DIY DC power cables

[Nenon]

2 hours ago, HumanMedia said:

Have you tried this @Nenon? 

Yes, I have. I have done a cable for the Farad using 4 x 18AWG wires and a cable using 2 x 15.5AWG connected to pin1 (+) and pin2 (GND). The latter sounded a little bit better to my ears. They were both pretty short, around 1 foot. 

 

2 hours ago, HumanMedia said:

And can you link to your Mundorf DC cable recipe?

 

 

[Exocer]

Has anyone tried applying this DIY Helix concept to DC cables?

 

http://www.image99.net/blog/files/be8de0c383c5434907610d6b55049e69-75.html

 

I have only seen Interconnects and AC power cables outlined there. It may not be applicable to DC cables for reasons beyond my understanding. It is interesting nonetheless. 

 

@seeteeyou - thanks for bringing this to my attention.

[Nenon]

1 hour ago, Exocer said:

Has anyone tried applying this DIY Helix concept to DC cables?

 

My guess is that the DIY Helix concept has bigger advantage to AC cables. No motivation to try it with DC cables here. But I will try it on a power at some point. 

[seeteeyou]

If there were enough space for 4 little boxes plus another one with LT3045, maybe Schröder Method could be another avenue for DC cables?

 

https://www.usaudiomart.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=13858#p13858

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/30376-a-novel-way-to-massively-improve-the-sq-of-computer-audio-streaming/page/666/?tab=comments#comment-1059624

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I can say the sound quality improvement is something else -- I don't want to go into hyperbole but it's a big jump with dramatic improvement in everything. That's after a couple days of burn in, so hopefully further improvement.

 

It's meant to be an improved version of this mod with Mundorf silver gold

 

https://www.usaudiomart.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9753#p9753

https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649459989-dual-cat-poe-dc-31-dc-to-dc-hubs-sota-dc-digital-power-chain/

 

Though here's the catch about AliExpress, their worldwide shipping is kinda "free" but toggling the destination between Hong Kong and United States would result in $9.17 versus $25.55 a piece

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32897304783.html

 

Nobody tried a different flavor like this one yet, though the price is right for shipping to US

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32963331310.html

 

And then the costs of 16 Ethernet cables do add up pretty quickly unless we're able to build them ourselves. Some cables might sound better than the others but the brand UGreen seemed to work well for Empire_City_Denizen et al.

 

Not exactly interested in feline jokes but anti-rodent CAT6A cables like these guys (with metal armor) could be an interesting option in terms of shielding

 

https://www.amazon.com/SANWA-Japan-Brand-Jacket-Ethernet/dp/B07RRVF1SJ

 

Once again it's still quite a bit of money when we're getting 8 × 2-pack Sanwa = $117 while applying that 10% off coupon would bring it closer to 100 bucks. Finally we'll also need 3 (short) DC cables for 4 passive PoE boxes.

 

---

 

BTW, Helix geometry could also work somewhere else

 

https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8787

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/duelund-conversion-to-diy-helix-geometry-cabling/post?postid=2042201#2042201

Quote

USB cables made using Helix design principles are simply outstanding.

[seeteeyou]

FYI - it's quite interesting to see this (fairly extensive) mod for the PSU, plus another flagship DC cable with a separate ground connector on top of woo-woo quantum stuff

 

https://www.hiendy.com/hififorum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=135912

https://www.hiendy.com/hififorum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=135954

https://www.hiendy.com/hififorum/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=136838

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=475207072498951&story_fbid=3534622159890745

 

Are all XLR connections created equal at 110Ω? If so, this particular XLR jack (w/ pure copper contact pins) ain't having the lowest impedance by any means

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32915836871.html

https://www.amazon.com/VIBORG-Chassis-Connector-Insulator-Rhodium/dp/B07HK836PL

 

And then IMHO it's kinda funny to pick this XLR connector w/ phosphor bronze contact pins for aesthetic reasons

 

http://www.oyaide.com/ENGLISH/AUDIO/products_category/interconnects_cable/pg516.html

 

Finally we've got this DC connector for 45 bucks a pop

 

https://www.atl-newcablestudio.com/DCHead.html

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=664199480349433&story_fbid=994036170699094

 

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In terms of conductivity, I guess that maybe something with UP-OCC copper contact pins might work better when compared to that Oyaide FOCUS 1

 

http://wp.neotechcable.com/xlr-plug/

https://www.hificollective.co.uk/catalog/components/connectors/xlr-sockets-plugs/neotech

 

Of course it's still hard to beat the impedance of Jaeger

 

https://www.hummel.com/fileadmin/user_upload/hummel_com/Kataloge/PDF/EC/CC_JAEGER_Kat/Kat-JC_CvI-en-070617-smallres.pdf#page=14

Quote

< 0,0015Ω ø 2 mm, Depending on thermocouple ø 3 mm < 0,0015Ω ↔ < 0,0045Ω

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/37373-the-paul-hynes-sr7/?tab=comments#comment-733206

Quote

The XL has ultra low impedance (< 1 milliohm) connectors and fine silver internal wiring between capacitor banks, regulator modules and the output connectors.

