GoodSoundClub - Romy the Cat's Audio Site - We who are about to die... (a cable thread)

06-28-2008

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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We who are about to die... (a cable thread)

Most will recognize the Roman gladiator's salute. Caveat...

Based on what I've seen at AA, this is as likely a place as any (and more likely than most) to go down in flames.

My own motive for starting this up is recent experiments with super-pure silver IC, in this case it a twisted pair of 26 ga., cotton-covered OCC wire with new-type silver WBT RCA plugs. I had these ICs running from my K&K phono stage to the TAP attenuator for several months.

My previous (and present) ICs for this run are Litz braided, 4-wire (2/ea. leg) 25.5 ga. OCC pure copper magnet wire (urethane coated) and Vampire copper RCA plugs (with gold sputtered directly onto the copper). I also melt bees wax into the wire braid before I cover it with a braided poly sheath.

Today I ran direct sound comparisons using Bruckner's 9th, just to be sure everything would stay off-balance.

The silver is at the same time calmer yet more extended on top, and it is obviously biased upward, frequency-wise, compared to the copper. The silver also does some very interesting things with the soundfield, namely it seems to increase the sense of "spaciousness" in general, and "depth" in particular. It also renders more obviously the "audible" part of percussion, such as the sound of fingers picking and letting go of plucked strings, or the "rise" of a piano note. However, the copper better renders the "felt" part of percussion, namely the "impact" of the plucked string or piano note, and likewise with bass notes; it better renders the immediate "vibe" of a bass, bowed or plucked. The copper had more "image density", almost to the point of "congestion". The silver had more "separation" of images, almost to the point of striation/stratification.

I wound up getting a little manic exploring the finer points (who, me???), swapping the cable back and forth after just a few bars, and I found the results to be very interesting.

The upshot? If stuck with one kind of wire for this run, I'd have to say, copper. But I'm not so sure I want to be stuck with either of these options, so I plan to try both --- at once!

To start, I think I'll +/- disassemble the silver IC and then rebuild it using 4 wires per IC, meaning a silver and a copper wire on each leg, and I'll start with the silver WBT connectors.

In doing this I am not simply equivocating; rather I aim to include, if possible, the best each wire type has to offer in one IC.

Please do not suggest or even mention silver-coated copper...

Paul S

06-28-2008

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drdna
San Francisco, California
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The mystery of different metal in audio

It is undeniable that different metal sounds different, and the reasons for this are complex. I bet we could have a good old time discussing cable geometry, conductance, impedance, capacitance, inductance, reactance, corrosion, and maybe even some quantum physics. But, you know, I am not going to do that. I encourage people to explore and experiment with whatever they want and do what makes them happy.

I agree that silver is great for the high end and copper is good for the very low end. Another neat experiment is to take some lead wire, you know like the kind used to cut into buck shot and use that as interconnect. It gives a wonderful tone.

When you rebuild the IC's with copper and silver, I bet the result will be similar to silver-coated copper, though. It was, when I did it.

Adrian

06-28-2008

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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Bass and HF versus balance

Adrian, I will be disappointed if the mixed-metal IC sounds just like the silver-coated copper I've heard, which pretty much lacked the best attributes of either metal and, further, its sound deteriorated badly, in short order.

My own solid silver IC actually has "good bass" within the context of my system, and I would not reject it on that basis alone. Despite the decent bass, however, it still has too light an overall balance, in terms of real music sound. And yet there is nothing strident about it, either; in fact, its HF from lower treble on up is calmer/less obvious than the copper's, including the coveted "No HF" extreme highs. But there's somehow just too much of it, relatively speaking, none the less.

Another interesting thing I noticed was that the silver gives an amazing sense of "great clarity"; yet when I tried some semi-unintelligible lyrics through both cable types, it was slightly easier to make out the lyrics in question with the copper. I get that this can be mostly frequency dependent; but it is still interesting, based on the greater overall, general "sense" of clarity from the silver.

For some time I have tried to find and integrate components that have the greatest potential range of tone, among other things, and I remain interested in silver's potential to add something to the electronic palette. Of course, the idea is to NOT get stuck with a "signature" sound, like I found with the silver-coated wire. This I find tricky enough to be interesting.

