While every bit of mass reduction might help, I’d look to the quality of the tonearm itself before I’d change up wires to the cartridge. And as @Torq points out, more of a concern with moving coil’s very low voltages than with higher-output moving magnet designs.
I remember, in my distant youth, riding and looking at bicycles. Lots of marketing for weight reduction in tubing and other components. Taking 20 lbs off of the rider would mean much more…
Hi @Torq, do you know if there is any (audible) difference between Oyaide and Furutech connectors (that are, afaik, in the same price range) and a Neutrik connector? I got the impression that Oyaide and Furutech are the best. Is that so? Or would you say it doesn’t matter and the Neutrik is as good as the other two?
I don’t really think there are any audible differences between one properly designed and built (i.e. appropriate materials and gauge for the signal being carried) connector and another, regardless of brand.
To the extent that people do hear differences in such things, I would say it is almost certainly down to expectation bias.
This is not to say, however, that different connectors (or wire, or finished cables) don’t have different electrical characteristics (resistance, capacitance, internal reflections/structure)!
They certainly do.
Though you need fairly specialized (and extremely expensive) equipment and techniques to measure those differences. It’s not something you can do with a standard multimeter or audio analyzer (even the high-end ones … they’re built for a different task).
But even so, the effects of these differences in electrical characteristics don’t tend to show up at audio frequencies at all. And the mechanisms those different characteristics have to change sound, i.e. altering impedance or capacitance (which with dynamic headphones can form an LC filter in conjunction with the coil, that would affect frequency response) require much larger changes in value to be material anyway.
Now, saying one connector “is as good as another” depends how you define “good”. For audibility-purposes, yeah, there’s probably nothing in it. But there are many other practical factors when choosing connectors, even beyond their electrical characteristics … and those are generally what drives which connector or brand you choose … even if sometimes it’s just how they assemble and aesthetics.
Just another short question, which probably needs a long answer (which I am very thankful for):
So what about the differences in 4-wire cable types (made out of 4 conductors) and 8-wire cables (made out of 8 conductors)? Is the 8-wire the “better sounding” one. I guess the ergonomics of the 4 wire is better, but if I would need the best resolution (if that is even possible), then I guess an 8-wire is the better solution?
It’s impossible to say without comparing specific cables.
There’s no general rule that applies here as to whether 4 or 8 conductors is better excepting that, all other things being equal, an 8 conductor cable would have:
Three primary variables are at work with the wire part of a cable:
Lower gauge (fatter wire) has less resistance:
If you had a 4-conductor cable, that’s one conductor per phase (+/-) per channel. If the conductor itself was 24 gauge, then all other things being equal an 8-conductor cable (two conductors per phase/per channel) would have half the resistance of the 4-conductor version. If the 8-conductor cable was made using 26 gauge cable, which is thinner and more flexible, then it’d have an effective gauge of 23 and still have less resistance than the 4-conductor cable.
Different metals conduct better/worse:
Some metals conduct better than others. For example, silver has lower resistance than copper, high-purity/OFC copper has lower resistance than normal copper, copper has lower resistance than aluminum etc. The resistance differences here are dwarfed by those resulting from simply using a different thickness of wire.
And bear in mind, in both of the above cases, we’re talking about very low resistance values to begin with. So while lower resistance is BETTER … a typical headphone cable might have 1-2 ohms of total resistance end-to-end. This isn’t particularly relevant with most headphones (it’s a non-issue for anything planar and for anything over about 20 ohms impedance - which is almost every non-IEM transducer available).
Capacitance is primarily a function of how much insulated surface area a wire has. If you double the number of insulated conductors, you double the capacitance. If you double the length of a given insulated conductor, you double the capacitance. So, if using the same conductors for both, an 8-conductor cable would have higher capacitance than a 4-conductor cable.
For practical purposes stranded (most headphone wire) and solid-core cables of the same circumference have the same capacitance (since in conventional stranded wires, the individual strands are not insulated from each other and they effectively act like a single conductor at audio frequencies).
True Litz-stranded conductors have all the individual strands in each wire individually insulated, so will generally exhibit higher capacitance (due to a higher insulated surface area) than a single strand of equivalent gauge.
