I've been kicking around either getting or making some new speaker cables.

But right now I am using some Mapleshade Clearview Golden Helix. I've had them for years and have no complaint at all about them.

Typical speaker wire "magic" on them, special winding, super thin insulation, special power pulses have been shot through them. Blah, blah, blah. They sounded different than what I was using before, maybe better, maybe.

I had tried quite a few well liked value cables. Some that did not stick long were Zu Mission, an early version of Reality cables, some earlier Anti-cables, and a few more I can't recall... And ones that stayed in a while, a DIY design using ethernet wires, Decware Styx, and Morrow's second to the top model. Then I fell into a really nice price on some used Synergistic Research Copper Elements with their special ground tech and sound tuning "bullets." The bullets were pretty powerful, each one giving the wires different feels, from more open and clear to more warm/bassy. They were the most revealing cables I had tried in frequencies and speed, with the cleanest bullets, very good at fine information and space. But not quite right for me, I could not liven up the bass, being a little soft and lean for my setup.

About then, I stumbled into the NOS WE tinned copper wire trend, and liked things I heard with one 16 gauge wire... lively, textured and fun in the mids, while not being so flavored as to sound too fake to me. Trouble was, that little wire could not give me the bass I needed. So I tried two together, and then three. Three 16s brought the bass into the mix pretty well, but 2 and 3 wires together made the mids progressively hard, making the initial mid magic from a single wire too concentrated and dense.

So liking one WE, I took a cue from the SR Elements, and decided to mix wires with the sonic character of each in mind, trying for a really good sonic blend I thought the mix might give. For size, like finding the WE wires too small/lean, I had found big wires like Decware Styx and some others too big, making the mids a little too dense and hard, and the bass too big and dominant. The happy medium here, between the 8 gauge wires and 16, that was quite a spread... I decided to start with 13-12 gauge...1 - WE 16, 1 - "polished" 20 gauge soft annealed pure silver wire in over-sized teflon tube, and I think an 18 gauge (maybe 16?) soft annealed pure copper in oversized teflon, also smoothed and polished with fine steel wool.

As luck would have it, this was quite good here, so I started playing with the number of wire crossings to tighten/clean up the sound by sound....not really twists, as my fav, if I am recalling correctly, had wire crosses something like every 10-12". Once I found the geometry I liked best, I tried some odd wires in teflon tube, and I ended up with a subtle improvement in the finest stuff...I am thinking it might be a 28 gauge titanium plated copper wire...

In the system at the time these cables were overall notably better than the SR Research, quite close in fine detail and space revelation, and with good spectral and speed balances from bass to highs. Sorry I am vague about the exact wire and geometry, but from looking at emails, this was about 9 years ago, bringing memory into question, and the orders are so old, the links to exactly what they were are not working...

Interestingly to me... though I have had UPOCC silver and copper wires, and some Duelund interpretations of WE wire for years, these are so good here, I have never felt compelled to take the time to make an upgraded version.

I started making cables because I could not get what I wanted easily buying them without going sort of stratospheric price wise (to me like these Audience cables). And getting really good results that I could tune to my preferences with good materials, designs, and iterations, I never looked back. To me, my cables beat the few high dollar references I had tried, but the main reference for me, has been, do they make it sound like real music across recordings without noticing the cables? Then my bud who has heard most of the greats, testing my ICs in his reference systems, said my ICs are near as good as they get. I trust his perception and discernment more than anyone else I know, so this was encouraging to me, that my way of evaluating was working.

As to more or less of anything, something I think I have learned is that everything matters lots at this level, wire sizes, metal types, draws, purities, dielectric, stranded or solid, geometry, ends, damping, cryo or not, magic sauces, solder....... So I can't really say if all OCC copper is "better," especially since I tend to like some silver in my power, USB, speaker, and ICs, especially UPOCC in the latter. And the silver used way matters. For example, my ICs at this point use careful blends of UPOCC gold/silver, silver, and copper, and if I trade VHAudio UPOCC silver in cotton, for Neotech UPOCC silver in loose teflon, that changes the whole cable sound... or change the gauge a little of any of these wires with the same wire... notable change in sound. Loving these cables, still I can't say this is the "best" route, since the cable sound is the sum of so many influences and how they work with one another.

Supporting this idea, I don't doubt these Audience cables sound as amazing as folks say. I just can't imagine paying that much for a cable when what I have is so satisfying that I can't hear flaws. But as importantly, what led me here, I got tired of sending higher dollar things back because they did not quite suit me, again, the balance of things in good cables as important as anything, and that complex of balances effecting how they fit in a given system and room. But that is me!

Hey Stone, I get it.

If something works really well to improve and enhance all the best qualities of all else...That can be sort of priceless. Good luck in the quest, and I hope more come in on this thread!

