I saw the huge arguing about the RCA cables. I would like to know a few
things:

1. How bout using thick wires (like flex) - thicker = less resistance =
better sq, right? please correct me if wrong.

2. Shielding - do I need foil shielding - when do I need it?

3. Would you think of it as advicable to make the cables yourself (I am an
EE student and I am good at practical electronics)

4. Gold plated connecters (bull****?)

Thanks for any comments

pil wrote:

1. How bout using thick wires (like flex) - thicker = less resistance =
better sq, right? please correct me if wrong.

Thickness of the RCA or signal cables is not very important, there is
very little current and therefor very little voltage drop.

2. Shielding - do I need foil shielding - when do I need it?

Sheilding is normal for RCAs because RCAs are unbaallanced.
You can use TV coax and solder your own ends on them if you
want to...

3. Would you think of it as advicable to make the cables yourself (I am an
EE student and I am good at practical electronics)

If you can solder you can do it...
However, decent cables are dirt cheap, why not just buy some?

4. Gold plated connecters (bull****?)

No, the reason is, gold wont corrode as easily as the nickel plated
connectors... Corrosion isnt really a huge problem for most of
us though... I guess since most folks think gold is largely better and
it doesnt sound better unless there is any corrosion then it may
be considered largely bull****.... could be....

Eddie



Thanks for any comments

1. How bout using thick wires (like flex) - thicker = less resistance =
better sq, right? please correct me if wrong.

Your reasoning is correct, but your application is wrong. We're talking
about very high impedance circuits here, where minimal current is being
drawn from the HU. Wire thickness doesn't matter at all.

2. Shielding - do I need foil shielding - when do I need it?

No.

3. Would you think of it as advicable to make the cables yourself (I am an
EE student and I am good at practical electronics)

If you feel you can make them more reliably than the manufacturers, it may
be worth your time. Sometimes RCAs fail. It may be fun too. It's up to
you.


4. Gold plated connecters (bull****?)

Thanks for any comments

Gold plating is used to prevent corrosion. It can be beneficial. Sometimes
it doesn't matter (because the RCA connectors it's connecting to aren't
always gold plated!). If it's not corroded, there will not be a difference
in sound between different types of metal.

pil wrote:
I saw the huge arguing about the RCA cables. I would like to know a few
things:

1. How bout using thick wires (like flex) - thicker = less resistance =
better sq, right? please correct me if wrong.

You're dealing with 3 to 5 volts at the most, and current in the range
of milliamperes. Unless you own a 20 foot stretch limo, you don't need
anything better than 18 gauge.

2. Shielding - do I need foil shielding - when do I need it?


From a discussion a few years ago, it was decided that foil shielding
(mu metal) is actually detrimental to high frequency response. The
effect is probably minimal, but why waste the money? It won't help
against noise in 90% of the cases.

3. Would you think of it as advicable to make the cables yourself (I am an
EE student and I am good at practical electronics)

A set of el-cheapo 20 foot RCA's is about $4. A set of four RCA cables,
and 80 feet of wire will run you $20. You do the math.

4. Gold plated connecters (bull****?)

Gold does resist corrosion. In most connectors you're likely to buy,
it's plated so thinly that the act of handling it will likely remove the
protection provided. Little trick: just smear vaseline on your RCA's.

Of course, all this advice only counts if you're just doing this for
sound, and you don't plan on showing this off to your friends. If you're
trying to get street cred, you'll need to buy the overpriced overhyped
super thick tri-path kryptonite interconnects from Tumuchmunee Audio.


--
--
thelizman

http://www.teamrocs.com/caraudio
"It's about the music, stupid"

thanks for the vaseline trick. I don't give a **** about street credit. All
I am interested in is high sound quality and particularly being able to do
it myself and do it cheaper and better than having someone else do it.

That why I love info like the vaseline on the rca's. I can buy "normal" rca
plugs, make the wire myself and then I KNOW it will provide the best sound
quality. If someone argues about the gold plated plugs I won't even argue
cause to me its just about sound quality and its just for myself.