 

[sbronf]

guys, I have a question: using a 3 pin xlr connector (as hdplex does) for a dc cable, pin 2 is the + while the negative I always put it on pin 3 because I knew that pin 1 is for a shielding braid. but then I opened a ghentaudio cable and I saw that the negative was soldered to pin 1 ... isn't there a rule?

[alecm]

there are two dc power supplies(5v and 5v)  and there is only one starquad cable.  can it be used to transmit two dc power lines? what are the disadvantages?

[musicguy]

What about using a cat 5 cable  for a dc cable?  2 or 3 24 awg,  in twisted pair  should be about 20 awg total.  Teflon coated wire.  solid core wire.  Once installed never moved again.

 

about 5 foot.  

 

 

[BCRich]

On 11/22/2020 at 5:18 AM, sbronf said:

guys, I have a question: using a 3 pin xlr connector (as hdplex does) for a dc cable, pin 2 is the + while the negative I always put it on pin 3 because I knew that pin 1 is for a shielding braid. but then I opened a ghentaudio cable and I saw that the negative was soldered to pin 1 ... isn't there a rule?

The Ghent Cable is using 1 & 2 because that is how the XLR outputs are configured on the HDPlex LPS’s.

 Balanced XLR for Audio is a different story.

[pl_svn]

10 hours ago, BCRich said:

The Ghent Cable is using 1 & 2

it's entirely up to you when placing your order ;)

[MikeyFresh]

I see that Parts Connexion in Canada is now offering a decent looking DC plug for DIY cable making, introductory price is $8.40 each (regular price $ 11.25 each). 

 

No details on the maximum diameter cable it will accept, I assume it is gold plated brass, who knows if the carbon fiber is real or faux:

 

[LowMidHigh]

Maybe someone can riddle me this?

 

I’m considering putting together some DC cables—Oyaide plugs with starquad cords (Gotham GAC-4/1 Ultra Pro or Canare 4S6 or 4S8).

 

The location of the soldering if pretty obvious:

 

 

 

How do I handle the 4 conductors? Do I first braid the red pair into a composite conductor, then do the same to the white ones? That is, turning the 4 separate conductors to two composite conductors. It makes sense, but I want to double-check myself.

 

Lastly, do I solder the shield/ground to the plug, as I do with XLR plugs? My mind tells me ground is not required here.

 

P.S., I’m forgoing the JSSG. 

[Smaragdhk]

Sorry to revive this thread… there is a lot of discussion on the signal flow / direction of cables… most speaker and signal cables have an arrow pointing out the direction… your ears will confirm if the printed direction on those cables is indeed correct or not…

So my question :  is this important at all for DC cables? If so, can someone explain why?

[Smaragdhk]

And an additional question, if you use the “wrong” direction with a DC cable, would you hear the difference, e.g.  affect the sound?

[Narcissus]

Can I use this cable https://www.ghentaudio.com/part/dc-gac4.html

 

to pair the IR with LPS 1.2?

[R1200CL]

59 minutes ago, Narcissus said:

Can I use this cable https://www.ghentaudio.com/part/dc-gac4.html

 

to pair the IR with LPS 1.2?

Yes. It may be the best DC cable available. 2.1 mm 

[Gr8tful]

I suppose this solderless dc umbilical is a bad idea,,,,https://www.3monkeyssolderless.com/

[agladstone]

16 minutes ago, Gr8tful said:

I suppose this solderless dc umbilical is a bad idea,,,,https://www.3monkeyssolderless.com/

I’ve often wondered the same thing! 
it’s really meant for guitar effect pedals (I have a ton of these too:) ) - however I’m sure they will work. It’s not going to be as good as a professionally made cable by ghent audio, but it should get the signal from A to b ? 

[fas42]

23 minutes ago, Gr8tful said:

I suppose this solderless dc umbilical is a bad idea,,,,https://www.3monkeyssolderless.com/

 

Depending of course upon how well it's thought out, most likely ...

 

Think of your system as sounding like the quality of the weakest link - if that happens to be a poor quality, non-soldered, cable into a plug connection, say, then that's what will always be a key factor determining how good the setup can ever sound ...

