I think one of the most amusing things about my modular cable system has been the number of times I’ve seen people posting elsewhere speculating/asking others about the connectors I’m using (and so far all getting it completely wrong - not even getting the number of pins involved correct) vs. sending me a PM …
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Haha. Maybe they think you bite.
Neutrik NTP3 RC-B - the angled one
Hicon HI-J35S02 - the big one
SommerCable SC Stage 22 Highflex - 2m
Makes this:
The cable that rips your phone and headphone appart before it dies.
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hey Maze,
nice work! - I would prefer not to kill my headphone nor the source, and let the cable die, if something has to suffer 
now seriosly… do you plan to start a business with your builds?
I would order some headphone cables and interconnects next month
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I just DIY things every now and then.
Soldering is not difficult, unless you buy that specific Hicon connector, solder-points are sub-par for the price of the plug.
The cable is also WAY too massive for what it is, it just runs near the wheels of my office chair so I wanted something to survive a potential encounter.
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Nice thread! @Torq, I have long thought that creating a modular system for cables would be the ideal way to maximize materials and build time. New set of headphones with unique jacks? Just make the headphone end of the cable!
Here are a couple of builds that I have done. They’re not super fancy (you’ll note my heat shrink Y-splits :-), but really functional and I love the way they look and feel. Do they sound better? I think they do, but it could be DIY bias.
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A Sennheiser 600/650 balanced cable with cryo treated DCT milspec silver plated copper in teflon and paracord, Cardas HPSC connectors, Neutrik 4pin XLR. I made this with a long balanced-to-SE extension cable using Neutrik connectors at each end. Cardas Quad Eutectic solder used throughout.
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An Audeze/ZMF style balanced cable with Neotech cryo treated OCC in teflon and paracord. Rean 4pin minis and Neutrik 4 pin XLR. I made a shorty adapter with the same cable and Neutrik connectors on either end. Cardas Quad Eutectic solder used throughout.
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I am also including an image of my Elleven Acoustica Epsilon R1s that I built with wood cups from Elleven Acoustica, rodblocks and gimbals from Shipibo, and headband from Turbulent Labs. The connectors are Rean 4 pin minis. This is the fourth set of grado-style headphones that I have built and they are keepers (I have sold the others now). They’re very good. I am using the “Sunflower Mod” pads with them which are OEM L-Cush halfway over Senn 414 pads. The extra distance helps the staging without effecting the bass and also ensures my giant ears don’t touch the drivers.
I am planning to make a shorty portable cable for the Senns in the next while with some Mogami mini quad mic cable. I’ll post when I do.
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Hello Sir, I would like to connection of Hifiman Sundara Cable. Kindly help me out
Hello Sir, I would like to connection of Hifiman Sundara Cable. Kindly help me out.
You’ll have to Google it for yourself, as I don’t build HiFiMAN cables (nothing nefarious, just never been asked to). I do know they’ve used at least three different types of connector, though - so make sure you get the right connector type for the specific headphone.
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Those cables look are awesome! Great work.
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Thanks for your kind words, @raindownthunda . I had fun putting them together. The braid and paracord gives them a great look and feel. I have a few more projects in mind and will post them as I work.
@Torq, what connectors are you using between the ends and the “core” cable?
They’re part of the HiRose HR10 series.
There are many configurations, including whether you want plug or shell jackets on male or female connections, how the strain relief is done, materials and number of pins, so you should be able to find one that matches what you need.
I use a 12-pin connector on my system, which allows for things like dielectric biasing, active shielding and so on, in addition to the actual signal connections which, due to my cable geometry, requires four pins per channel.
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Thanks for the connector name, @Torq. Sorry for the late reply - things got busy here. I know these connectors well from film gear - they’re often used to connect power, run control signals for moco rigs etc. It’s a really great choice - they are tough as nails and I have never seen one fail. I will look into these for future builds. By your description, your cables sound very specifically tuned.
There is some EXCELLENT cable work in here! Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences and finished products. This is my first post on this forum, but I have a long history on other audio forums, like HeadFi and TDPRI.
I had a quick question related to a specific combination of adapter/plugs, involving 4-pin XLR and 4-pole 2.5mm TRRS
I am using Mogami Quad 2534 microphone cable, this has 4 conductors and the shield. Now my question is, should I double up two of the main conductors? (Since I have 5 wires and 4 places to put them). Or, should I ditch the shield connection and use one of the primary conductors connected to the body of the plug?
Right now I have doubled up two of the primary conductors and connected it to the bottom connection point (in the photo). When wiring it, I was kind of torn on which seemed best. Dropping the shield all together didn’t seem optimal to me. However, running one of the conductors with half the resistance as the others (Since they are in parallel when combined), also seemed less than ideal, haha.
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Just spent this weekend building my first two sets of DIY cables using Canare L-4E6S Quad mic Cable sleeved into 550 paracord. Sleeving was a lot of work, but once I got the hang of it I just went on autopilot mode. The hardest part for me was soldering the mini XLRs lol
Next, I want to try building a set that is similar to ZMF’s sexy cables w/ clear tubing (like ZMF 2k Cable). Does anyone know where I can source them for cheap? I just really like the aesthetics of it.
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@Torq is there an advantage of a gold plated silver occ cable in comparison to the same cable without the gold plating? Is there an audible or measurable difference? Do you have experience with gold plated cable?
Also there are those „fusion“ cables available, like 99% silver with 1%gold or palladium etc.
what do you think about those?
Gold is a poorer conductor than silver (or copper), so other than for tarnish resistance or cosmetics there’s not really a good electrical reason to plate a silver wire with gold. Enamels or gas-tight applications of other insulators (e.g. PTFE) achieve the same resistance to corrosion.
It won’t measurably affect impedance or capacitance at audio frequencies, since they’re too low to be particularly impacted by “skin effect”, but if they weren’t it’d be a degradation not an improvement.
Mixing other metals with silver would do a couple of things … again, for one, it’d increase resistance (very slightly if we’re talking 1% of the additional metal), but it’d also increase the number of crystal boundaries in the conductor, which is generally not desirable (not much reason to go all OCC or UPC/S if you’re then going to deliberately pollute the material in question).
Outside extreme cases with some IEMs, where even then the potential changes are tiny, I’d still say that copper vs silver wire doesn’t make any audible difference, and what’s needed to measure any differences is specialist and expensive equipment. Plating or minimal/exotic alloys would have even less of an effect.
Think about it another way … if silver, which is the best conductor, had a conductivity rating of 100 (higher is better), copper would be 97.6 or so, gold 76.6 and Palladium, as exotic as it sounds, comes in around 12.
Even most SPC is largely pointless. Partly due, again, to the fact that audio signals are high enough in frequency to travel on the skin of a conductor, and partly because most SPC is crap (average grades of not particularly OFC/OCC copper, cheaply plated with not-especially pure silver, done in massive quantities because there’s a current fad for it.
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I have a hard time believing that all these “science people” and their fancy facts actually know what metals sound best. For example:
I have my amplifier suspended above an acoustically blessed slab of amethyst crystals, which the Audiophile Monks of Northern Mongolia have meditated over for thousands of hours thereby imbuing it with ethereal sonic power. It’s a night and day difference in sound. It really helps my third eye hear better.
(Today’s dose of snarky sarcasm brought to you by the Coronavirus and quarantine induced cabin fever.)
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But were you fortunate enough to have these in your system?
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