So thanks for all the info. Its really cool


"thelizman" wrote in message
...
pil wrote:
I saw the huge arguing about the RCA cables. I would like to know a few
things:

1. How bout using thick wires (like flex) - thicker = less resistance =
better sq, right? please correct me if wrong.

You're dealing with 3 to 5 volts at the most, and current in the range
of milliamperes. Unless you own a 20 foot stretch limo, you don't need
anything better than 18 gauge.

2. Shielding - do I need foil shielding - when do I need it?


From a discussion a few years ago, it was decided that foil shielding
(mu metal) is actually detrimental to high frequency response. The
effect is probably minimal, but why waste the money? It won't help
against noise in 90% of the cases.

3. Would you think of it as advicable to make the cables yourself (I am
an
EE student and I am good at practical electronics)

A set of el-cheapo 20 foot RCA's is about $4. A set of four RCA cables,
and 80 feet of wire will run you $20. You do the math.

4. Gold plated connecters (bull****?)

Gold does resist corrosion. In most connectors you're likely to buy,
it's plated so thinly that the act of handling it will likely remove the
protection provided. Little trick: just smear vaseline on your RCA's.

Of course, all this advice only counts if you're just doing this for
sound, and you don't plan on showing this off to your friends. If you're
trying to get street cred, you'll need to buy the overpriced overhyped
super thick tri-path kryptonite interconnects from Tumuchmunee Audio.


--
--
thelizman

http://www.teamrocs.com/caraudio
"It's about the music, stupid"

thanks for the vaseline trick. I don't give a **** about street credit.
All
I am interested in is high sound quality and particularly being able to do
it myself and do it cheaper and better than having someone else do it.

That why I love info like the vaseline on the rca's. I can buy "normal"
rca
plugs, make the wire myself and then I KNOW it will provide the best sound
quality. If someone argues about the gold plated plugs I won't even argue
cause to me its just about sound quality and its just for myself.

So thanks for all the info. Its really cool

Gold plating tends to be cheaper than a jar of vaseline.

Mark Zarella wrote:

Gold plating tends to be cheaper than a jar of vaseline.


I'm willing to bet that

a) He has a jar or tube of vaseline laying around
b) He does not have gold plating vats laying around.

--
thelizman

teamROCS Car Audio Forums http://www.teamrocs.com/caraudio/
teamROCS Car Audio News http://www.caraudio.com/news/
"It's about the music, stupid"

4. Gold plated connecters (bull****?)

Gold does resist corrosion. In most connectors you're likely to buy,
it's plated so thinly that the act of handling it will likely remove the
protection provided. Little trick: just smear vaseline on your RCA's.


The reason behind using gold plated connecters in not only for corrosion sake,
but to help with Skin Effect. Now for all the tech people and EE's probably
know about this, but a lot of people think electricity flows though the whole
piece of metal. In fact it only uses the outside layer of the metal, hence the
name. That is why a lot of manufactures add or coat conductive metals on top
of cheaper metals like brass to keep the conductivity very high.

Now as far as the more expensive cables that use Platnium. Besides, it is a
very precious and rare metal, they should be about the same. I have to look up
the structrue of Platnium to see if it has an other benefits like copper, gold,
or silver. But, at most they may give you a little more bottom and help the
high end frequencies, but you would have to have a very trained ear to deciper
the differences.

I hope that answered your question.

"KingTut416" wrote in message
The reason behind using gold plated connecters in not only for corrosion
sake,
but to help with Skin Effect. Now for all the tech people and EE's
probably
know about this, but a lot of people think electricity flows though the
whole
piece of metal. In fact it only uses the outside layer of the metal, hence
the
name. That is why a lot of manufactures add or coat conductive metals on
top
of cheaper metals like brass to keep the conductivity very high.

Can you hear the difference of skin effect? No! So the only real reason that
gold plated connectors should be used is for their resistance to corrosion.
The rest of it is all marketing BS, skin effect is just higher end marketing
bull.


But, at most they may give you a little more bottom and help the
high end frequencies, but you would have to have a very trained ear to
deciper
the differences.

If by trained ear you mean believe the marketing hype, then yes. Even a
discerning ear is not going to tell the difference between gold or platinum.
More marketing BS.

I hope that answered your question.


Actually all that it did was probably confuse people with junk that has no
bearing on the sound of the system and is based on marketing BS. When you
come back to reality and get out of the city of Audiophilia drop us a line.

