What do you think of the DIY Cat 5 speaker cables

I to would not put any covering over the cat 5 braids. It is important to note that this type of cable design is VERY susceptible to vibration, both air and surface vibrations. And to much vibration anywhere in your setup robs you of the ability to here your system at it's best. And we all know the speaker cables are the last link before we get to the speakers themselves. So if your speaker cables are prone to excessive vibrations(DIY Cat5 or Cat6)you will lose that needed(emotion)and gain something you don't need(somewhat sterile sounding cable). Your DIY Cat5-6 will sound good, especially good for the money. Then you will say "MAN IF THESE CABLES HAD A LITTLE MORE... THEY WOULD BE GREAT". Enter the BEESWAX. What it does is quiet the cable down. Stops the excessive vibration in the cable to a degree that notes that once sounded etch(thin) now are full. The music come out of blackness(not dark).You will hear and feel musical cues on a much greater level. You will be hard pressed to believe it is the same speaker cable. Low level information will come through lower,fuller with slam and emotion. Emotion is what is added when you apply BEESWAX to your DIY CAT5-6 cables. You take wire that was made to TALK over and turn it into wire that is now ready to sing. Beeswax on telephone cable is "OLD SCHOOL" it goes back to the MA Bell days or earlier. If you use this type of cable or plan to make a set,than you owe it to yourselve to go all the way and apply the Beeswax with all the scepticism you can muster. That is until you press PLAY.

Technically speaking, this design has a lot going for it in certain areas and drawbacks in others. As can be expected, there are some big sonic improvements in some areas over basic cabling with some drawbacks too.

The first thing that i noticed about this cable is that it has a VERY solid and powerful bottom end. Top end is slightly "tizzy" or smeared sounding, probably due to uneven length paths from the multitudes of unevenly twisted & braided conductors and / or all of the stress that the conductors undergo when doing braiding i.e. fissures and cracks developing from metal fatigue. Tighter braiding produces a more consistent impedance ( one of the BIG problems with this design ), but also results in greater stress on the metal with increased potential for microphonics.

I'm certain that cryo'ing would help somewhat, but the problem with cryo'ing is that the cables must be moved and "bent up" when trying to re-install them. As such, "burning the cables in" installed IN the system using high powered dummy loads may work better, if one were interested in going to such lengths.

Extremely labour intensive and time consuming. If you have access to cabling at little to no cost and were going to build them in your spare time i.e. while watching TV in the background, etc..., have at it. Probably better than what you think, but how they turn out will ultimately depend on the quality of materials used and the consistency of the build. Sean
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In my experience DIY CAT 5's caused a smearing of the sound. Probably due to the different twist ratios on the strand pairs. In any case, it effected the definition and leading edge transients badly.

Enjoy,
Bob

I have done the receipe... They are okay, Lamp cord monster cable/types of copper or Home depot 12 - 10 gauge are more normal sounding, in otherwords lamp cord has basic detail, a little midrange ruff, but have better bass than the CAT 5... Now I have owned kimber stuff, and yeah the cat 5 is very similar, and I would not waste the money again on kimber in retrospect, however I don't like EITHER the CAT 5 or kimber much. Go with a better simpler Litz or stranded single wire design in my opinion. CAT 5 is great if you have 200.00 old Cerwin vega or optimus speakers sitting in the garage or basement to save a few bucks, then it is good wire.. But for a more full body and depth musical feel I find other stuff better, yeah it costs more but its only my opinion that it works better...Getting all the tiny cat 5 strands to be in perfect geometry for not causing too much resistance, inductance, capacitance whatever to carry a Hi current audio signal is not perfectly easy either. But I am no expert, just know what I felt about it in the end. For how cheap it is give it a shot, but its a real pain to make correctly is all. I have interest in hearing Mapleshades wire, it is something very similar and is suppose to sound very warm in comparison to Kimber and cat 5.

Some of the best cables I have ever heard.

Cat6 with FEP insulation has been a long decade favorite of mine.
With cat5 another major breakthrough is realized in sound quality even with a non superior jacket material.

Recording a live event can be very demanding on a speaker cable and if the Board man is unfamiliar with the speaker cable and speakers used, the sound can be altered from one recording to another with the same material. Especially with non powered speakers "which I build and Prefer" to powered speakers that use Class D amplifier designs. Without throwing everything into a tizzy, most studio monitors in recording studio's are now powered and most use class D. The reason, cheaper more power less weight, and in my opinion weaker, dirtier and uninvolving , and the loss of warmth even in the new digital era.
I consider this a lost art.

Lets go back to when say Barbra Streisand recorded in the studio with a amplifier SPEAKER WIRE set up. Say SSL board Studer A820 Crown amps JBL L300's
or Altec's and high end lamp cord. The sound was simply mind blowing, alive and full of emotion.
This is the feeling I get today with properly designed speaker cables and Cat5 and Cat6 definitely take the cake for price versus performance without getting into the exotics that cost more than the equipment!

Cat5 and Cat6 all the way if you want the best sound versus cost. Been making silver plated hyper pure solid silver/copper interconnects and x-overs for 20 years now and have found Cat5 and Cat6 speaker cable to simply sine brighter in the sky with a purity that is simply worth an ear in the High End.