[Encore]

On 5/5/2017 at 2:26 AM, JohnSwenson said:

OK here it is: cable shielding, how to make it work and how almost all cables have it wrong.

 

The first important question is, what is electrical shielding and how does it really work?

 

Lets look at the infamous "Faraday cage". For this discussion it is a metal box, with all sides well electrically connected (no gaps). Shielding means that electrical fields outside cannot be sensed inside. Conversely electrical fields inside cannot be sensed outside.

 

So how does this work? When an electric field from the outside world impinges on the box it causes the electrons in the metal to move, this rearrangement of the electrons creates an electric field inside the metal which exactly counteracts the external field, thus the field is essentially stopped at the periphery of the box.

 

The important aspect here is the part "electrons in the metal move". What are moving electrons called? Current. In order for current to flow there has to be a loop. Current will not flow unless there is a loop. In the case of the Faraday cage, the loop is the whole cage. Lets say an electric field impinges on a side of the box, this causes a current flow that goes all the way around the box back to where the field impinges on the box. If the sides are not electrically connected to each other the current cannot flow, thus the electrons cannot move, and the canceling electric field does not get setup, thus no shielding.

 

It turns out that for AC electric fields it is a little different. Some current can flow due to capacitances between conductors. The electrons can move a little bit one way, then a little bit back. If the frequency is high enough the back and forth movement, which is charging and discharging the capacitance is sufficient for shielding. For a given capacitance the lower the frequency the less effective the shielding. The electrons start moving which charges the capacitance, then stop moving when fully charged, they don't do the full movement necessary to produce the canceling field.

 

So what about shielded cables? I hope is now obvious that for shielding to be effective there needs to be a conductive path from one end of the shield to the other. If there is not such a path the only shielding that is going to happen is for high frequencies due to cpacitances involved with the shield.

 

The best way for the shielding to work properly is a separate wire connected to each end of the shield. This is sufficient for shielding from DC to very high frequencies. Note the shield does NOT have to be connected an earth ground, the "ground" of the circuit at either end, or any thing else for that matter. A cable with a shield the is not connected to anything else except itself (ie a separate wire from one end to the other of the shield) will be highly effective in shielding what is inside.

 

Where does this wire need to go? It can be either inside or outside the shield, but if it is inside it can couple to the signal wires inside, so it is usually best to have it outside the shield. Note it has to be insulated from the shield except for the ends where it connects to the shield. It should intersect as little of the external field as possible so it should NOT be tightly spiraled around the cable. Just running along side the shield is best, although a very loose spiral (say one turn per foot) is almost as good.

 

So some ramifications of this: The traditional "connect the shield to one end and let the other end float" is not good, it does not allow a loop so shielding does not happen very well. If you add the external wire connected to the shield at both ends, then you CAN connect one or both sides of the shield to the signal ground or some other ground, but you don't NEED to for effective shielding. You will find that in many cases leaving the shield completely disconnected from the rest of the circuit is the best way to go, you get the benefit of properly working shielding without any interaction of the shield with your system. You may wind wind up with static charges on the shielding so a resistance from the shield to ground may be useful in some cases in order to dissipate static charges.

 

So how come nobody does this? I don't know. My only guess is that cable shielding has been going on long before the actual mechanism for shielding was worked out, thus by the time it was understood, cable shielding was "standard" and nobody ever even thought about analyzing it based on an understanding of how shielding actually works.

 

But shouldn't the big companies know about this? It seems they don't. I have read several app notes from Belden that state that shielding is only effective at high frequencies, at audio frequencies and power supply frequencies (60Hz etc) it is totally ineffective.

 

Audio people are the only ones that seems to at least empirically know about this. Remember phono cartridges and preamps, there is a little green wire that goes from the "ground jack" on the preamp to the tonearm. Everybody assumes that this is to "ground the cartridge" but what it really does is provide a loop from one end of the interconnect shield to the other, it has nothing to do with whether it is "grounded" or not. So if you have (or had) a turntable you were actually taking advantage of this without realizing it.

 

So there you have it, shielding DOES work, but only if you provide a path from one end of the shield to the other. This is effective even if you don't connect the shield to anything else.

 

John S.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wauw--once again a huge thanks. It's the first time I understand what my turntable's grounding cable does. Would this work with Ethernet cables as well?