Les

4. Gold plated connecters (bull****?)

Gold does resist corrosion. In most connectors you're likely to buy,
it's plated so thinly that the act of handling it will likely remove the
protection provided. Little trick: just smear vaseline on your RCA's.


The reason behind using gold plated connecters in not only for corrosion
sake,
but to help with Skin Effect. Now for all the tech people and EE's
probably
know about this, but a lot of people think electricity flows though the
whole
piece of metal. In fact it only uses the outside layer of the metal, hence
the
name. That is why a lot of manufactures add or coat conductive metals on
top
of cheaper metals like brass to keep the conductivity very high.

The issue is gold. Gold has a higher resistivity than copper. So does
platinum. The negligible effect of the skin effect at audio frequencies is
offset by the more prominent (yet still insignificant) effects exerted by
cable geometry. Hell, the amorphous interaction that "plating" introduces
is probably even more prominent than the skin effect!

In any case, the effect is inaudible. I think I calculated the effect on a
"typical" interconnect to introduce something like 0.1dB attenuation at
20kHz due to skin effect, which is obviously incredibly small - well below
detectability for humans. Do a google groups search for "skin effect" and
"Zarella" and you'll see that I've discussed this issue ad nauseum in here.

KingTut416 wrote:

The reason behind using gold plated connecters in not only for corrosion sake,
but to help with Skin Effect. Now for all the tech people and EE's probably
know about this, but a lot of people think electricity flows though the whole
piece of metal. In fact it only uses the outside layer of the metal, hence the
name. That is why a lot of manufactures add or coat conductive metals on top
of cheaper metals like brass to keep the conductivity very high.

Sorry Charlie!
Skin effect isnt an issue in the audio bandwidth, skin effect doesnt come into
effect generally untill we get into VHF radio frquencies....

There are however alot of CRAPPY MAGAZINE ADDS that lie about this.
I am sure thats where you got your miss information....

Eddie Runner

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:41:35 GMT, Eddie Runner
wrote:

KingTut416 wrote:

The reason behind using gold plated connecters in not only for corrosion sake,
but to help with Skin Effect. Now for all the tech people and EE's probably
know about this, but a lot of people think electricity flows though the whole
piece of metal. In fact it only uses the outside layer of the metal, hence the
name. That is why a lot of manufactures add or coat conductive metals on top
of cheaper metals like brass to keep the conductivity very high.

Sorry Charlie!
Skin effect isnt an issue in the audio bandwidth, skin effect doesnt come into
effect generally untill we get into VHF radio frquencies....

There are however alot of CRAPPY MAGAZINE ADDS that lie about this.
I am sure thats where you got your miss information....

Eddie Runner


Actually skin effect starts out somewhere around the nominal mid to
tweeter xover point. However, it is so small (one source says that at
20kHz the signal still penetrates 68% of the wire) that what Eddie
said above is effectively true. Especially true since this region is
not a great power hog like a subwoofer setup.

BTW, platinum is used because it oxidizes less than gold plating.
Gold plating is almost never 24K as it's too soft. 14K gold is 50%
gold 50% other stuff - the other "stuff" isn't usually specified -
and it's the "stuff" that ozidizes/corrodes over time - ask any
jeweler. Plat and it's normal alloy partner (iridium among others) is
also physically tougher than gold. Finally since Plat is even more
expensive that means the marketing types can REALLY hype it up.

I'm not an EE, or even close - anybody want to take a stab at how the
varying impedance match/interface between copper and gold and back
several times affects audio frequencies, i.e., reflections, etc.

Actually skin effect starts out somewhere around the nominal mid to
tweeter xover point. However, it is so small (one source says that at
20kHz the signal still penetrates 68% of the wire) that what Eddie
said above is effectively true. Especially true since this region is
not a great power hog like a subwoofer setup.

The effect can easily be quantified. Any good physics text has an equation
to calculate the skin depth - the effective depth at which a signal of a
given frequency travels through the wire. I calculated it before in here
and got something on the order of a fraction of a dB loss for 20kHz. When
you take the psychophysics into account, it's easy to see that the effect is
inaudible.

