ISO Regen performance Improvement Cheap!

[charlesphoto]

I had an IBRA and then returned it. Wasn’t anything that special or different compared to what I had on hand (the Monoprice, Teragrand, AQ Cinnamon, etc). I think these were picked out of a hat solely because of their availability on Amazon. Lots of Cat 7 to choose from out there. So having compared the monoprice with the IBRA when I had a poE I think I have a pretty good idea of how to gauge the Supra. 

[wushuliu]

16 minutes ago, charlesphoto said:

I had an IBRA and then returned it. Wasn’t anything that special or different compared to what I had on hand (the Monoprice, Teragrand, AQ Cinnamon, etc). I think these were picked out of a hat solely because of their availability on Amazon. Lots of Cat 7 to choose from out there. So having compared the monoprice with the IBRA when I had a poE I think I have a pretty good idea of how to gauge the Supra. 

 

I didn't see you mention having used any of those in this application, only the Monoprice.

[charlesphoto]

Oh, sorry, thought I did way up. Returned the IBRA and accidentally wrecked the poE adapter. Then thought why not just the cable to dc barrel connector. I like to work with what I have on hand. Just tinned the leads of another monoprice and better yet. Tighter bass. Will change subtly as it burns in. When the LT3405 gets here I’ll just do a dc connector straight in to the LPS-1 on one side and Cat 7/8 cable out the other to the microRendu. 

[lmitche]

38 minutes ago, charlesphoto said:

Oh, sorry, thought I did way up. Returned the IBRA and accidentally wrecked the poE adapter. Then thought why not just the cable to dc barrel connector. I like to work with what I have on hand. Just tinned the leads of another monoprice and better yet. Tighter bass. Will change subtly as it burns in. When the LT3405 gets here I’ll just do a dc connector straight in to the LPS-1 on one side and Cat 7/8 cable out the other to the microRendu. 

Charles, what sounds better, 4 conductors in star quad or 8 conductors in dual star quad?

[charlesphoto]

Turns out the ebay Supra seller lives in the neighborhood so he dropped  the meter of CAT8 on my porch. Fabbed up a cable and... HOLY SMOKES! Now this is more like it. Just took the system sound to another level. Everything sounds so right and natural. I use Ahmad Jamal’s Ahamad’s Blues as a test track, and the long run of high piano notes in the beginning are now totally discernible, and not at all grating. Bass is big but defined. Timbre amazing and not at all muffled or strangled sounding. Incredible. So it says to me it’s the cable geometry at play, and quality does make a difference. 

 

I have it wired brown and orange and their white counterparts as hot, and the blue and green and their white counterparts as neutral. I may rewire one connector sometime as the orange on one side wouldn’t strip right and is hanging on by a thread. The outer casing is very stiff and hard to remove, and the insides very tightly wound. The wire isn’t any thicker than the generics, but one can tell it’s of higher quality. 

 

Man this sounds good! Listening to Thelonious’ Japanese Folk Song now. Like the players are in the room! 

[bit01]

@charlesphoto - using the pic below (from another post) is it possible to please to specify the +ve /-ve wires by pin #s, and also the length of your cable?

Thanks

 

[charlesphoto]

1,8 and their white twins (dotted lines, 1,7) to +, and 4,6 (3,5) to -. I’m sure there’s other ways to do it; no idea if it would sound different, or by how much. I just like to remember what’s hot and what’s cool by color. One meter total. 

 

Sounds so good. Dangerous having a Supra distributor in the neighborhood...

[charlesphoto]

Still sitting here listening, jaw dropped. I would just go for a length of Supra CAT8 ($9.00 per meter) and some barrel screw connectors and forget about all the injector dongle b.s. Definitely found the missing link for my system. Something was more right with the cheap cat 7 vs the Canare starquad but still off. The Supra hits on all cylinders. 

[bit01]

23 minutes ago, charlesphoto said:

Still sitting here listening, jaw dropped. I would just go for a length of Supra CAT8 ($9.00 per meter) and some barrel screw connectors and forget about all the injector dongle b.s. Definitely found the missing link for my system. Something was more right with the cheap cat 7 vs the Canare starquad but still off. The Supra hits on all cylinders. 

I ordered some! If I understand this right , you are using all the twisted pairs but the shields are floating (not connected) on either end: 1,2 + 7,8 for +ve and the rest for -ve?

The cable is 1 meter long?

Thanks.