Best regards,
Paul S

06-29-2008

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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Targeting and tracking differences

Markus, I am a big proponent (and frequent violator) of the "One Change at a Time" rule. In this case the "scientific" part of the idea is simply to track audible changes in a particular run of IC, since they/it are/is plainly discernable to me, as such.

But how do you determine the electrical similarities and/or differences of your cable in situ? For instance, how do you, practically speaking, isolate and measure working inductance of phono IC? While I'm sure that something "electrical" factors largely into what I hear, I have yet to be able to pre-determine how wire will sound from any truly meaningful measureable electrical parameters, whether similarities or differences. At this point, such quantification is for me just other way of keeping track of stuff rather than a fool-proof method of pre-determining and/or reliably shaping the sound by "design". Further, and annoyingly enough, I find the damned stuff changes over time, and not just with respect to "breaking in", but simply +/- long term sonic changes. I suspect this owes primarily to oxidation; but, in any case, any attempt to forestall it also introduces additional sonic variables.

The fact that all the components also use wire has not so much escaped me as it simply puts me off, due to the mind-boggling complexity of the "logical extrapolations" of this sort of thinking. Basically, I'm just not up to it...

At this point, I already have a good general (and specific) sense of what I have and what I am after/will accept. This is not a change in strategy, nor in tactics, really, so much as it is just another attempt to push what I have a little farther.

Best regards,
Paul S

06-29-2008

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drdna
San Francisco, California
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Mixing silver and copper

Yes, I agree, eliminate all connectors. They are made of terrible metal and it is like seasoning your food with a tiny bit of poison.

On the subject of mixing silver and copper, I did find that multiple strands of different metals seemed to yield a tone which was an average of the effects of the different metals' contributions. In a pair of speakers I built that was too bright and hard, I used a combination of copper and lead to mellow out the sound and bring it closer to neutral.

Maybe there was something wrong with the silver-coated copper wire you used. The way you describe it does not sound the way I expect for the metal, but more for the "breaking in" aspects of a particular cable geometry. Was it also single stranded 25 g silver-coated copper?

Adrian

06-29-2008

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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Napoleon, arsenic and daily bread

Adrian, I specifically do not want to use wire to "compensate" for systemic problems. Like some pathetic believer, I have long held that the "best" wire would be "transparent". Since that appears increasingly unlikely, I suppose I am now after the most interesting compromise between the lesser of weevils and maximum content.

My own experience with silver coated copper had nothing to do with expections, as far as I know; it just was not good. I found it to be fundamentally dis-integrated, with cartoon-ish stratification and unbearable noise. And it only got worse over time... the proto-typical non-starter. And, you may have heard, even others who loved it initially eventually wound up talking lawsuits. Feh, already...

But thre's always Hope in the Unknown. No way I would have guessed from either "common knowledge" or "common sense" the difference in sound between the Mundorf silver versus their silver-and-gold caps. By this, I mean to say that I realize that this idea of mine is rooted in and guided by the most ephemeral of practical flim-flam. But at the same time, I have the stuff I need to do it onhand, and I am obviously OCD, with the attention span of a fruit fly.

Best regards,
Paul S

06-29-2008

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
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..and never forget the “Big Secret of Cables”

The Big Secret of Cables is a fact, well know fact BTW, that electricity does not flow in cable but rather within an electromagnetic field around the conductor. The cable’s nearfield (let say 2” around a conductor) is as critical environment as the core itself.

BTW, Paul, if you use Litz wire then Bud Purvine has in interesting theory of “stopping “Litz at arbitral intervals…

The Cat

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

06-29-2008

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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An elevated subject

Well, the electricity suddenly switched gears today, and it entered into an entirely unknown level of cleanliness; and what do you know? The "cables" pretty much became a non-factor. I suppose this means that noise is A Very Big Issue most of the time, a notion exemplified/borne out by the Synopsis cable, which, as "cheap" as it was/is, obviously took real-world noise into account in its design; OR (more likely, perhaps), it was simply a design that through some stroke of dumb luck wound up doing a bang-up job compensating for real-world noise. Well, I have no problem with Luck, in the end; in fact, I hope to get lucky someday.

