How to Make You Own Audiophile XLR cables

Comments · 233

• WI

  @williammilligan8432 · 6 years ago

  So I&apos;m rather late to the party but I have to comment on this video. Before this however, a bit of context as to where I&apos;m commenting from. I previously worked for a firm specialising in exactly this, building high end custom interconnects and test leads and balancing transformers. Amongst our customers were SSl, Mackie, Revox, Tascam, Studer, ballfinger to name but a few. We also made test leads and probes for some incredibly precise measurement equipment for the likes of Techtronix, Keysight, Rhode &amp; Schwarz, Teledyne and Keithley. Not only are these applications extremely demanding in performance and precision but our products were (and still are) used by the manufacturers who built the recorders that mastered your precious reel-to-reel recordings and furthermore probably used our test leads to test and calibrate those very reel-to-reel decks, not to mention the one you listen on. So, I know a little about this subject and the physics involved in signal retention, degradation interference rejection, inductance etc, etc. <br><br><br>So, the video.....<br>Firstly, to the people giving you a hard time, I understand their point of view regarding your soldering skills etc. Probably not the best idea to shoot a video on the subject of building and &quot;audiophile&quot; interconnect before you&apos;ve really practised your soldering. However you stated that you are not good at it and still had a go at it and I can only commend you for that. I see many people criticising you for this but I don&apos;t see them publishing a video on the subject (I might however). <br>As for balanced interconnects, screening is important but that is not why they are superior to unbalanced connections. They do indeed pick up interference (especially on long runs) but you won&apos;t hear it because of the balancing process. Signal from your source passes down the hot conductor, at the same time, a 180 degree phase shifted (opposite or mirror image of the hot signal) passes down the cold conductor. This phase shifted signal is produced passively by a balancing transformer (which we used to build) in the source. These two mirrored signals pick up the same interference due to shield leakage, inductance, etc. At the other end, for example, an amplifier, the cold signal is phase shifted back to match the hot and when the two are recombined, the interference spikes on the hot and cold cancel each other out. The effectiveness of this could be influenced very slightly by the arrangement of the conductors in the cable. In testing we found the best was a &quot;starquad&quot; or quadrupole arrangement. When it comes to screening, you cannot beat a solid foil screen but a wrapped foil screen is almost as good. Braided screens don&apos;t no nearly as well but they give you the practicality of having a cable that has a reasonable degree of flexibility. <br>I&apos;d also like to dismiss the notion of any kind of directionality or anisotropy in copper conductors or any electrical conductor for that matter. Not one single scientific study has shown that this phenomena exists in single element or indeed alloyed electrical conductors. It has been studied but the effect has never been observed and demonstrates a lack of understanding around how electrical currents actually flow. Furthermore if the theory (and it technically isn&apos;t even a theory) had any substance and there were millions of diode like structures forming in your interconnects, all that would do is increase overall resistance resulting in greater signal attenuation. There would be no real impact on quality, just a slight reduction in amplitude. It would also suggest impurities in the copper meaning that any cables that claim to have any form of directionality must be made from inferior material. This is pure marketing nonsense but it sure does help sell lots of expensive cable! Interestingly this property isn&apos;t used by the manufacturers who cater to the professional market, probably because if you tried to tell a scientist, transmission engineer or a sound engineer about this amazing feature, they&apos;d probably laugh you out of the building! I recently saw a similar marketing fabrication concocted by a manufacturer of so called audiophile inerconnects claiming that their Rhodium plated connectors exhibited &quot;unparalleled electrical conductivity&quot;. A claim that is utterly, utterly false given that Rhodium has an electrical conductivity of 38% IACS which isn&apos;t great (Gold is measured at 70% IACS, Copper is actually better at 100% IACS and Silver better still at 105% IACS!).<br>So as for the best possible interconnect with the greatest interference rejection, inductance rejection and signal preservation, you&apos;d use a foil screened starquad cable and a set of Neutrik EMC XLR connectors. <br><br><br>The connectors look very nice but I&apos;ll guarantee they are electrically inferior to a neutrik connector. The reason I say this is that the sexy black connectors you bought are black because they have a paint electrostatically applied to them and that paint finish is not particularly conductive. If you want the best interference rejection possible from an XLR, you need to also ground the casing of the connector. one way to do this is to solder a link between the ground pin and the case grounding lug (the thin connection that you didn&apos;t solder). The other way that the casing of the XLR can be grounded is via the connector on the equipment you are plugging in to. This ground is established by the casing of the connector making contact with the grounded body of the connector in your gear. If the connector is covered in a non conductive paint finish, it cant establish this ground.... Those connectors look really, really nice but they haven&apos;t been engineered for peak electrical performance. All XLR&apos;s consist of three pins plus a ground lug in a moulded lump of plastic, a plastic strain relief cone, a threaded piece of conductive tube and a threaded nut essentially. Unless the body of those connectors are machined from solid silver or some precious metal, they clearly aren&apos;t worth anything like what you paid for them. Incidentally those connectors retail for £59.99 in the UK. <br><br><br>As far as the soldering goes, you kind of did it backwards. When I make them I twist up the braid an put a small piece of heatshrink over it to insulate it and prevent any stray strands from contacting the other poles. Then expose about 4mm of the twisted strands of the sleeve (if you measure the handy little cups on the end of the pins, you&apos;ll find they&apos;re about 4mm deep) and strip the hot and cold wires to the same depth. Apply a tiny dab of flux to the wires and with a small bead of solder on your iron, apply heat. within a second or two the wire will soak up the solder, turning many fine strands into one easily manageable piece. Then take the pre soldered wire and slide it into the handy hole on the end of the pin. All you need to do is hold your soldering iron onto the pin and the solder will flow from the wire and wet the joint, job done. You should always tin the wire, not the connector. It&apos;s much easier. Also because I only strip about 4mm of the wire, there is no bare copper exposed inside the connector so the re is no chance of a fault to ground or for the hot and cold to connect. I also never, ever used electrical tape, not ever. You had a nice box of heatshrink tubing, that&apos;s what you should have used. <br><br><br>There are several other things I could say about the video but I&apos;ve gone on far too long already, I might just make my own video. <br>Well done for having a go anyway, like someone else commented, most people aren&apos;t even aware of balanced connections, what they are, what they&apos;re for or how they work so good on you for trying to bring a little more knowledge to the masses.