Hey Stone,

Sounds like nice wire choices to me... Guessing the added C on UP-OCCC for the neotech means it is copper? I guess I think of yours as 12 gauge cables since it is 12 between individual posts. It always confuses me trying to figure out Chinese made cable's functional gauge when they call those Kimber-like weaves that are split in two in effect whatever gauge they are combined. BTW, some years ago I got a pair of these cables made entirely of UPOCC copper with teflon that I think I recall as about 10 or 11 gauge to each post. They sounded compelling, that good copper (with various sized strands making up the stranded wire in each of the individual dielectric coatings), and heavy crossing geometry with the air core...Once more burned in, they seemed worth exploring. But they were too big and full sounding to me, a little thick and slow for my tastes especially low mids down. My plan was to disconnect one or two wires from each group to each + and -, but have not gotten around to it... They may be a really good cable to me then, especially with faster ends. Though these are made of pure copper with gold plate, and sounded pretty good, they are little heavy, and from sound impressions I thought some nice silver connectors might help the whole.

Anyway, I think I have so far pretty consistantly found a conglomerate gauge to each post in the 13-12 range more balanced spectrally and in speed here. Also so far I have always found various wires and gauges making up the conglomerate better than single wires. Easier to tune to sound based on metals and gauges used and their varying sound characters, and to fine tune with geometry, while to me, reducing smearing.

That is the same combined wire calculator I have used, very useful to me too!

Cool. I look forward to your comparisons. From your explanations of what you explored and heard, I can imagine with those wires, sonically arrived at geometry, and transparent ends that are not too heavy, that your cables might be hard to beat.... at least for what I like!

I have not tried that connex 6N silver in teflon, not having gotten around to asking if it is dead-soft annealed yet. Not having tested enough wire to absolutely verify, overall, my impression is that very soft annealed wire made more difference toward smooth yet resolving silver sound similar to UPOCC than the number of Ns.

That said, I have used some 6N Jupiter wire in interior IC-like cables that I thought sounded less than optimal compared to equal proportions to UPOCC... tending sharp and rigid as I recall. But with just a little of it in the right blends, it can be a nice touch to me. And different sounding, I think softened by the oiled cotton cover of Duelund silver, to me the metal sounds a little hard.

I wonder if you happened to check that out with the connex, and/or, though a small proportion of your overall gauge, did you hear any hardness with the 6N connex in your experiments?

Thanks. Me too, seems consistent that I am dependent on some good silver to pull the finest stuff, ribbon tweeters or not, though I seem to be dependent on those too with the right wires and caps.

Sounds good! I can imagine the extra wires in your own version of the round weave could increase damping compared to not adding those new wires, while allowing more moderate damping than the core and yarn, which might be easy to overdo if not careful. Not that I don't think damping can be important, but I try to do it with geometry and relatively innocuous cotton... I don't think I have added anything to the inside or outside of a cable I cannot hear, including shields, even with oversized shields separated from the wires as much as I can. So if needed, I am really careful.

I find many commercial cables can be over-damped and shielded....even when sounding really good, making them tend a little toward slow/dull/colored... seemingly from electrical/frequency balance draws/effects caused by different materials around the signal energy... And I get that a lot of cables can be nice with all the wires, damping, shields packed close together, but compared to not doing that, all my tests using decent parts with more attention to not having dielectric effects, give the cable comparatively better immediacy and ultimate clarity. And cotton, easily available and having relatively lower dielectric effect than many, I prefer it for damping.

As I often try to say.... I think part of the rationale for not paying fuller attention to these things is in part the long cultured habit of smoothing/warming (masking) detail many folks are afraid of, and perhaps rightfully so... for decades so many developers not fully addressing the finest detail and space needs, including timing and revelation aside from the DA conversions... and by not making detail more complex and spacious, actually continuing from habit in creating hard detail.

In this vein, I think the "smoothness" and "warmth" that we can get from closer cable construction, off materials, over damping, etc, can help hide hard detail, "good" in many settings where hard detail is an inherent issue... But having solved a lot of that syndrome here with a really good front end conglomerate that, in its pretty seriously modded state, can reveal complexity rather than creating hardness, and all the other gear and speaker modifications, room, cables, feet, etc designed and intended for musical revelation and speed... ie real transparency... from this baseline, a lot shows for better or worse. 

Here, cables with close construction can tend to subtly mask fine information and immediacy... even artful warmth and smoothness with relatively good speed and detail complexity and completeness often feels ultimately a little affected rather than natural. Some power cables I made from raw cable by really good designers who actually listen, and really good materials (Furutech and Neotech), though really good, to me they sound a little off... a bit held back if looking at all aspects of the sound. So even though I like and use these with the right ends, the subtle issues I have inform my exploration, and they will likely be replaced one day.

So my old rag... I find improving the qualities of timing, revelation, and complexity of detail a much better way to solve hard detail... But to really start to get that, it takes a conglomerate of power, gear, cables, speakers, room ... that is capable enough to be without notable weak links anywhere.... And for me so far, with how I approach what I will pay for this or that, and really not liking the buying roller coaster, this has required modifications with good parts, wires, tubes!

And again, in the fundamental picture, the really good fine stuff will never be there to mask if a front end signal is not pulled without damage and truncation of the delicate finer elements of a pure musical signal.... From the quality of the stream, compressed, "lossless" to error corrected uncompressed... to the drive and wires uses, the computer, OS and software that process it (whether these are all in one like some streamers or separates).... how the stream is made, transported, processed, and output.... all cables... there are way too many ways to screw that up before ever getting to the pre or amp.