The main "problem" with the plain fact of the EMF is that it effectively puts cable design and construction back into the hands of well-equipped "experts", leaving the rest of us to await their latest and greatest while we try different pieces of flotsam to keep our wire/EMF generators off/away from potential baffles, sinks, and other errant sources of EMI.

Needless to say, the diy Litz wire is more about mundane "balancing" impedance, resistance and inductance than it is about 2" EMF; in other words, it's closer to drinking the Scotch than shooting it into "di-electric" fluid reservoirs.

Do we all remember Peter Belt? How about Doug Moorecroft? Bob Fulton? All folks who, however otherwise misguided, were hyper-vigilant about EMF and "reflections", etc. Bud P, please feel free to chime in about "reflections", or whatever it is you think warrants close attention to cable length.

Best regards,
Paul S

06-29-2008

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Bud
upper left crust united snakes
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Multi wire hell

Romy does explain things correctly, in his own way of course.

Modern electrical field theory has it that the electrical field attached to a cable, stops progressing along the cable for every vector change in the field. Not exactly a digital event but close. Once the vector change has followed the information packet demands, the electrostatic field collapses into the B field, or what is called current. This continues until the next vector change and only occurs for "AC signals"..

During every vector change, the field, which has a vast gradient of differing charge values, must reach out and affect a change in the charge on the end of a near dielectric dipole. Many trillions of these at once. These dielectric dipole charge ends are typically found in plastics, surrounding the field event carrier, known as "cable".

These plastics have a charge rate vs charge level, over time, and if it is not fast enough to fully support the field event, then lower charge portions of the field event will be lost to the information packet.These become random, charged fields of their own, called noise.

The B Field event, when the E Field event collapses, is not affected by anything but another EMF field, intersecting the cable it is attached to. The E Field event is therefore the malleable event in a cable.

The only reason to use Litz wire in a cable is to obtain enough surface area that a small amount of dielectric can be used to "tune" the E Field characteristics. Also keep in mind that, in the entire signal chain, for one information packet thread, there will only be one static moment and it will take the entire length of the chain to express into and be supported. So, cables and their losses are only part of the problem.

Lack of proper grounds within electrical equipment are just as, if not more important problems, than anything cable might provide. Most modern circuit design has no effective mirror ground plane. You might look at Romy's last phono corrector build, to see what is a correct ground plane implementation. Your digital source has nothing like this and thus, all of the sharp sound and thin values of red book audio are really just information that has been dropped, right at the "line stage" output on the end of the DAC. Red book audio is actually a very good signal source, when the information packet created in the DAC is maintained through the entire signal chain, through proper grounds and proper cable dielectrics.

Bud

06-29-2008

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drdna
San Francisco, California
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Wire is the simplest yet most complex

Thanks Bud!

We often underestimate the fundamentally very physical way that sound is produced in our stereo circuits in complex electromechanical ways. I agree with Peter Belt that circuits are affected in ways that can be more adequately explained by quantum physics, because -- well -- everything has some quantum physics in it, not just circuits.

In audio, everything is a compromise. Wire is like the least of the Gatekeepers in Kafka's story "Before the Law." Multistranding of wire creates its own problems as it solves others. But what we should not forget is that the Sound exists. Everything we do with out silver foil capacitors and copper Litz wires etc. is simply a way of tuning the circuit to allow the Sound to be transmitted and reproduced.

In this respect I do not feel that using wire of different types to balance a circuit is a form of compensation. Nor do I feel that there is an ideal wire, any more than there is an ideal resistor value. What should it be? 50 ohms? 1000 ohms? The question, put this way, seems rather silly. We use the value that is appropriate to make the circuit work. Wire, capacitors, electrical filters, etc. are no different.

Adrian

06-29-2008

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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A grounded response

Bud, you may have read some of my babblings about stacking ground planes and stray current attaching/backing up all over the place; it's a personal fetish. Not to mention the fact that getting the ground "stacked" correctly is almost impossible when the ground potentials of the various "grounds" themselves are all over the place and they are also typically loaded with stray current.