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• RO

  @roberttroxell4006 · 6 years ago

  Thank you for showing the process in detail. &nbsp;I might even be able to do this! &nbsp;☺️

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• MI

  @michaelforsythe4335 · 3 years ago

  I got a hold of some of that wire and hooked it up to Xhadow XLR plugs. Wow............. absolutely fantastic sounding and I haven&apos;t even burned the wire in yet.

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• HA

  @harrisedgar · 6 years ago

  worderful.... &nbsp;I was looking for these, Thank you.

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• SL

  @SlowMenThinking · 8 years ago

  Final step you should always test the work for continuity, polarity, resistance, insulation resistance and reactant impedance.

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• AR

  @AriKona · 8 years ago (edited)

  Rats. I was hoping to see your next video on reel to reel maintenance, but this turned out to be a very interesting video as well. <br>You said it best when you mentioned distance. I have several XLR cables, but only use them for microphones and music equipment. A good friend who deals in high-end audio told me long ago that if you are connecting audio equipment with less than a 2 meter cable, XLR is not likely to give you any better of a signal than a good quality RCA cable. My experience, as well as many laboratory and listening tests, has proven him correct. &nbsp;<br>Soldering is an art. Having built several hard-wired electronic devices in the past, &quot;tinning&quot; the wire, removing less shielding and keeping the connection point smooth (no &quot;cold soldering&quot;) makes for the best results. While we have no &quot;ban&quot; on lead (at least not one that prevents someone from finding it), I use both, but agree that silver solder produces a noticeably better electron flow in audio cables. <br>You did an excellent job in pointing out things that most first time cable builders do wrong and end up having to do it twice so this really is a valuable presentation. You provide a very reasonable alternative for those who don&apos;t want to spend the money on expensive professionally made cables (which many times is truly a waste). &nbsp;Thank you for making this instructional video and I hope to see many more (including the one on reel-to-reel maintenance ;-).

• SL

  @SlowMenThinking · 8 years ago

  In your application the shield brad does not carry the signal it is ground the signal is the hot and the cold

• JU

  @jud-aka-stansell · 7 years ago

  You need to get yourself and use this rubber like coating that you can brush on naked wires and it seals them electrically from their surrounding. So easy to use in little tight areas you&apos;ll never want to use tape again. Search liquid tape

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• FI

  @FinnishArmy · 5 years ago (edited)

  You cannot argue to me that the direction of which electrons flow through a cable matter. It’s the same in both directions..

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• TH

  @the-matrix-has-you · 5 years ago

  Hi, I found your video really helpfull thank you so much for sharing. Could you please give a link to buy cables? Thanks so much

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• SA

  @sascharoll · 7 years ago (edited)

  I‘ve been to several (worldwide known) mastering studios and have never seen a) audio signal cables with directions on them and b) that thick cable, especially for such a short length. Same goes by the way for loudspeaker cable - it always amazes me how much efforr „audiophile“ amateurs put into special cables for everything where the real professionals (who btw mixed and recorded the stuff you‘re playing back on your machines) just use ordinary material that technically does the job. I also have worked on world premieres of Hollywood movies in the tech departement where the director / rerecording engineer etc where full of praise for the sound... no magical cables where involved anywhere ;-)

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• BA

  @barbiegamaestan456 · 6 years ago (edited)

  Appreciate the video. In summary, if you want audiophile XLR cables, buy some cheap neutrik connectors and adequatly shielded cable and spend your money on someone that can solder properly or invest in yourself by learning to do it properly. If cash is still burning a hole in your pocket get a good quality temperature controlled soldering iron.

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