BTW, platinum is used because it oxidizes less than gold plating.
Gold plating is almost never 24K as it's too soft. 14K gold is 50%
gold 50% other stuff - the other "stuff" isn't usually specified -
and it's the "stuff" that ozidizes/corrodes over time - ask any
jeweler. Plat and it's normal alloy partner (iridium among others) is
also physically tougher than gold. Finally since Plat is even more
expensive that means the marketing types can REALLY hype it up.

I'm not an EE, or even close - anybody want to take a stab at how the
varying impedance match/interface between copper and gold and back
several times affects audio frequencies, i.e., reflections, etc.

Reflections would be at frequencies higher than we're dealing with.

KingTut416 wrote:

The reason behind using gold plated connecters in not only for corrosion sake,
but to help with Skin Effect.

The skin effect does not occur at audio frequencies.

deleted one (1) paragraph of uninformed bull****

Now as far as the more expensive cables that use Platnium. Besides, it is a
very precious and rare metal, they should be about the same. I have to look up
the structrue of Platnium to see if it has an other benefits like copper, gold,
or silver. But, at most they may give you a little more bottom and help the
high end frequencies, but you would have to have a very trained ear to deciper
the differences.

I hope that answered your question.

You really have no idea how electricity works, do you?


--
thelizman "I didn't steal the FAQ either"

teamROCS Car Audio Forums http://www.teamrocs.com/caraudio/
teamROCS Car Audio News http://www.teamrocs.com/news/
"It's about the music, stupid"

This post is Copyright (C) 2004. Reproduction of its content anywhere
other than usenet without the express written permission of the author
is forbidden.

leeb wrote:

Actually skin effect starts out somewhere around the nominal mid to
tweeter xover point. However, it is so small (one source says that at
20kHz the signal still penetrates 68% of the wire) that what Eddie
said above is effectively true. Especially true since this region is
not a great power hog like a subwoofer setup.

technicly it starts when AC starts... But it doesnt get significant
untill you get way way up there... ;-)

Well above the audio band...


Eddie Runner

KingTut416 wrote:

The reason behind using gold plated connecters in not only for corrosion
sake,
but to help with Skin Effect.

The skin effect does not occur at audio frequencies.

deleted one (1) paragraph of uninformed bull****

Now as far as the more expensive cables that use Platnium. Besides, it is
a
very precious and rare metal, they should be about the same. I have to
look up
the structrue of Platnium to see if it has an other benefits like copper,
gold,
or silver. But, at most they may give you a little more bottom and help
the
high end frequencies, but you would have to have a very trained ear to
deciper
the differences.

I hope that answered your question.

You really have no idea how electricity works, do you?


--
thelizman "I didn't steal the FAQ either"

teamROCS Car Audio Forums http://www.teamrocs.com/caraudio/
teamROCS Car Audio News http://www.teamrocs.com/news/
"It's about the music, stupid"

This post is Copyright (C) 2004. Reproduction of its content anywhere
other than usenet without the express written permission of the author
is forbidden.







I am a EE, except I mess around with stuff in the KHz and MHz areas.
Electricity has different characteristics at different frequencies. I just
started to get into the audio band area of design realizing it is not as
tedious. I learned that stuff back in College in Electromagnetics class.

Anyways, since you are in Team ROCKS would you use the cheapest patch cables or
a twisted pair with Platnium ends.

KingTut416 wrote:

I am a EE

I hear this all the time...

would you use the cheapest patch cables or
a twisted pair with Platnium ends.

Neither.

--
thelizman "I didn't steal the FAQ either"

teamROCS Car Audio Forums http://www.teamrocs.com/caraudio/
teamROCS Car Audio News http://www.teamrocs.com/news/
"It's about the music, stupid"

This post is Copyright (C) 2004. Reproduction of its content anywhere
other than usenet without the express written permission of the author
is forbidden.

Anyways, since you are in Team ROCKS would you use the cheapest patch
cables or
a twisted pair with Platnium ends.

My guess is he would use these:

http://www.teamrocs.org/voodoo/tRcrap/

KingTut416 wrote:

Anyways, since you are in Team ROCKS would you use the cheapest patch cables or
a twisted pair with Platnium ends.

what in hell does one have to do with the other?