I’ve had my 1050 for about 2 weeks now and I am loving it. I am planning on purchasing the PIONEER ELITE DV-45A DVD player. I realized that I am going to have to shell out some more money to get some good interconnects. Then I began thinking. Quite some time ago I interned in a recording studio for a while and we use to make our own cables all the time. I was reading some interesting info http://www.tweakaudio.com/Cable%20Tweaks.html that inspired me to try to make my own interconnects at least temporarily. Can anyone offer any advice?

Nothing wrong with DIY, but the 'information' on that link looks like mostly horse excrement. YMMV.

I know nothing about self made interconnects but I have a 45A and love it

Not to change the subject but Outlaws PSC's are excellent if you need some dig coax connections. They double as excellent cables for component video as well. They are cheap by some standards and are of excellent quality. Their PCA's are great as well. Hell, everything from these guys kicks ass!

Good luck though, hopefully someone can you help you out more then I did. Out of curiosity, i will check out the page you posted.

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Play it LoUd!!

I've had good luck so far with some info from Chris Venhaus's (http://www.venhaus1.com/) and from tnt-audio http://www.tnt-audio.com

The interconnects I've been making now are a combination of Chris's design and the TNT-X cables... 2 strands of fine silver wire in an x pattern alternating over and under around teflon tube....

I also made the tnt-x cables they way they recomended using wire-wrap wire and I haven't noticed a big difference (I've got 2 of the pure silver and one of the wire wrap) they're all 6 feet long and hopefully soon I'll do a more thorough test... but electrically speaking the pure silver are better, for the 6 feet I'm getting 0.082nf capacitance.. for the other (multi stranded wire wrap) it was around 0.120nf.... I also made a 2ft long interconnect the way Chris recommends, both conductors paralell around the tube... that yeilded the same capacitance as the 6ft x pattern.... ( I think that one will be used for the center channel)

Oh both those numbers include the .05nf that my meter shows just from the leads... so it's more like 0.03 and 0.09

Maybe if I get some free time I'll try making a single strand silver plated copper interconnect and see how that does (wire-wrap wire)

Good luck though

[This message has been edited by Unferth (edited February 27, 2003).]

[This message has been edited by Unferth (edited February 27, 2003).]

I actually use RG-59 for interconnects and it is very good for that purpose. Canare makes some good gold plated RCAs. There are a lot of other more "designer" wires out there, but good old RG-59 cannot be beat.

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The Soundhound Theater

You might want to rethink the DV-45A. I'm told that the audio performance is terrible on that player, and that its video has the deadly chroma bug. If you can muster up about $400, you might want to look for the Panasonic DVDRP-82. It just got top school at the Secrets DVD shootout; it uses the Faroudja deinterlacer.

Jeff

What about the 47ai?

Unferth, Thanks for the info on the cables. I followed the links and did some interesting reading. The pure silver, sound like a cool project. Soundhound, way to go with those Canare RCAs. I actually found some information on there bulk cables. They seam to be very good and moderately priced. Now, what about the 45a? I went to a local store last weekend with hope to purchase it but they did not have it hooked up. I read an article in last months Home Theater Mag. They compared it to an Onkyo DV-SP800 and a Marantz, can’t remember model, if I recall correctly it said that for the price it was excellent. I read the article briefly my brother-in-law would not part with it and now it’s off the shelves. Can anyone offer an opinion? I am mainly interested in the Pioneer for its ability to play DVD Audio and SACDs. What are the difference between the 45a and 47ai and at $377 and $677 which seams to be the better choice for an entry level Universal DVD Player?

Thanks, all

I personally would believe your choice comes down to the amount of quality in playback you're willing to sacrifice. I personally don't own a universal player and I've been a little scared to go pick one up. All the posts and reviews I've read seem to say that this first generation of universal players haven't quite worked out all of their bugs. It seems they all have their strong suits, be it SACD playback, DVD-Audio playback, video playback, ease of set-up, etc., but none of them seem to be solid in all of these areas. You're left with a decision on which one of these formats you prefer the strongest playback with. I would personally wait a generation for the manufacturers to work out the kinks. Also, the prices are bound to fall by that point.

The chief advantage of the 47Ai is that it has the i.Link digital multi-channel connection for SACD and DVD-A. This is only usable if you have a pre-amp or receiver that supports this format (it's proprietary, and not commonly in use), in which case you can pretty much ignore any sound issues in the player because it'll essentially be acting as a dumb transport.

I believe the DV47Ai also has an extra degree of chamber isolation to prevent vibrations from affecting disc play and to prevent the disc play noise from bothering the listener.

Jeff