[cpasmoi]

Hello

I am French and I subscribe to your thread because I have a small dilemma to solve
I have a D.I.Y Hdplex Server which is powered by a 19 Volt/6A linear power supply

the cable of connection was bought on Ghentaudio

Custom DC-GAC4 Gotham GAC-4/1 11301 UltraPro DC(JSSG360)

Length: lm, GX16-4(1/2+, 3/4-) female to DC(7.4/5.0) male

I need to move the linear power supply and the cable should be 1.70 M 

or 5.57 feet 

the cable must be imperatively shielded to avoid the antenna effect and I wish a better product than Gotham and use a quad version JSSG360 in the Swenson way

it will be a D.I.Y cable

or a 
V-Quad Cu21 cable
VH Audio V-Quad cable
Cu21 cable but is it shielded enough ?

or Neotech UPOCC 7N Copper 18AWG Hi-End DC(JSSG360)

where can I get it?

thank you for your feedback

cpasmoi 😀

 

[Smaragdhk]

I can highly recommend the NeoTech route.

Having made many cables myself with  NeoTech raw cable…

You don’t need to look to far:

www.Audiophonics.fr

 

[JBL]

Made several starquad DC power cords for my Farad Super3 LPS's.  Used VH Audio 18awg solid core OCC wire with Airlok, Oyaide 2.5mm plugs, OEM Japanese GX16-4 plugs, and Cardas Eutectic solder. 

 

New cables sound amazing.  Bigger, deeper soundstage, increased dynamics, deeper bass, increased detail,and smoother tonal balance across the frequency range.  Percussions sound incredible now.  Tons of attack and dynamics. 

 

Made a couple more for a friend who also uses a couple of Farad's in his system.  Same results and then some.  Made XLR version for his Audiophool modded Meraki switch and matching power supply.  Transparency of sound and microdetails also improved significantly to where even his wife noticed the difference easily.

 

During the process of making the cables, I came up with a simple jig for twisting the cables. I took a 2"x2" piece of delrin I had laying around and drill 4 holes about 1" apart.  Countersunk the holes so the wire insulation wouldn't catch the edge of the holes.  Using the jig made twisting the solid core wire 10x easier.  Probably not an issue with stranded wire but twisting the solid core wire by hand was quite difficult.

 

Stock power cord from Farad is a 4x22awg tinned copper in starquad with braided and PE insulation. 

 

Since the stock cord was already starquad and shielded, my guess is that using a heavier gauge solid core OCC wire in a teflon jacket is what yielded the improvement.  YMMV.

 

 

 

[JohnSwenson]

34 minutes ago, JBL said:

Made several starquad DC power cords for my Farad Super3 LPS's.  Used VH Audio 18awg solid core OCC wire with Airlok, Oyaide 2.5mm plugs, OEM Japanese GX16-4 plugs, and Cardas Eutectic solder. 

 

New cables sound amazing.  Bigger, deeper soundstage, increased dynamics, deeper bass, increased detail,and smoother tonal balance across the frequency range.  Percussions sound incredible now.  Tons of attack and dynamics. 

 

Made a couple more for a friend who also uses a couple of Farad's in his system.  Same results and then some.  Made XLR version for his Audiophool modded Meraki switch and matching power supply.  Transparency of sound and microdetails also improved significantly to where even his wife noticed the difference easily.

 

During the process of making the cables, I came up with a simple jig for twisting the cables. I took a 2"x2" piece of delrin I had laying around and drill 4 holes about 1" apart.  Countersunk the holes so the wire insulation wouldn't catch the edge of the holes.  Using the jig made twisting the solid core wire 10x easier.  Probably not an issue with stranded wire but twisting the solid core wire by hand was quite difficult.

 

Stock power cord from Farad is a 4x22awg tinned copper in starquad with braided and PE insulation. 

 

Since the stock cord was already starquad and shielded, my guess is that using a heavier gauge solid core OCC wire in a teflon jacket is what yielded the improvement.  YMMV.

 

 

 

As I have been saying for years, the two most important parts of DC cables are geometry and dielectric. Star quad is one of the best geometries and Teflon is probably the best dielectric. (vacuum is the best but a little difficult to manufacture). So you hit the nail on the head.

 

For some reason a lot of people don't think DC cables can make much difference since they think it is just DC, but DC cables for digital audio device have massive load current swings that can be very high frequency, this puts severe strain on the DC cable.

 

John S.

[JBL]

Hi John,

 

Could there be any advantage to using multiple runs of smaller gauge and doing a double starquad geometry?  I.e. 4x24awg of the VH Audio solid core wire into starquad.  Then take 4 of those 4x24awg and put into another starquad.  Combined wire gauge remains the same vs 4x18awg so would doubling up on the starquad offer any additional benefits?

 

 

JBL