Help me build speaker cables please!

@toddverrone - I’m now getting an incredibly cohesive image with pinpoint placement of artists and instruments now the bananas have burned incompletely.

Some tracks that I have used for auditioning include...

Hide and Seek.by Imogen Heap - is a track that uses the phasing technique. It has always amazed me at how this track seems to envelope the listener, placing sounds behind my head. But I had noticed that with each cable tried certain reverberations of the image shifted position behind me.
- With these cables those reverberations now appear to be centered right between my ears - very unnatural. A bit like wearing headphones.
- Is it finally in the correct place? Without hearing the track in the studio system I have no way of knowing - but it makes sense this is the correct position - finally?

Is This Love - Bob Marley - perhaps one of the largest images I hear from any studio recording. Instruments that appear to be located quite a distance out side of both speakers. It is also a very dynamic track with extremely fast percussive elements and has some very nice natural sounding reverberations and a very smooth bass line with nice details

Papas Calientes - La Chimera - from a very nice album titled Buenos Aires Madrigal - it transports me into another world - I’m sitting in an out door cafe in an Argentine square where the performers are roaming from one cafe to another - it certainly sounds like superb live engineering - but is it?.- who cares :-)

Undring - Sigmund Groven & Iver Kleive - is superb live engineering at its best with spectacular spacial acuity that envelopes the listener, But for entertainment, I get a kick out of watching the woofers "dance" at around 10 Hz part way through this track - a testament to the abilities of these cables, the pipe organ and the engineers.

There are now so many of these special tracks - just too many to list

I hope you are having a similar experience :-)

Regards - Steve

Yeah man, the space that has opened up with these cables! I love electronic music and I've recently purchased an ambient album of particularly good sound quality. The mastering was spot on and the vinyl pressing is impeccable. One track in particular absolutely envelops me in sound now. The artists are lav and purl and the track is 'absorbed serenity'. So good!  I'm listening to an old pressing of 'uprising' by Bob Marley now. Thanks for getting me in an irie mood!

@toddverrone - irie mon ! break out de Red Striiipe :-)

How About...

The Golden Age of Wireless by Thomas Dolby - a-m-a-z-i-n-g !

Business as Usual by Men at Work - super-fast dynamics and superb clarity

Any track by Police and U2 - so crisp

All are on vinyl ;-)

But the digital stuff sounds great also.

I never appreciated just how well recorded Fleetwood Mac is - until now!

I’m very glad you are hearing the same improvements as me - especially since you are using different conductors

I think it "proves" the geometry is the key "ingredient".
- The type of conductor would probably allow/deny small refinements in details.

Lav and Pearl - did you get the pink vinyl ? - it’s reeel purrrtie :-)

I downloaded the MP# and it sounds pretty good - I’l have to to try get a high res version.

Best analogy I can think of -
- with my old cables - it’s like drinking filtered tap water
- with the Helix cables - you’re drinking flavoured Perrier

Chat Later - Steve

Ha! Yeah, I do have the​ pink vinyl. It's the only one they did. You should be able to find their stuff on Bandcamp in a variety of download formats including alac and wav. I love Bandcamp for that.

Unfortunately I miswired one of the helix RCAs I built. And of course this is the first DIY cable I didn't test, so it killed one of my amps. Which sucks, because I have almost all the parts needed for my speaker cables now.. alas. So it'll be a bit before I can report back. 😛

@toddverrone  - Ouch! - how did incorrect wiring  an IC kill your amp?

That's interesting - did it short the input to the amp ? most amps can handle that. Unless you shorted the pre-amp output?

Also, doesn't sound as though you were using a Harmony RCA - because it's almost impossible to create an accidental short condition with those (one of the things I really like).

Hmmm - what did you do?

Finally, I have a Blusound Powernode 2 amplifying my TV, so I gave it the speaker cable upgrade...

- These cables really do show just how good the new amplifier designs really are
- The Powernode 2 is 50 watt per channel into 8 ohms, class D
- into a pair of Tannoy Mecury F4 -  91dB 8 ohms 34Hz - 20kHz

Since the Power Node 2 only has an Ethernet cable (for music) and an optical cable for input for from the TV, the only copper cables in the audio pipeline are my DIY speaker cables.

Immediately, the dynamics, deep bass performance and bass control improvements were very noticeable. 

Perhaps the biggest and most noticeable improvement is the clarity.

The diminutive Powernode 2 now exerts complete control over the Tannoys with lots of power to spare and the TV sounds the best it's ever sounded, except there are no rear speakers anymore - a choice I made when downsizing the A/V system to fit the new house.

Even the shortest Helix speaker cables I have made is on my mini system (around 15" each channel) ,also yields significant improvements. 

So it does not seem to matter how long you make them - the appear to work very well.

Regards...