Cat 5e cable - ouch

CodeThief

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Well I made a 5m pair of Cat 5e cables today. Took me 4 hours and I have blisters on my hands. I haven't really finished yet as I haven't terminated them and only one length has had the wires seperated up at the end. All I can say is they actually look quite good (if you like the industrial look), hopefully they sound ok as well :) Just gotta find a way to get those 2m round copper cables into some banana plugs ;)

Dave
 
When your done before connecting them, play a track a few times over on your current speaker cable, then swap and listen again, then post your views :)
 
You'll be impressed m8 :)
Best thing I ever did was upgrade (?) my speaker cable to Cat5 cable.

It is a little bit tough on the old figers though, but then again what cable isn't?

It'll take a few days from them to fully bed in, so give them time. Don't expect to hear anything different for at least a few days and then you can try them up against your old stuff.
 
Right,

Today I finished the seperation of the twisted pairs. Im just waiting for my mate in a hi-fi shop to get me some bananas. To be honest, I won't be testing these for a while as I'm waiting for my new Q1s to be delivered and I'm making these as something to do to pass the time. I bought 12m of QED Silver Anniversary at the same time, so these, the speakers and the CAT5 will all need bedding in. Don't expect anything anytime soon, unless I take a pic with the terminations on as well :)

Dave
 
i made some cat5 speaker cable also, terminated with ixos 204 banana plugs. they have quite a large opening to accept the cable and it's also side entry. cost about £8 from direct distribution over the net(for 4). the cables revealed more than my eccosse cs2.3 cables in my system.:D
 
Oooh sweet, got a link??

Dave
 
OMG!!

Flimber, you star!!!! Runs off to order them straight away. ....---->

Dave
 
Just ordered them :)

Cost me £17.39 for 20 plugs delivered :)

Dave
 
I had a go at some Cat 5 cables but wasn't able to get the Belkin cable suggested in the Net article and used standard cat 5 cable from Maplin. Was pretty disappointed with the result, not as good as my original cable (bi-wired using two separate runs of CableTalk Concerto) a lot of wasted effort. Was tempted to import the proper Belkin cable from the USA but couldn't motivate myself to do all that braiding again. CableTalk Concerto is about £8.50 per metre including delivery from CableTalk would suggest you buy a couple of metre's of it and try a comparison.
 
Fraid not mate, theres just a screw that hold the wire inside the plug.

Dave
 
Are those plugs okay ? Thinking of getting some meself...

Also, where did you get yer CAT5 and at what cost ?

Oh, and some latest pics too please. Quick as you can ;)

Cheers,

Mike.
 
Originally posted by GaryG
I had a go at some Cat 5 cables but wasn't able to get the Belkin cable suggested in the Net article and used standard cat 5 cable from Maplin. Was pretty disappointed with the result, not as good as my original cable (bi-wired using two separate runs of CableTalk Concerto) a lot of wasted effort. Was tempted to import the proper Belkin cable from the USA but couldn't motivate myself to do all that braiding again. CableTalk Concerto is about £8.50 per metre including delivery from CableTalk would suggest you buy a couple of metre's of it and try a comparison.

I just used bog standard Cat5 network cable from Maplin (it was purple :) ).
How long did you leave the cables on your system before you changed back to your original ones?

I've found that it takes a good few days worth of heavy use for these cables to bed in. You cant gauge any cable just by a few mins of listening (no matter what price they are).
 
Alanrob

I left the cables to 'burn in' for a week with my system playing 24 hours a day. I have a fairly transparent system as listed below, making it easy to spot differences between cables.

Meridian 600 CD transport
Audio Synthesis DAX Decade DAC
Krell MDA 300 Monobloc amps
KEF Reference 4 speakers
 
Flimber:

I haven't got a problem with these plugs but I haven't given them any abuse yet. Be interesting to see whether the weight of the CAT5 gives the little screw any problem when they're wired up. They seem quite good quality though! The latest pics of them are under my DIY Interconnects thread ...

Dave
 
Flimber,

I got mine from screwfix.com for abt GBP17.50. Have a quick look at my previous posts. As for pictures, search for posts from evildonut. :)

I infact took a chance today to compare my 5 metre Cat5 cable with Gale XL189 (1 quid/metre from RS) side by side and ran in for abt 1-2 hrs listening to CD.

Dissappointingly, in contrast to what most people said on the 'FFRC' Cat cable, the Gale performed MUCH better than my Cat. I feel the Cat cable sounds flat and limits the speaker potential. The bass and mid range are there however they are not as deep as compared to the Gale.

Then, I ran my 2nd Cat cable of the same length. Again, same result was observed.

Havent got time to run in the cable much longer. The amp was set to abt 55 dB and the speaker is 100 W and non-biwire. The cables are bare wires at both the amp and speaker ends.

Apart from running them much longer, other advice to improve the cables is highly appreciated.
:rolleyes:

-Silver Sam-
---------------
Strider, Dr Doom, X = the best offensive team. :D
 
Originally posted by GaryG
Alanrob

I left the cables to 'burn in' for a week with my system playing 24 hours a day. I have a fairly transparent system as listed below, making it easy to spot differences between cables.

Meridian 600 CD transport
Audio Synthesis DAX Decade DAC
Krell MDA 300 Monobloc amps
KEF Reference 4 speakers

Nice setup m8 ;)
Mine isn't too bad either -
Tag McLaren AV32R / 1005xR / DVD32R
Linn centre 5120 and rears 5110's
Kef 104's Front l/r

If I have the time this weekend (at last, a weekend off :) ) I'm try my old cables in again (Furakawa) and see if there is any diffence, but I doubt it as there was none three weeks after putting in the Cat5 cables.

A word of note though! How many runs of the cable were you using to each speaker? I'm using four to all the fronts and three to the rears. Read on the site I got all the info from that it make a huge difference using four instead of three per run.
 
AlanRob

If I didn't know better I'd say you were masquerading as Nic Rhodes! Nice bit of kit, now if only Audiolab had been bought by Ferrari;)

I'm hoping somebody can compare the Cat 5 to the Concerto and tell me it's better, it would give me the incentive to have another go at it. It would appear the Teflon jacket is the key.

Here's some useful background on cables for those that may not have already seen the link.

www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/spkcbl_e.html
 
Originally posted by GaryG
AlanRob

If I didn't know better I'd say you were masquerading as Nic Rhodes! Nice bit of kit, now if only Audiolab had been bought by Ferrari;)

I'm hoping somebody can compare the Cat 5 to the Concerto and tell me it's better, it would give me the incentive to have another go at it. It would appear the Teflon jacket is the key.

Here's some useful background on cables for those that may not have already seen the link.

www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/spkcbl_e.html

I've been rumbled :D
BTW, tnt-audio.com is the site I used dor all my cabling DIY info.
Great site ;)
 
Well I better update this thread really. I've had the Cat5 on for a week or so now. I havent given them a huge amount of burn in but they sound much better than bellwire and also better than the 12 metres of QED Silver Anniversary it appears I've wasted money on :( Never mind, have to see if these can be used for the rears now. Ho-hum, thats life.

Dave
 
One thing which has definitely caught my eyes....... the time! I barely got my cables started in the time it has taken some to complete! I am pretty sure that it took me in the region of 50 hours to braid all my cables. How many cores did everyone use? I have 216 cores per speaker, thats 108 per connection....... did you guys use hat many and still get completed in the really short time????

ad
 
Hi there,

I used 3 pairs of Cat5 per side, so thats 48 cores per side. how the hell many pieces of cat5 did you use??????? :eek:

Dave
 

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