And I do think this figures big in cables. Despite the fact that I prefer the inherent sound of un-shielded cable better than shielded cable I have tried, I find I just cannot get by without shielded cable in the transformer-to-phono stage run in this installation.

I happen to like certain aspects of single-wire-per-leg IC, and I even have some OCC copper pairs twisted and sitting there, waiting to be soldered to RCA plugs. This reminds me to do this, mainly to check if mutual rejection in the case of such tightly-twisted pairs might actually obviate a shield for such a pair. It wais not possible to twist the cotton-covered silver wires very tightly, which begs the question in that case

At the same time, there is no mere discounting the audible (and consistent) differences between different metals that are otherwise +/- the same in terms of gauge and cable construction.

Best regards,
Paul S

06-30-2008

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Gregm
Greece
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Just as a suggestion

...Why not also try a paralleled "solid-core" (single wire per leg) cable. You can twist the paralleled wires if you wish. Proceed carefully, using about 1-1 ½" between the wires. Try silver on the return first...

Just as an experiment; as you note, you'll probably pick up RFI (buzzing, etc). Maybe if you try this cabel before your amp, the noise may be bearable?

You realise this is all very egotistical -- I'm using paralleled wires & am keenly interested in your results mixing the metals!

Regards

06-30-2008

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drdna
San Francisco, California
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Parallel wire runs

I had tried this before, a few years back, using parallel runs for interconnect and speaker cable of uninsulated and insulated wire of different metals. The end result was that the tonal result was very similar and basically the tone seemed to vary with the amount of each metal used, like adding more spice to a soup. Although I did find that the wires rejected noise best when they were closer together than I expected, this was difficult with thin uninsulated strands. One odd thing I noticed was that the sound was quite sensitive to the length of the cable runs. I know this doesn't make much sense in terms of conventional electromagnetic theory at audio frequencies, but I can only tell you what I heard. Slight adjustments in the length of the cable runs or mismatches between the two legs gave a sort of DPOL effect with the rhythm snapping into the correct focus.

Adrian

06-30-2008

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
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I had tried this before as well.

drdna wrote:
I had tried this before, a few years back, using parallel runs for interconnect and speaker cable of uninsulated and insulated wire of different metals. The end result was that the tonal result was very similar and basically the tone seemed to vary with the amount of each metal used, like adding more spice to a soup.

The adding spices to a soup were a good illustration of what was going on. I did not succeed in it as the vintage Dominus was better anyhow; BTW, Dominus is multi core- multi metal cable as well. The most complicated task for me during the times when I was experimenting with making cables was a methodological definition of “neutrality” against which I would assess all changes. I kind of cheated as I took old Dominus as the reference of neutrality and was trying to get better sound, eliminating the very specific shortcomings what I feel Dominus has. I failed. I do not think that I failed because it is imposable but rather juts because I did not want to invest too much efforts time and money in it. Still, I feel that the sandwidge of multiple cables is a very good idea...

The Cat

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

06-30-2008

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be
Copenhagen, Denmark
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Silver vs. copper vs. diameter

I recognise your observations about the Ag vs. Cu sound, but instead of mixing the two materials I think it is better to change the diameter.
I experienced 0.5 mm silver wire to be too thin soundvice, have you tried 1.0 mm or even more?
The thiner the wire the less body the sound will get.
The thinner the wire is, the larger the surface area to volume ratio is.
This will increase the skinn effect and thereby enhance the high frequencies.
Obviously we are talking about solid core wires only.

Regards.

06-30-2008

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Gregm
Greece
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Equal weight deasn't signify identical sound

be wrote:
I recognise your observations about the Ag vs. Cu sound, but instead of mixing the two materials I think it is better to change the diameter.
I experienced 0.5 mm silver wire to be too thin soundvice, have you tried 1.0 mm or even more?

I've tried a few different thicknesses, the larger being 1,2mm. The larger, I kept for the speaker cable.

Mind you, I also tried mixing thick & thinner wire for the same IC -- with indifferent results.

be wrote:
The thiner the wire the less body the sound will get.
The thinner the wire is, the larger the surface area to volume ratio is.
This will increase the skinn effect and thereby enhance the high frequencies.
Obviously we are talking about solid core wires only.

Regards.