[charlesphoto]

Correct, into DC male barrel screw connectors. 

 

 

[AnotherSpin]

3 hours ago, charlesphoto said:

Correct, into DC male barrel screw connectors. 

 

 

 

Thank you for Supra report, I am thinking about ordering it together with barrel screw connectors. Would you be more specific about attaching cable wires/shielding to connector? Maybe you can post a pic?

[Cornan]

6 hours ago, charlesphoto said:

Turns out the ebay Supra seller lives in the neighborhood so he dropped  the meter of CAT8 on my porch. Fabbed up a cable and... HOLY SMOKES! Now this is more like it. Just took the system sound to another level. Everything sounds so right and natural. I use Ahmad Jamal’s Ahamad’s Blues as a test track, and the long run of high piano notes in the beginning are now totally discernible, and not at all grating. Bass is big but defined. Timbre amazing and not at all muffled or strangled sounding. Incredible. So it says to me it’s the cable geometry at play, and quality does make a difference. 

 

I have it wired brown and orange and their white counterparts as hot, and the blue and green and their white counterparts as neutral. I may rewire one connector sometime as the orange on one side wouldn’t strip right and is hanging on by a thread. The outer casing is very stiff and hard to remove, and the insides very tightly wound. The wire isn’t any thicker than the generics, but one can tell it’s of higher quality. 

 

Man this sounds good! Listening to Thelonious’ Japanese Folk Song now. Like the players are in the room! 

 

Great report Charles!

Looks like my Supra Cat 7+ project have just changed to a Supra Cat 8 one. They are much easier to work with than the stiff Cat7+. A pity that I gave my Cat 8 ethernet cable away to my younger brother when Ghent ET02 improved upon it on the Aqvox ethernet side. Luckily I live in the land of Supra and almost any hifi- or home cinema dealer around have them in stock. 

[wushuliu]

6 hours ago, charlesphoto said:

Turns out the ebay Supra seller lives in the neighborhood so he dropped  the meter of CAT8 on my porch.

 

Mine arrived today as well. Thanks for the quick report. Sounds promising.

[Cornan]

5 meter Supra Cat 8 on order. Expecting delivery tommorrow. If anyone finds the optimal wire configuration with the Cat 8 I am very interested to know about it!  

[wushuliu]

Here are the specs for the Supra:

Technical Info

Cable design

Cable	4 pair, Cat 8 S/STP PIMF
Lead area	0.23 / 26	mm2 / AWG
Number of strands	7	pieces
Lead material	Bright drawn oxygen-free 5N copper
Insulation	Air-injected, low capacitance PE
Inner shield	Aluminium foil
Outer shield	Tin plated, oxygen-free 5N copper braid
Jacket	PE (FRHF)
Outer dimension	Ø 6	mm
Flame retardancy	Yes

Electrical performance

Resistance	145	Ohm / km
Capacitance	43	pF / m
Bandwidth	2,000	MHz
Skew @ 100 MHz	5 / 100	ns / m
Impedance	100	Ohm
Velocity factor	0.8x	C (speed of light)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Internal geometry doesn't seem all that different from the other round cables. However, one aspect to be considered is twist rate. The twist rate increases from Cat5 to Cat6 and presumably Cat7 and Cat8 in order to reach specified bandwidth:

 

"The twist rate (also called pitch of the twist, usually defined in twists per metre) makes up part of the specification for a given type of cable. The greater the number of twists, the greater the attenuation of crosstalk. Where pairs are not twisted, as in most residential interior telephone wiring, one member of the pair may be closer to the source than the other, and thus exposed to slightly different induced EMF.

Where twist rates are equal, the same conductors of different pairs may repeatedly lie next to each other, partially undoing the benefits of differential mode. For this reason it is commonly specified that, at least for cables containing small numbers of pairs, the twist rates must differ."

 

Evidently the twist rate is unique from manufacturer to manufacturer and since Cat7 is so new, who knows what some of these companies are doing.

 

I came across a pretty interesting discussion here:

 

"There is no spec, on what pairs have a specific twist rate. A minimum twist rate is implied by the noise immunity required to meet the specification of the entire cable. But the rates on the individual pairs is manufacturer specific, and not dictated by the networking specifications. The networking specifications don't specify how the wire manufacturers perform the desired specs, they only specify what requirements are in place... dB of rejection on adjacent pairs, dB of rejection of adjacent cable, etc.

