network cable

Posts : 29 Join date : 2018-12-30

I read somewhere in the MGA encyclopedia of knowledge to use thin speaker wire. So I look around and say what about cat 6 network cable. Its thin and it has 8 conductors. So I rip apart a length and use two of the pairs to hook up my speakers. It happens to be 23 gauge solid core. Immediately, the bass seems great, but after an hour or so its get thin and brash. So I give it few more hours, come back and put on Tracy Chapman. I got chills three or four times. Has anyone tried this? Am I onto something or is my brain playing tricks on me. I only had one beer, honest, and that was yesterday.

Posts : 133 Join date : 2018-05-25

Greetings Hifitone

Welcome to the Tune!

May Sonic venture an answer to your question? It is hard to say if you got a real improvement in sound from the switch to 23 AWG network cable without first knowing what equipment you got, the state of tune of this gear and your room acoustics and critically what were the previous speaker cables.

Over here, the cable that Michael offers is solid core with pure copper 22 AWG conductors. The MGA speaker cable is available in options from T1 -- one solid core conductor (22 AWG), to T4 -- a twisted cable of 4 x 22 AWG conductors (16 AWG). The preferred starting point is to use T3 (three strands equal to 17 AWG).

As systems get to higher and higher levels of Tuning, Zonees have been known to go from T3 down to T2 (2 strands) and sometimes even T1 – one conductor.

Back when Sonic was learning the Tune, I started with T3 and was happy with it but then reading what other Zonees were doing led me to a big mistake which took a couple years to unravel: I thought my system was more highly Tuned (the Michael Green way) than it was and I went from T3 (17 AWG) to T1 (22 AWG). At first I thought the effect was marvelous for its apparent clarity but over time what this premature move did was to cause a thinning of the sound, a peaky treble and an uneven bass with poor extension. On a tiny number of recordings, things were fine, but everything got worse and worse. I modded and tuned other things in the system one after another not knowing the root cause. Only much later, realising my mistake I ordered a fresh set of T3 cables from Michael and on installation, the music returned and Sonic wanted to cry seeing the long detour I made.

So please describe your system in more detail, and email Mr Green any pictures you want him to put up. And he, the Tuning Guru, will be able to tell you much more than Sonic can. Also try listening to a wide variety of music and see if the sound is realistic, getting better and better or the sound on average is thin and brash.

Sonic

Posts : 29 Join date : 2018-12-30

Hi Sonic,

My previous speaker wire is double helix plus version 1. I bought it last year and has about 700 hours on it, so its broken in well.

My system:
Raspberry pi with hifi berry digi+ transport
Schiit Audio Modi 2 multibit
Decware SE84UFO amplifier
Betsy Baffle speakers
SOTA Sapphire turntable, audiomods tonearm, grado green cartridge
Antique Audio USA PP-1 phono

I've only got 5 hours on the wires - all on digital, so I figured I'd continue to let them break in with digital for 50 hours or so and see how things sound. I just did not expect that much of a change. The double helix wires are already fairly thin relative to a lot of other products available at least.

Michael has setup a thread for me called Scott's system under Home Audio Systems.

Thanks

Posts : 133 Join date : 2018-05-25

Oh hi Scott!

I read your reply on the other thread but did not notice your user name....

Posts : 29 Join date : 2018-12-30

Very good. Looking forward to even more improvements.

I was doing some searching on the internet for folks using cat 6 network cable and found a discussion on capacitance. These folks got me worried about the network cable having too much capacitance and thus causing the amplifier to oscillate. I certainly don't want to do any damage, so I checked the capacitance of a similar cat 6 cable and it is roughly the same as lamp cord. So I'm not sure if this guy was just throwing nonsense out there or if there is some concern. He did have a caveat that tube amps would not be a problem.

Can anyone confirm or deny that there maybe an issue here?

Subject: Re: network cable Fri Jan 04, 2019 9:04 pm

Hi Scott

I don't pay too much attention to what I haven't tested for myself, unless I get feedback from another Tunee that is exploring something on their own and lets me in on it. Where I draw the line though is at safety issues such as power cords.

network cable M2052

cat cable

Keep in mind I don't want TuneLand to be a DIY site (how would I feed my 18 kids) but Cat is one of the cables I have tested for sound quality. Some things good and some things not so good. Note: every manufacturer sounded different. A Bare Essence it is not but for short jumps it's not bad.

Posts : 133 Join date : 2018-05-25

Greetings Scott

Mr Green has a point that we are not fundamentally a DIY site. Aside from that, from another perspective, may Sonic offer these thoughts for consideration:

a. the pursuit of turning a Cat 6 or any other network cable will be a hit or miss, a moving target endeavour IMO. Miichael observes that different makes of network cable sound different from each other. This makes things more complicated obviously. Add to this that these network cables were not designed for audio frequency use – they will be optimized from a signal transfer and out of band noise rejection standpoint for the signal they are meant to carry. So trying to make good speaker cables out of these wires will require lots experimentation with the probability of more frustration than an Eureka moment of finding a Super Cable.

b. an alternative to might be to use the cables that people who have the same audio objectives as you are have found from experience to work. At the Tune, Sonic along with many others can put our hands up for the MGA T3 cables. They are neutral and tonally balanced cables that serve music and speech well.

In saying this, there is a slight difference in opinion that Sonic holds. I prefer Michael’s earlier T3 which had tin-plated copper conductors rather than his more recent version which has pure copper conductors. The earlier wires give a slightly warmer sound in my system which is something I prefer.

c. if you are after a “warm, big musical vintage sound”, there are products that deliver this sort of sound too. In my town, the go-to cable for a tubey Golden-Age sound is the Duelund tin-copper wires (with a cloth insulation) that come in 16 AWG and 12 AWG. This cable is particularly liked by some audio fans I know – the sort of people who go get all excited when you say “Klangfilm” near them.

So depending on what sort of sound you are after, there are cables you can buy at very moderate cost that will give you predictable outcomes for your system and your ears.

Sonic

Subject: Re: network cable Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:03 pm

Just as a note, I still do Tinned by request. I even do stranded and a stranded tinned. I don't post these so not to confuse folks but they are available.

As another note, be sure to read "GARP's" comments on the tinned.

Every system is obviously different and responds differently to different wire types. In this particular case Tinned vs Non-Tinned my finding is the opposite from Sonic's. No big deal but in the systems I have tested the Tinned sounded more brittle than the Bare. In Sonic's system the Bare sounds more brittle than the Tinned. After getting these comments from Sonic I explored the issue some and did a series of spin tests to see if I could make the Tinned sound like the Bare and vice versa. The results were interesting. I haven't shared these results because almost all order the Bare anyway, but the findings are still interesting to me.

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