Still, part of the same historical progression of development that started running from hard detail with the advent of very clear digital... streamers, streams, DACs have gotten quite good at making it appear complete when it may be more hifi, and not fully musically extracted and presented. To me this has contributing in making it hard to find and recognize the need for the very fine and spacious nature of an undamaged signal. Until I started to hear a front end that does not mess the fine stuff up much.....I did not know how powerful that could be to the musical experience. And the other side, improving the signal can reveal how the rest of the system is not designed and tuned to utilize a really good signal, which can make hearing a better signal difficult. A circular pattern that keeps things slower I think....

Yeah, sorry... this is just where my journey has taken me, and most issues I have had always come back to what I perceive is this same basic issue of working from conditioning more than outright creative solution orientation, not based on the past so much as using our now amazing tech, parts, materials, knowledge and perception to refine our musical experience based on what we have right now!

Taking it all back to getting the best we can from cables now, so they help now, and will reveal improvements elsewhere as they come.

Wow, I had forgotten about that DAC. Turns out it was Feb of 2016 I tried one. My reference then was a tuned up NOS Tranquility DAC, with a nice USB cable designed with the DAC to help it do its best, along with a Mac Mini computer with a really good audio software player.... an inherently quiet computer, the OS also tuned to bring out all they could be from this DAC... I was excited, having found agreement in the importance of all balances and complete revelation with one of the designers like no other, in talking anyway. Also, that he and the engineer (and more) blind tested part by part to get where they did. Then I got an open box version with VHAudio copper/teflon caps.... and it was good, but not as good as I expected or wanted. So after some talks I sent it back, and Eric tested it and agreed, the caps the customer before me had special ordered were not nearly as good as one would expect from that famous cap in this setting anyway, and the relatively cheap stock ones were notably better in all ways.

Back in my system with their latest favs, it had become what I expected and wanted... really good at all things in terms of harmonics... decays, textures, overtones... with really nice spaciousness and balances... all the challenging stuff that makes it sound real. The bass could have been a little tighter and more powerful, but it was good, and I loved it for years, and still do really enjoy that DAC with upgrades I made to IEC, power supply and signal caps.

So not all that important to me, but for some reference, with that same basic front end at RMAF using 44.1/16 uncompressed error corrected files their room won:

- Best sound for the money, RMAF 3 years in a row 2012, 2013, 2014
- Best digital for the money, RMAF 2012, 2013
- Best Digital against all including cost no object 2014

I think 2014 was the last RMAF DbAudioLabs (Tranquility makers) did, so don't know how that would have progressed, but a good pointer to how the DAC could be tuned to be really good with all these things that make the front end considered together.

But back to the ZDSD, I was using my Torii MKIV with I think my CSP3 and HR-1s. I was making pretty nice cables by then, but not a lot of modifications yet... guessing in the Torii only having replaced the stock aluminum HT Jupiters to copper for coupling caps..... My CSP3 had Jupiter HT caps too, and I had done a fair bit of experimenting with caps and plinth tuning on the HR-1s, but mostly stock then. I think it was later that year and early the next I started working on power supply bypassing, exploring lots of caps, connectors, wires etc. So I was not hearing near all I do now.

Anyway, I was deep in on "mastering" the system/room by trying to tune things to sound great across recordings, and with the help of gain tuning between the CSP3 and Torii per each recording when needed, that was quite good with the Tranquility. But with the ZDSD, not so easy, and I tried lots of stuff to make it work. Talking with Steve about it some, I think he might have let me keep it for an extra test period to see if I could make it work, and I was working hard, especially finding that adjustable "ZBIT" like output compelling.

The DAC sounded really good on a lot of better recordings to me. But I just could not get the right sound on too many others... as I recall there were a number of recordings that were really revealing that allowed me to hear parts of the Tascam circuits I was not able to get past... maybe a little too made, not born to me. Too long ago to be clear, but it went back and putting the Tranquility back in was a relief, very resolving while being more natural sounding. Though not as impressive as the ZDSD with that ZBIT transformer, it just sounded more like music on more stuff here. And I could make up a lot of that ZBIT clarity and hit with the CSP3 tubes and settings.

Now my Mini with a super refined OS completely modified for music, modified Gustard DAC, and modified Singxer USB Bridge before it, are my overall fav and have been for quite a few years ... And I do have a tuned up ZBIT after it now! My Gustard was better stock to some folks who talked about it than the Yiggi and Auralic Vega, pretty hot DACs at the time that were 2 to 3 times more expensive. Though I was modifying it to my tastes, I was using ideas from more experienced people who had a cool collective flow going for making the DAC really good... and to me, mine was at least twice as revealing, fast and musical as stock when done, if not more. I can hear a little ringing now and then from the digital filter, but overall, it seems pretty close to flawless to me.

Now everything here is hyper tuned/modified and the front end is more than holding up, getting better and better as the system does. So though mine is s dinosaur in DAC time at this point (2017), I still question whether it is worth it to bring in another DAC to try... though the Laiv Harmony resistor ladder DAC that has caught my attention, my first real temptation.