Add to that that there is a teeny increase in resistance... Yes, you'd logically conclude that, wouldn't you. Yet, the best result -- i.e. most homogeneous sonically -- came from the thinner wires in interconnects.

I kid you not. I tried the thicker & invariably chose the thinner (wire).

06-30-2008

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tuga

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Why "thinner is better"

Gregm wrote:
be wrote:
I recognise your observations about the Ag vs. Cu sound, but instead of mixing the two materials I think it is better to change the diameter.
I experienced 0.5 mm silver wire to be too thin soundvice, have you tried 1.0 mm or even more?
I've tried a few different thicknesses, the larger being 1,2mm. The larger, I kept for the speaker cable.

Mind you, I also tried mixing thick & thinner wire for the same IC -- with indifferent results.
be wrote:
The thiner the wire the less body the sound will get.
The thinner the wire is, the larger the surface area to volume ratio is.
This will increase the skinn effect and thereby enhance the high frequencies.
Obviously we are talking about solid core wires only.

Regards.
Add to that that there is a teeny increase in resistance... Yes, you'd logically conclude that, wouldn't you. Yet, the best result -- i.e. most homogeneous sonically -- came from the thinner wires in interconnects.

I kid you not. I tried the thicker & invariably chose the thinner (wire).

My findings are similar to yours: In my ICs I am currently using 0,4mm Cu single core, with both runs running parallel and spaced around 1,5cm between them. For the speakers I chose a 0,6mm wire in a similar configuration, but I plan to try 1,0mm wire soon as I found that the increase in diameter resulted in more extended extremes without any noticeable side-effects. There's a kind of theoretical explanation for why "thinner is better" at the DNM website: http://www.dnm.co.uk/cables.html

"Science draws the wave, poetry fills it with water" Teixeira Pascoaes

06-30-2008

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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If you're not cheating, you're not trying

Why not try to build on/off the best one has gotten to date? Without some kind of a pivot, there is only drifting; plus, it's got to be nice to have a fall-back position. I'd be perfectly happy to just BUY the damned cable, believe me, if I could find anything interesting that didn't also have some kind of stench attached to it.

As for wire gauges/diameters, I have tried many during my manic foraging. As it happens, I have gotten the best overall balance and "neutrality" so far, at least as far as frequency balance, and with any speakers I've tried as a "tell", using 24 - 26 gauge wire(s), regardless of any "physics" that suggests/"proves" otherwise. I have had better luck so far with multiple strands for speaker cable, and I ass-u-me this is simply due to current demands.

I have forgotten DNM's very impassioned schtick re: the thin parallel singles; but my versions of this just didn't cut it with big +/- FR speakers, for sure. Coherent? yes, up to a point; FR? no.

It has been my understanding that some very expensive "exotic" cables use several strands per leg of very fine gauge wire carefully wound into proprietary "lays". I have been curious for years about some of the modified "tubular" Litz cables that weave multiple strands around a (generally propritary, of course...) dielecric core, including some like this that are also shielded. To repeat, I don't want to shield; I so far regard any shield I have tried as a necessary evil. Also, I still question the "ultra-thin" part of the "exotic" equation, on general principals, with core anxiety rooted in the bad sound of zip cord and general dis-satisfaction with small net gauges.

I also used for a while parallel single-strand copper (~ 20 - 24 gauge; I don't remember), eventually twisted about once every 40mm, but only for speaker wire, since it seemed to act as an antenna when used for IC. I also had some concerns with real or imagined inductance roll-off. In any case, this stuff did not do bass, and it got badly congested on the big stuff with +/- FR speakers, as noted above.

I agree that wire gauge alone affects frequency balance, at least up to a point. In my experience, large diameter wire, past a critical point, is not just stronger in LF relative to thinner wire, but it simply becomes incoherent.

Meanwhile, the sudden onset of exceptionally clean AC on Sunday, and the PROFOUND effect of this on the Sound, got me thinking again about the numerous functions that IC are gererally expected to perform simultaneously. And how annoying is it that most of these functions seem to be at odds with one another, in the sense that trying to optimise any one of them invariably creates issues somewhere else. Basically, I could hardly believe how great my "cable" worked when the AC was great. Sobering.

