High end speaker cables....made cheap. :)

[KenM10759]

So recently a favorite dealer of mine put some Nordost speaker cables in my hands to test. It's the cheapest ones Nordost sells, at about $500 for a pair of 2 meter (7'9") long. I put them on my system and played familiar music for almost two weeks, then switched back to my homemade cables of Monoprice 12-CL2 and their banana plugs. I really couldn't discern one bit of difference, so it's one of three possibilities.

1. My receiver and speaker combination aren't capable of emitting fine enough sound to tell. (I run 2.1 over 95% of the time)
2. My ears are shot and the differences are there, I simply will never hear them with these tired ears.
3. There is no difference in speaker cables once you get the right size & up of a reasonable quality wire.

I vote No.3, others will assail me for being so ignorant. I don't care, I am quite blissful with over $400 still in my pocket. The other $100 is about what it cost me to buy a 100ft spool of wire, banana plugs, heat shrink tubing, KnuKonceptz cable pants, cool sheathing and a heat shrink gun. (I've dealt with the butane lighter method long enough, time for the right tool.)

The result:

Whaddya think? Waste of time and money or no?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm

 

[KenM10759]

I'd already read that plus many more, including a few here and YouTube videos on how to make them. I just want to add "my touch" with the green sheathing and shrink fit sealing at all the joints.

 

[lovinthehd]

While I agree number 3 is the correct answer (unless you don't want it to be due to the money you're spending if buying them), green and pink don't do it for me Nice job!

 

[KenM10759]

Crappy point & shoot camera photo. It's really more a red than a pink but that's subjective opinion as much as speaker wire is. The green is hard to capture in a photo because it kind of glistens and changes tone as you look from different angles.

Thanks!

 

[killdozzer]

Whaddya think? Waste of time and money or no?

Man, I'd give you 50$ for a pair of 2 meter long cables like these. They look stunning. If you really bought all the material and bits for a 100$, well, you do the math.

Is it a pain in the... to put the sheathing on a cable?

killdozzer

 

[Alex2507]

Finding something you like looking at for only a hundred bucks is a bargain. Finding the thing you like looking at to be wire is a deeper issue but since you showed me yours ...

 

[KenM10759]

Man, I'd give you 50$ for a pair of 2 meter long cables like these. They look stunning. If you really bought all the material and bits for a 100$, well, you do the math.

Is it a pain in the... to put the sheathing on a cable?

killdozzer

It's not hard at all to get the sheathing on. What's a little tricky is getting the length correct. Another issue is that when you do cut it, the sheathing will instantly start to fray.

I remembered a little trick from my days making braided stainless steel hydraulic hoses: Wrap a single layer of electrical tape around the sheathing, locating the center of the tape where you want to cut. As you cut through the tape it keeps the braid from fraying on both sides of the cut.

 

[tyhjaarpa]

When you have thick enough ofc cables it doesnt matter at all. It is more of looks when you pay more than 1-2$ per meter.

 

[KenM10759]

Yup, and I'm fully aware. I made these purely for looks. With the placement of my speakers being away from a wall and near passageway doors, they can be seen so now they don't look cheap. They make my speakers look more "high tech" to the unknowing, but I do know the truth.

I should add that these speaker cables achieve my desired effect for a TINY fraction of what super-duper cables from the snake oil dealers sell. I don't fault people who truly believe the $5000 speakers cables make their $100,000 systems sound better. I just can't see the point of adding $2000 cables to a $10,000 system. My cables are simply commensurate for to the value of my pedestrian level system and look better (to me) than the plain vanilla.

 

[Alex2507]

When you have thick enough ofc cables it doesnt matter at all. It is more of looks when you pay more than 1-2$ per meter.

Even at $2/m that's like 66.6 cents/ft. I like 4/14 wire and you ain't getting that for 66 cents. Doubled up that's 11 gauge but more flexible than 2/12 wire. Try ordering terminated 10' lengths from BJC and see how fast $100 gets eaten up. Using your own labor for terminations is what drives up value and having terminated wire buys you back all that time plus when you consider how much time you save on subsequent connections.

It's more than looks. Serious business, this wire.

 

[rojo]

Finding something you like looking at for only a hundred bucks is a bargain. Finding the thing you like looking at to be wire is a deeper issue but since you showed me yours ...

Your pic reminds me of this.

 

[killdozzer]

I oppose paying for the aesthetics through your nose, I don't oppose aesthetic in it self. I find no particular pleasure in any part of the equipment looking like it came from the flea-market.

This is also the reason I see behind the 'copper-business' in hi-fi; the profit margin is extremely high. It is hard to make good electronics or speaker drivers, you have to invest and research, but to take some copper and dress it all nice and pretty costs nothing. If you buy wholesale, it costs even less for sure.

This @KenM10759 's experiment revealed just that. All he needs to say now is that this is a cryo-copper sprinkled with semen of some soon to be extinct species, forged by lightning and so on and voila; 385$ for a single inter-connector!

If it's a decent cable and dressed up a bit for my pleasure, I'm all for it. For the price of up to 30$. I didn't find BJC dealer in Europe, but entry level QED and some Van Den Hul cables are just that - fair&fair.

 

[j_garcia]

#3


Knu-Konceptz pants and BFAs. No fancy sheathing on my wire, but it is 4S11 so it is already secondary jacketed.

 

[mtrycrafts]

..

The result:

Whaddya think? Waste of time and money or no?

They look really nice. Now you can go into business of cable modding for good looks.

 

[KenM10759]

They look really nice. Now you can go into business of cable modding for good looks.

Great idea....but I wouldn't want to compete with companies like "Spurious Research." Their cables have ALL the cool features with interchangeable UEF Tuning Circuit modules, pretty lights and atmosphere built in.

 

[j_garcia]

But you could still make crazy claims about them

"different color jackets have varying affects on the clarity of highs or more solid bass depending on the color chosen."

 

[KenM10759]

But you could still make crazy claims about them

"different color jackets have varying affects on the clarity of highs or more solid bass depending on the color chosen."

LOL...almost all the other cable sellers do that already! I'm a man of integrity and would never stoop so low.

 

[lovinthehd]

But if you don't make crazy claims then why would we believe they are actually "high-end audiophile" cables?

 

[mtrycrafts]

Great idea....but I wouldn't want to compete with companies like "Spurious Research." Their cables have ALL the cool features with interchangeable UEF Tuning Circuit modules, pretty lights and atmosphere built in.

You would not be competing, just modding for looks, not sound modding.