Can insulator cause distortion/smearing?

[5th Beatle]

Can your chioce of wire insulator cause sound distortion or smearing? Am looking to use natural cotton or spaghetti teflon tubing to insulate IC's and speaker wire. If so, how would I correct it?

[WmAx]

Can your chioce of wire insulator cause sound distortion or smearing? Am looking to use natural cotton or spaghetti teflon tubing to insulate IC's and speaker wire. If so, how would I correct it?

Let's put it this way: no source of credibility has shown a coorelation of sound quality and insulator material(s). The only sources that advocate a difference are those basing their advice on purely subjective opinions, not based upon any sort of real scientific perceptual research. You won't find so much as a basic double-blinded test comparison of like cables with different insulation as the only variable. Only in sighted [you know which cable is which during testing] tests, have audible differences been claimed to exist. There is a popoular guy out there by the name of Jon Risch who has made some rather dubious claims about his ability to be able to positively identify cable insulation in double-blind testing, but he has never backed it up by providing test methodology details and witness names, and more importantly, no one has replicated his claimed results in independant testing. At this point, it just seems like some guy making wild claims.

-Chris

[jaxvon]

As Will Smith would say,

"AW HELL NAW!"

[j_garcia]

The wires and I/Cs are already insulated no? Then why would you need to further insulate them from one another?

[5th Beatle]

Actually the wire would be bare for a DIY project. Natural cotton or Teflon tubing is the insulator. Was curious to know whether rubbing or movement inside insulator could produce smearing or distortion.

[mtrycrafts]

Actually the wire would be bare for a DIY project. Natural cotton or Teflon tubing is the insulator. Was curious to know whether rubbing or movement inside insulator could produce smearing or distortion.


Movement not unless that cotton is too thin in places and it shorts out.

Why do you want to go to all that work? Just curious. I would suggest teflon, less possibility of shorts.

[MacManNM]

Actually the wire would be bare for a DIY project. Natural cotton or Teflon tubing is the insulator. Was curious to know whether rubbing or movement inside insulator could produce smearing or distortion.


I guess he's worried about that static buildup:rolleyes:

[j_garcia]

Why bare wire? They sell teflon insulated wire, but it isn't cheap. I used to work at a semiconductor capital equipment company dealing with high temp caustic chemicals and teflon insulated wire was the only thing we could use that would resist both corrosion and heat.

[5th Beatle]

There is a school of thought I've read elswhere "less is more" hence bare wire, insulator, and nothing else. Seems like an inexpensive plus relatively easy first project for me who is all thumbs to begin with.

[mtrycrafts]

There is a school of thought I've read elswhere "less is more" hence bare wire, insulator, and nothing else. Seems like an inexpensive plus relatively easy first project for me who is all thumbs to begin with.


Well, not all 'school of thought' created equal. Some are based in mythology, voodoo, plain bs, you name it:D :D Here, we try to weed that stuff out:p

The 'less is more' process buys into SET amps as an example:eek: