Recipe for a DAC ...did you say a duck ?

Recipe for a DAC Cable........................did you say a duck cable?

Well as we stat to turn our thought to those long winter night. I thought what little project can I provide to lighten those dull moments.

The L'Argent Canard Link

Recipe for Duck

Take one duck .......
This come about one day when I'd mislaided my dedicated 75ohm digital cable, the nearest to hand was a silver twisted pair with cheap RCA's [25p each]. Well suprised at the improved performance I checked all the usual suspect and finally came to the conclusion it was the cable. This by the simple expedient of replacing tit with the Digital cable I had now found.

Ingredients

2 x 0.8mm PTFE sleeving 0.7mm dia[internal]
2 X 0.8mm [4n/99.99% purity] Fine silver wire
2 x RCA plugs
insulation tape
2 x clamps or a vice
soldering iron
silver loaded epoxy [optional]
Expandable Woven braid [optional]
Multimeter
Ten minute

First sleeve the silver wire in the PTFE.
Clamp sleeve and wire to table or bench and clamp the free end [to make a handle].
Using the handle twist the wire to get about 6 - 8 twists per inch.
As you release the pressure the number of twists unwind to about 5 per inch.
Tape one wire and use the multimeter to locate its other end, tape again.
Solder or epoxy RCA plugs in place.

Place on a cable cooker* for 2-3 hours till tender.

Substitute the Canard for you normal digital link and be somewhat gobsmacked [well I was].


All of the ingredients are fairly commonly available, for a price.

If you have any difficulty in getting any of the bits at a reasonable price not more than £15. PM me and I'll see what I can do.

A Kit is now available from me

Zanash's Patent cable cooker....see another post.

 

Why is no one intrested in this ?

 

What sort of level would you comparatively, place this cable at? I'm currently using an IXOS £35 (I think) coax. Seems ok, but i've not compared it against anything else.

 

Well thats not an easy question to answer.

But its the best I've heard, bought or diy.

Significantly better than the purpose built 75ohm jobie....leagues better than the silver plated copper coax. Much better than an offering from A&R


Though I've not heard every cable by a long way. I would hope it could hold its own with cables upto £100. As adding a nought on is the normal commecial mark over the basic material cost IMO. The £15 cost is with basic RCA plugs, exotic plugs are costed as extras.

If you want to have a listen pm me!

 

Just found this thread

Where can I buy
2 x 0.8mm PTFE sleeving 0.7mm dia[internal]
and
2 X 0.8mm [4n/99.99% purity] Fine silver wire

Any thoughts on the idea of using different dia wires?
Say by using three dias. Twisting two lengths of same dia togeteher as pairs and then plaiting the three into a single cable.

 

pm me !

 

So how do you get 0.8mm diameter wire in 0.7mm internal diameter PTFE sleeving then? Sounds at the very least this is going to be a very tight fit and somewhat of a nightmare to sleeve any useful length?

 

Martin, i suspect the PTFE sleeve dimension is the internal diameter, the silver wire dimension is the cross sectional area.