Note that using a pair with a higher twist rate will give a higher noise immunity, but this does not necessarily result in a better picture when using balun's. This is because the higher twist rate also results in a higher capacitance for that pair. This can be modeled as each strand of the cable being a series string of low valued resistors, and the node between each resistor having a capacitor connected from one conductor to the other. (Looks like a ladder, with the sides being resistors, and the rungs being capacitors.)

This model is a low pass filter! Above the corner frequency of the RC filter formed by the resistance of the conductor, and the capacitance of the twist, the cable looks like a short to high frequencies. So this twist reduces susceptibility to noise, but does so at the expense of bandwidth. These cables carefully balance the resistance, and capacitance in an effort to provide noise immunity while preserving as much bandwidth as possible, while keeping manufacturing cost reasonable. Like many things in life, this is a balance, and the best overall result is achieved by carefully balancing the behaviour, weighting the factors for what is typically seen in real applications."

 

TL;DR - Twist rate increases as you go up, however it is manufacturer specific the exact rate and *which pairs* get what rate. Already I see reviews on Amazon of cables opened where the twist rate was not optimal. So this is a factor that could tie in the variation in results but nevertheless consistent as we go higher and higher (based on what we know so far).

[mtruong34]

@wushuliu that's very interesting. So does it seem for our DC cable application, the best would be highest twist rate for all pairs since we are not really concerned about bandwidth?

[lmitche]

Great to see the commmunity here pull together and get to the heart of this phenomenon through critical thinking and shared experience.

 

Really terrific!

 

Larry

 

 

[lmitche]

Here is a cable I’ve been experimenting with for a few months.  Tough to work but sounds great! It’s called Gotham Audio GAC 4 Ultra Pro Quad.

 

[pas]

7 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Here is a cable I’ve been experimenting with for a few months.  Tough to work but sounds great! It’s called Gotham Audio GAC 4 Ultra Pro Quad.

 

I use the Gotham GAC 4/1 for interconnects, terrific cables.

[lmitche]

34 minutes ago, pas said:

I use the Gotham GAC 4/1 for interconnects, terrific cables.

You can do JSSG with this cable by joining the inner and outer shields together at the endpoints, however care needs to be taken to avoid contact with the connectors.

 

This is not twisted pair, so I've ordered 5 meters of Supra Cat 8 to compare the two.

 

Ugh, it never stops!

[lmitche]

10 hours ago, charlesphoto said:

1,8 and their white twins (dotted lines, 1,7) to +, and 4,6 (3,5) to -. I’m sure there’s other ways to do it; no idea if it would sound different, or by how much. I just like to remember what’s hot and what’s cool by color. One meter total. 

 

Sounds so good. Dangerous having a Supra distributor in the neighborhood...

Charles many thanks for the detailed explanation.  How did you deal with the foil shielding at the endpoints?

[charlesphoto]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

Charles many thanks for the detailed explanation.  How did you deal with the foil shielding at the endpoints?

 

Cut it off.... (was there something else you’re supposed to do with it??)

 

A couple of other things I might try:

 

A very short cable. I could go nine inches from the micro to LPS-1. 

 

And twisting together all of the colored wires for +ve and the white wires for -ve. 

 

 

[charlesphoto]

7 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

Thank you for Supra report, I am thinking about ordering it together with barrel screw connectors. Would you be more specific about attaching cable wires/shielding to connector? Maybe you can post a pic?

 

Will try and post a pic later. But it’s very simple - cut off outer casing by a few inches (really hard to pull off), strip wires of shielding and then strip bare by an inch, twist together (I’ve posted the pattern I’ve done - there could be others - what’s most important is the same wires end up on the same side), insert =/- into their respective holders, screw down tight, and good to go. I didn’t monkey with the shield at all other than cutting it away to clean it up. I suppose I could try a JSSG as I have the solder iron laying around. 

[wushuliu]

Lol, Ebay Supra Cat8 stock almost depleted in less than 24hours.

[charlesphoto]

Okay, wired it up with the four colored wires to +ve and four whites to minus (first carefully marking the white with colored pens). Not the best job as done quickly before hauling the kids off to school and not starting with fresh twists. Verdict: still sounds very good, but for my gear and room the bass is bigger but not as controlled. Next step is to make a very short cable with my original arrangement. Will report back. 

 

Sounds like the local Supra distributer owes me a drink! I’ll have him by for a listen.