This refers to both the internal arrangement of an individual conductor, as well as the overall arrangement of all the conductors. And by “arrangement” I mean how they are wound/twisted/interleaved/braided etc.
In general, this affects how much electrical noise/interference is rejected or attenuated, and what potential for signals for one channel or phase have to effect others.
Straight wire runs have no practical noise rejection. Twisted pairs have some. Star-quad has excellent rejection characteristics. And then adding shielding (assuming it is done properly) can further improve this. A fair amount of precision (usually involving spacers, binders and so on to maintain) is required to make noise-rejecting geometries consistent enough to work, especially as the cable twists or bends.
Some braided cables are done in a manner that effectively gives you one of the above (or other) noise-rejecting geometries. And some have no useful electrical benefit and are more about aesthetics (nothing wrong with that, as long as not claiming otherwise).
From a practical perspective, the signal levels involved in a headphone cable, are too small to have a meaningful level of induced crosstalk. And the value of noise-rejection is rather limited unless you’re in a highly polluted environment or are running cables around/across other gear/cables that ARE carrying lots of power (e.g. lighting packs/controllers). This is rarely the case (especially for home use).
All of the above effects are 100% measurable and well documented (in fact wire/cable is usually sold with specifications for resistance, capacitance - and for cables noise rejection - at different lengths). They become much more relevant with bigger signals, longer cable runs, and higher frequencies.
Wow, now I knew you wouldn’t write a short answer, but I didn’t expect such a detailed answer. As always: thank you very much!
Dear Sir,
I want to build focal utopia cable. I want to know the polarity of 2 pin lemo connector. Kindly help me out.
Pin 1 is Signal, Pin 2 is ground, based on that diagram.
This is marked on the side of the Utopia headphones/connectors themselves if you look at them. It’s also a 10 second job to pin-out with a multi-meter.
Thank you so much for your help . 
Hello and welcome @varma .
So, I’ve had my hd650 for over a decade, and I’ve lived with the stock 1/4" cable this whole time.
I’ll wait for the gasps to end…
Deciding to remedy this, I figured I’d build one. Here goes…
First order of business, strip the jacket off the Canare 4E6S cable. Then I put a bit of heat shrink on the end, keeping the metal shielding in place. Then it’s just a matter of putting black Paracord over it… 2 mm at a time because it barely fits… until the whole thing is sleeved.
I stripped the metal shielding off the last 18" of it, removed the paper and strings, then peel 2 of the wires out.
Put on the Y splitter, Paracord for the 2 ends, heatshrink where needed, and that’s done.
I tin the end, and solder on the plugs.
These are a right proper bastards to solder. Even with my smallest soldering iron tip, I still managed to melt a bit of the plastic. Using a super small tip also means bad heat transfer, so it was an exercise in patience getting the wire and solder pots to temp and the solder to flow. Mini XLR are a breeze compared to these.
Giving each wire a gentle tug indicated they are fastened in pretty solid. They tone out just fine on the multimeter and show nearly 0ohm for each connection.
And now, to fill it with hot glue and shrink wrap it.
… Where the hell did my glue gun go? Damnit. Ok, so I’ll go to the store and get another hot glue gun. Tomorrow.
But, I can get the male 4 pin XLR plug on in the mean time.
$$$$ Reserved for the rest of the build $$$$
Damn fine job sir!
I was sweating along there with you for a while. Great job. And thanks for the heads up on how to get along.
thank you for taking us with you
What a fantastic thread!
I remember @Resolve talking about potentially creating a “how to” video (or video series) in cable building.
I would love this and I think this thread should be linked to the video.
So many talented builders on here. 
Agreed
Any folk here consider making a Verite cable for me?
Some in this thread look as good as it gets!
I’ll be doing one last round of cable builds before I pack up all of the necessary gear.
Just be aware that ZMF’s own upgrade cables are gorgeous and significantly less expensive than mine (partly because it isn’t DIY if someone else is building it for you), and that my stuff really only makes sense if you want the modular system I offer.
Well that system is just a whole lot of cool. Very very nice.
Whilst I’d love that, if the ZMF cables are a touch above my price range, yours will be too!
