by yourself. The audiophile store greets us with colorful boxes with connectors and cable spools. On closer examination, it becomes obvious that there is not much money to be won. Of course, the components for the cable are cheaper than the finished one, but the difference is not as great as we would like. You'll have to compromise.

Compromise

Remember, not only audiophile companies produce cables with good parameters and gold-plated connectors. A sharp price reduction is inherent in mass production. Guessed? Our path lies in the computer store. accessories ... buy connectors. We go to the Brown Bear trading house, brownbear.ru. Product catalog, group: connectors, type: audio - here it is "RCA plug (tulip) on gold-plated teflon cable (RPC-3GT) (K29320T) Manufacturer: Taiwan. Code: 220034 Price: $ 1.44".

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Teflon insulation, gold-plated contacts, low price ... The only "but" is that it is intended for coaxial cable. So, we will make the first interconnect cable of coaxial construction.

Coaxial interconnect cable

For a number of reasons, the "SAT 703b gas injected" 75 ohm cable (made in Italy) used in satellite television reception systems was chosen for use. A thick central copper monocore, a thick foamed dielectric, double shielding (braid and foil), low signal attenuation in the frequency band up to a gigahertz are also good qualities for an interconnect. The cable diameter is 6 mm, the cable is quite rigid and does not like sharp bends. The desoldering is symmetrical at both ends of the cable, a solder with a small silver content was used for soldering.

Cables with lengths of 0.6, 1.0, 1.5 and 2 meters were made. There was no difference between them in electrical parameters and sound by available means. At the same time, a plan arose to use these connectors for non-coaxial cable.

Interconnect cable - pigtail

For the manufacture we will use a computer cable "twisted pair category 5". It contains 8 insulated copper conductors twisted in pairs. We remove the outer insulation and separate the twisted pairs without untwisting them. In total, you will need a piece of cable about 4 lengths of the desired interconnect (8 lengths per pair). We cut the taken out pairs into 3 equal parts and collect them in bundles by color (3 red-white pairs, 3 green-white pairs and 3 blue-white pairs). We intertwine these bundles with a pigtail and put on the ends pieces of cambric of a suitable diameter 3-5 cm long (for example, pieces of sheath from a SAT 703 cable), while making sure that at the free end pairs of the same color come out in the middle of the bundle, and pairs of two other colors are evenly distributed around.

For example, in the center - green, red and blue - along the edge. We solder green conductors to the central contact of the tulip, and red and blue to the outer contact. At the opposite end of the cable, we solder only 2 bundles (green and blue) to the connector, and simply cut the wires of the red bundle a little shorter and leave them unconnected. The cable is directional, the end where two bundles are connected is connected to the source, and the one where there are three, to the signal receiver.

The length of the interconnect cables in my case was 0.6 meters. So, we have material for comparison.

Compare

For comparison, "blind" tests were carried out on two sets of equipment. Pioneer PD-S605 and Micromega Minimum CD players served as the signal source, Pioneer A-303R and Harman/Kardon 2.0 amplifiers served as the receiver. It should be noted that when using a relatively cheap set from Pioneer, the difference in the sound of cables of both designs was practically not felt, and became clearly noticeable on a more expensive set of equipment. Here, the "pigtail" clearly overplayed the coax, although it did not "reach" the expensive Kimber cable of a similar design, taken for comparison. On both sets of equipment, both homemade cables easily outperformed inexpensive Hama products.

It should be noted that the parameters of the cables used for the manufacture of interconnects can vary greatly depending on the batch and manufacturer, especially for twisted pair, which does not guarantee repeatability of results when using cable pieces from different reels purchased in different places and at different times. It is better to immediately prepare the required amount of cable for all interconnects, because you may need up to 8 such cables to connect a DVD player with a decoder.

Cables were also made using other coaxial cables (50 and 98 ohm for a computer network), and with a different number of twisted pairs in a pigtail bundle. The designs described here (SAT 703 coax cable and 3-pair twisted-pair pigtail - 6 signal conductors, 6 ground conductors and 6 shield conductors) have shown the best results in their classes.

Publication: cxem.net

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