What do you think of the DIY Cat 5 speaker cables

The only real test is to give them a try. The price of admission is reasonable. Until someone..anyone..can offer a physical explanation of how/why different cables do what they do & how this relates the changes in the sound of a system then, by definition, any option is fair game.

Granted there are some cables & geometry that are off limits, but the group of those that are inside the 'useable' framework is huge.

Of course there's always the option of some company using Cat 5 (or other DIY material), dressing it up beyond all recognition, charging a beyond-healthy sum for it, and calling it a critical, cutting-edge audiophile design. In this case the Cat 5-roots would then become one of the good cables already available to try.
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Its not the price of the cables its the time making them. It looks like it would take a long time to make them which is not a problem if they are good cables. It seems a lot of people on this site think the HD 14 gage zip cord is as good as anything. If that is right a lot of people are getting ripped off.

Hey Joe!
If you make'm, I'd like to hear'em when you come this way.
Compare them to the 8tc's.
Good Listening!

I made them. I made the full 27 pair with the recommended Belden Teflon-insulated 24ga wire. Mine were only 5 feet long, but it's still bloody hard work.

If I had to do it again, I'd only use one pair of the 4 pairs inside the Cat 5 cable (each pair is a different colour and has a different twist rate for noise rejection).

I caution you NOT to braid them too tight - it's much harder and you can easily get a short. Loose is better.

Use the best spades you can find - I used Kimber Postmasters - because you have to get 27 copper wires in there, and it's not easy with cheap spades.

Don't use any covering over the braid.

They take quite a while to break in, but they were stable in my system and sounded very nice.

They are quite a challenge to build but one does feel some degree of success at the end that far exceeds going to a store and buying something.

I eventually replaced the Cat 5s with hand-made silver foil cables.

Regards,

I made a set using a modified technique of what is referred to as "Gomers" on AA:

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/m.mpl?forum=cables&n=106567

Back when Radio Shack was having a half-price sale on cable (among other things) I purchased enough CAT-5 (Teflon) to make a bi-wired pair of the CVH braided CAT-5 speaker cable. I bought a lot of cable because, at the time, I needed 15' (!) of speaker cable. Well, as those who have made this cable can attest, making a 15' 27/9 bi-wired pair of these cables is a lot of work (to say the least). Bottom line, I gave up - even if those cables were magical, there was no way in hell I was going to commit the hours required to complete the fabled braided CAT-5 speaker cables.

So what the hell was I going to do with all that CAT-5?

Well, due to some re-arrangement of how my system is set up, my speaker cable length requirement decreased to just over 4 feet. A CAT-5 speaker cable was now practical. However, one aspect of the CVH recipe that I didn't like was that no matter how carefully I braided, I didn't feel that I had inch-by-inch consistency of my braids. Plus, it still would be more effort than I wanted to commit. Time to do some research on AA.

I noticed some CAT-5 recipes that suggested a star-quad twist. But some still required more work that I was willing to do (separating the individual pairs of CAT-5, using only one color of wires, etc.). The star-quad CAT-5 concept still seemed appealing. So...here's my approach to the star-quad CAT-5 cable:

I started out with about 50 feet of CAT-5 cable, stripped of the outer-blue jacket. I secured the ends of all 4 pairs in a vice, and secured the other ends in my drill. As I made the 50' length taught, I noticed that the 4 pairs of cables naturally were twisted in a clockwise manner. I used my drill to further twist the 4 pairs in a clockwise manner until the wires were tightly twisted together into a single rope.

I then cut this rope into 4 equal lengths, and aligned all the ropes so that, as you looked at them, they were all twisted in a clockwise manner. I secured the ends of the 4 cables in my vise (actually, it was the door to my garage) and the other ends into my drill. This time, I twisted the cables counter-clockwise, again, until they formed a single, tight rope (the diameter of which was just over 1/4 inch (8 mm).

What impressed me about this approach was that I no longer had a bunch of single pairs of wires, but a single tight rope. No matter how much you bend, the rope acts like a single wire. Plus, the twist was very consistent from end to end. I cut this rope into 4 segments of 4 1/2 feet each. This whole process took about 30 minutes. Time to terminate.

I wrapped electrical tape in a band around the cable 3 inches from one end and 2 inches from the other to prevent unraveling when terminating the ends. In hindsight, I'd make the leads just a bit longer (maybe 4 inches each). I separated the 4 bundles from the rope, then proceeded, one bundle at a time, separating the solid colored wires from the returns. I stripped the ends and twisted the solid-colored wires into a bundle and then twisted the returns into a bundle. After I did this for all 4 original bundles, I twisted all the solid colored bundles into a "positive" lead, and all the return bundles into the "negative" lead. I crimped on some Radio Shack spades to complete the end. Again, in hind-site, I'd use better quality spades. This took about 15 minutes per end.

After 2 hours, I had 2 identical sets of my Modified Star-Quad CAT-5 cable. I connected it to my system in a true bi-wire manner.

I should describe my current cables before getting into my immediate impressions of my creation. I was using 15' runs of Audioquest GR-8 cables. I bought these as an introduction to "higher-end" cables. I recognize these cables for what they are - good but not great (definitely better than long runs of zip cord (IMHO)).

Immediately I noticed these cables were...different. But within an hour of use, I noticed how annoying I was finding my vinyl copy of Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot"...and I realized why. There was all of this "stuff" going on in the background of the recording that I never really noticed before. The sounds were no longer abstract, but recognizable. Distinct. Identifiable. Surprisingly, the low end was much better with these cables. I actually decreased the crossover point of my REL by 4 Hz (32 to 28 Hz) and lowered the gain.

The question remains...

Is this just a great (or at least better) cable, or are the perceived benefits because:

a. I went from a 15' cable to a 4 1/2' cable?
b. I went from a internally bi-wired cable to 2 physically separate cables?
c. My cables no longer lie on the floor?
d. A little bit of all of the above.

One issue remained...This process puts a lot of stress on the copper. So, I contacted Lee over at Cryo-Freeze.com and had him soak my creations using his cryo process. Nice. Very nice.

The pair I made has an "unfinished" look to them, so I set out to make a set with a polished appearance. Unfortunately, they are too short for my system (1 m) and while the spades are Cardas, they are soldered (not crimped). They have not been cryoed. If anyone would like to try them, contact me and we'll make arrangements.