brad225
Well-known member
- Thread Author
- #1
My question for this thread is whether any of you have used any Fiber Optic of 5-10 Meters in your system?
When I built my listening room I had always wanted to eliminate the front end equipment from being at the speaker end of the room. This was from both a visual as well as convenience of access.
The drawback to that was even though I had run 1" PVC conduit under the floor to make a clean cable run from pre-amp to amps it was an 8 meter cable for each channel.
I originally installed an older version of Shunyata XLR interconnects.
A few years ago, I decided I wanted to try something different so I found a good deal on a bulk purchase of a Carver OCC cable and
Gold Neutrik XLRs and built cables. I was happier with the DIY so I sold all of my Shunyata and built a second 1.5 M pair for between my DAC and pre-amp.
I discovered recently that the wires in the DIY are probably much smaller than they should be. So, have decided to take another run at DIY interconnects to see what a different design and length might sound like.
I started with, figuring out how to shorten the interconnects to less than 2 M. The plan would require obviously moving the Preamp with power supply and DAC, at a minimum to the front of the room. My plan is, I don't want anything to be setting on more than a base platform on spikes keeping it low to the ground.
The Pre has a remote so that is not an issue. The DAC has a remote but putting in a disc will be a requirement of physical effort. I can certainly live with that for now, when I play one.
My next decision was, which cable I would make cover the distance from the old location and new. The options were often the usual besides an interconnect.
It could be Coaxial, Ethernet, USB or Fiber Optic. My hope was that the Fiber between the PlayBack Designs Stream-IF, that takes a USB signal, relocks and processes it and the DAC, was it.
Part of the process, is to allow a signal upsampled by Roon to 4XDSD and convert it to Fiber Optic and send to my PlayBack Designs DAC.
With the Fiber in the process I reached out to Playback Designs to ask about which cable to extend. The response was definitely Fiber.
The good part of that is that a duplex TrippLite 10 M cable is only $34. TrippLight is the same cable that came with the equipment.
Hopefully this weekend I will start the new cables.
They will be 18Ga OCC copper in teflon. It will be twisted in a Quadstar configuration. Then wrapped with a heavy cotton tape. After that a copper braided shield, then another covering of the cotton tape. That will either be placed inside inside of braided nylon sleeve or flexible heat shrink tubing. The previous Neutrik XLRs will be reused.
I will let you know if I hear anything different.
When I built my listening room I had always wanted to eliminate the front end equipment from being at the speaker end of the room. This was from both a visual as well as convenience of access.
The drawback to that was even though I had run 1" PVC conduit under the floor to make a clean cable run from pre-amp to amps it was an 8 meter cable for each channel.
I originally installed an older version of Shunyata XLR interconnects.
A few years ago, I decided I wanted to try something different so I found a good deal on a bulk purchase of a Carver OCC cable and
Gold Neutrik XLRs and built cables. I was happier with the DIY so I sold all of my Shunyata and built a second 1.5 M pair for between my DAC and pre-amp.
I discovered recently that the wires in the DIY are probably much smaller than they should be. So, have decided to take another run at DIY interconnects to see what a different design and length might sound like.
I started with, figuring out how to shorten the interconnects to less than 2 M. The plan would require obviously moving the Preamp with power supply and DAC, at a minimum to the front of the room. My plan is, I don't want anything to be setting on more than a base platform on spikes keeping it low to the ground.
The Pre has a remote so that is not an issue. The DAC has a remote but putting in a disc will be a requirement of physical effort. I can certainly live with that for now, when I play one.
My next decision was, which cable I would make cover the distance from the old location and new. The options were often the usual besides an interconnect.
It could be Coaxial, Ethernet, USB or Fiber Optic. My hope was that the Fiber between the PlayBack Designs Stream-IF, that takes a USB signal, relocks and processes it and the DAC, was it.
Part of the process, is to allow a signal upsampled by Roon to 4XDSD and convert it to Fiber Optic and send to my PlayBack Designs DAC.
With the Fiber in the process I reached out to Playback Designs to ask about which cable to extend. The response was definitely Fiber.
The good part of that is that a duplex TrippLite 10 M cable is only $34. TrippLight is the same cable that came with the equipment.
Hopefully this weekend I will start the new cables.
They will be 18Ga OCC copper in teflon. It will be twisted in a Quadstar configuration. Then wrapped with a heavy cotton tape. After that a copper braided shield, then another covering of the cotton tape. That will either be placed inside inside of braided nylon sleeve or flexible heat shrink tubing. The previous Neutrik XLRs will be reused.
I will let you know if I hear anything different.