DIY Speaker Cable

I just recently completed my center channel set of solid core silver speaker wires.
I have yet to integrate them into my system, as I want to set up a little before and after testing using my auto-calibration.
Hopefully, I can get some pics up on my webspace to link into a post here... I will give some more details here pretty soon.

Not that anyone is interested in what I have to say, considering my 3.7 member rating. LOL.

I'm looking forward to the info and pics!

Well for the center I used 8 pieces of 5' long 20ga solid fine silver wire. These pieces are wrapped in 20ga (ID) ptfe spaghetti tubing. Audioquest crimp on solid silver bananas on the tips.

I will be running (still no time, stupid new car!) four pieces to the positive and negative high input, respectively. seeing as my center channel has builtin subwoofers, i have the woofers fed using an ic from my center channel output. 20x4=14awg for the highs.

the front speakers will be getting 8 (4 pos, 4 neg) 17ga for the low input and 8 (same config) 20 ga for the high input. 17x4=11awg lows, 20x4=14awg highs, which yields a total awg of 9 for each positive and negative side.

so, as you can see my mains will be bi-wired through the speaker cables, and the center is bi-wired from speaker cable/ic.

the fine silver wire was purchased from Hoover&Strong.
ptfe spaghetti tubing from McMaster-Carr.
audioquest silver bananas from the cheapest place i found (forget where).

(ill put up some prices once i find the paperwork)

you will also need a crimper and a lot of patience.

my center speaker cables are spaced apart using 1/4in tile solutions tile spacers (rubber x shaped piece in which i drilled a hole in each leg to space the wires apart). looks kind of funny i admit, but i suppose it beats them flopping about freely. i dont know that this idea will work on the mains seeing as on the one end there will be 8 wires and the other end will have 2 sets of 4.

this assembly could obviously modified, but i went for the highest quality setup without any decorative frills. i.e. stretch mesh tubing over the entire setup would have looked nice, but why waste the money on that... there are other things to dress up the wires, that i neglected to use as well.

i will have to say that threading the wire through the tubing is insanely tedious (20ga is all I have done so far at 5' length). there are also bad parts in the tubing in places, which required cutting and restarting. you can buy wire that is preinsulated, but it is way more expensive... also, the finished lengths will be slightly shorter than the cut lengths if you space the wires...

the reason that i chose 20ga for the highs is that "skin effect" does not exist in wires of this gauge or higher (according to audioquest) and only influences high range sound.

i am not sure how using two different gauges for the two different frequencies on the mains will pan out.

hopefully i can post some pictures soon and find the prices, etc. oh yeah and complete the other two sets...

Despite some of the tediousness involved, I hope you’re enjoying the ‘journey’ of experimentation you've undertaken! Any plans for an A/B comparison between your innovative creation and a more ordinary wire solution?

besides subjective, i am going to use my receiver's auto-eq and see if there are any differences between my 12ga monster and this new wire. i cant think of any other way to test it with stuff that i already have. any ideas? seeing as wire "sound" is MOSTLY subjective anyway, i just want to see if the sound is different at all.

yes it is fun, and hopefully worthwhile!

Yeah. Make sure you pull the wire real tight so the sound at the tomato cans is as loud as it can be. Sometimes, if you pull the wire around a nail or something, you can hear a real difference.

where can i find some tomato cans? man, i hadnt thought of that. youre a genius, tony!

the nail idea just wouldnt work for me.

Got some pics up for you guys, check them out here.

http://home.nc.rr.com/curegeorg/

Yes, I know the site is primitive, but I dont have a clue how to do anything cooler.

The pics for the speaker wire (although a little blurry...) are towards the end of that slideshow.

testing this new link in my sig...

muhaha. i will put up some pics of my ht, in the my ht link as soon as i get a chance...

While it would be nice to improve on the cable photos, by the photos you already have posted it appears you have taken great care in the construction of the cables. Careful craftsmanship, even if time consuming, is in some ways its own reward. I get that impression from your work.

Depending on what kind of information the EQ will give you about the results of its automatic adjustments, it would be interesting to run several times through, to gauge what the average findings are if they vary slightly each time the EQ setup is run, with one set of cables then switch to the other and do the same, and afterwards compare the averages.

thats the plan for the eq.

pic quality is as good as i can get with one old digital camera and one camera phone, both about 1.2 megapixel.

thanks for the support.

WOW~~~~~~ although I didn't take the time to look at all those pics, but your HT sucks like shit. I was highly disappointed. It is mediocre at best! It blows major hard!! Shame on you! I don't even feel like doing a full review on this shit; it's neither worth it nor my time. I suggest you look at professional’s set up to give you an idea on how to set up a HT properly. Anyway……….. Here we go.

Your tire-speaker setup is dirty and OK, but nothing worth rooting over here. Honestly, I did expect much more out of your HT, but I can't complain a whole lot. The screw driver pic was very sexy, but un-necessary & I claim that it was the nastiest pic I ever seen. It is a travesty & it ruined everything! Not acceptable! If you can take that shit out of you HT it should look much better. JESUS CHRIST………… Next……..

Your sound card pic has a few moments. It's worth checking out, although I can’t see a damn thing…. I think it is not as good as the first one (the tire speaker one, you know?). The card’s construction quality looks stink also, so bad. I bet there are some flaws in that card, but it is better than nothing. Next……..

The network card is a bit weak & I bet it runs slow at most moments. Is that 5BASE T card? Anyway, it's still enjoyable to see a stuff like this inside a HT. It is a good pic, but not great. I expected more, but didn't get what I hoped for. Next…..

Finally the cable. Tell you the truth, I used to dislike audio quest cables, mainly because they had ugly logos. But, I just hope that this will be as okay as your first DIY cable.

Bottom line- this is a very strange home theater. I really have nothing to say about it, but I've given you all my words and suggestions for improving your setup. That should be good enough. If you don't see this, you are missing out!

PS- You better upgrade your Digi camera to higher pixel. I can’t see a damn thing!!

I'm not really sure that was necessary.

maybe not necessary but funny and deserving.
eye for an eye(slam for a slam).
seems like our mutual friend likes to have a slamfest on anybody he thinks is deserving.but i do think this is getting out of control.i do like coming to the saloon, maybe the bouncer should say a few words....

OK, kids, I think this has gotten entirely out of hand. I'll be the first to admit to having had a number of disagreements with curegeorg over the last year or so. But personal attacks and profanity don't belong in this forum. If you feel that any specific posts by curegeorg warrant discipline of some sort, click on the "Report Post" button under the post and express your concerns to Outlaw - let the moderators take care of it. Don't spout childish vitriol out of spite.