Paul S

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Romy the Cat

Boston, MA
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The very stupid idea about self-cleaning cable…

I was reading Paul’s comment about elasticity and the Bad’s comment about the electrical field attached to a cable and suddenly a very absurd notion popped to my head. Do not take it literally – this is just a brain-storm-like vision.

So, we have a power cable that cares distortions of 60Hz fundamental from mains. The amplitude of distortion is let say 3%. Then we have an electrical field that surrounds cable, the force of the filed back-proportional to the square distance from the core. Now, let presume that we positioned at a specific distance some kind of electrical field-consuming devises that consumes 3% of electrical field - think about the nuclear station's control rods… The field-consuming devises are powered by amplified distortions from the cable injected in opposite phase. So, we have the electricity leaving the region of the field-consumer with it’s distortions magnetically canceled… Let presume that it might be done in-line with powering electricity flows in a core of the cable but the field-consuming electricity flow in outer jacket in oposite direction… Would it be possible to construct in such case a power cord that would self-clean electricity it transmits?

The Cat

"I wish I could score everything for horns." - Richard Wagner. "Our writing equipment takes part in the forming of our thoughts." - Friedrich Nietzsche

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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I don't know about the "cord"...

but you have just +/- described an approach to cooty fighting that is already pretty popular with the tech-ies out there. This general idea is the basis for some very sophistocated attempts to quiet lines used for lab equipment, including imaging equipment, and that most-interesting/amazing laboratory, SONAR and related listening devices/schemes. I think present SOTA attempts are mostly going off to digital sampling/analysis with super computers; however, there is still some interesting stuff on the "old" analog versions floating around out there. If I run across a link, I'll toss it in the ring.

But I'm so pathetic, I always have the same initial reaction to this sort of thing as my cousin, Ned (Ludd), that by the time you add all the technology needed to do it, you have introduced another host of equally-annoying problems. Now, if it could be done passively...

Meanwhile, how about a Ferrite bead?

Best regards,
Paul S

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Bud
upper left crust united snakes
Posts 87
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Hammers as the only solution

Romy,

Try wrapping a copper wire around a power cable, then "inject" it into the power line through an isolation transformer. The wrapping only to help defeat the antenna event of other signal sources that only have one vector.

et all,

For cables, the most neutral cable available is a true Litz lay up, of insulated magnet winding wire. I use 140 strands of # 40 wire, twisted in a triple spinning loom, that weaves the individual strands from the inside to the outside of one of the lay up hanks, while twisting them in a spiral, within the tndividual hanks, that are also then twisted in a spiral.

This stuff can be used without any sheilding, as an interconnect, and even parallel power cords do not add an audible AC signal, even closely paralleled power cords. The sound of this Litz, in a woven cotton XXL shoe lace tube, is dead neutral and dead boring. Sounds like extremely detailed Brownian noise, no matter what is playing. This is a neutral reference if there is such a thing. Everything else has "color" added. Adding anything else to these cables adds colorful dynamics back. Too much of anything else added begins to slew the phase and smear the transients.

Same is true for using it for speaker cables. Island Pink has a full set of this stuff, IC's and speaker cables, and equates it with a single strand of wire in a teflon tube, but shlightly better in all cases of performance criteria.

There is a pure silver Litz coil winding wire too. The cost is in the thousands of $ per pound, there is a 6 pound minimum and a 6 month wait. I am thus very happy with copper....

Bud

06-30-2008

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Paul S
San Diego, California, USA
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Boring? Perfect (sounds interesting)!

OK, Bud: This does appear, as I projected earlier, to be case in point for the "expert approach", using technology/techniques/machines that don't pencil for DIY, to say the least. I mean, you're not saying you lay this stuff up yourself, right?

Off the top of your head, what is net gauge (140X40)?

How the hell do you dress/terminate it?

I just can't envision back winding and stripping 140 40 ga wire ends and prepping for cold-welding...

...like frickin' fiber optics...

Two mile minimum on the shoe lace, I presume?

Obviously, I'm Jake with Litz... but now I am confused again about the 2" EMF vis this mega-Litz and its "collective" dielectric, per yours, above...

Best regards,
Paul S

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