DIY Cable Faceoff - Results and Conclusion

Speaker Cable Face Off II previously conducted by Audioholics provided a lot of meaningful information, but no clear idea of which was best. While we are waiting on Gene to finish his cable analysis in Face Off II, I thought I would assign ranking based on his measurements using my linear interpolation method. So, here before you, I give you my opinion on which of these cable is the best. Granted, my opinion is worth is weight in copper (I would have said gold, but the resistance is too high, definitely not silver as it tarnished too easily). All of those ranking numbers contained in tables 2-5 are put to use right now. But first let us discuss weight factors. I have measured three electrical parameters of each of these cables (Resistance, Inductance, Capacitance), and know from first hand experience how much each cable cost me to make. So now we (in the royal sense) decided which factors are the most important based on an educated estimation their impacts may have on system stability and frequency response variation. Under different circumstances, each parameter measured may rise in importance. For very long cable runs all three may be of equal importance, but I think we should just consider normal runs of less then thirty feet (since the longest cable I measured was 26 feet). Based on this, we assigned rankings for each metric with a certain weight function based on perceived importance. Therefore, Resistance is weighted at 41%, Inductance is weighted at 32%, Capacitance is weighted at 27%. These technical factors are weighted at 60% and Cost is weighted at 40%.

TABLE 6

MUDCATS CABLE FACE OFF FINAL RESULTS

Editorial Note
The 1-10 scale ranks the overall score of the cable regarding technical and final rankings. The lower the #, the better the cable scored with respect to the test criteria, where the technical ranking is based solely on performance and the Final ranking also factors in value.

For your continued enjoyment, I've included a table comparing all the cables I tested and all the cables from Audioholics two previous cable face-offs. If you do not like the results, change the weight factors.

TABLE 7 - Comparison of all Cables from the 3 Speaker Cable Face Offs

Editorial Note
The 1-10 scale ranks the overall score of the cable regarding technical and final rankings. The lower the #, the better the cable scored with respect to the test criteria, where the technical ranking is based solely on performance and the Final ranking also factors in value.

Conclusions

So, now that I went and did all this, who does it benefit? You I hope. For those with the most remote DIY capability, the path to a really thick, large diameter cable to impress the ego and neighbors, and performs as well as super high tech, expensive, snake oil laden (or even snake oil free), speaker cables is contained herein.

Hopefully, this will generate a lot of discussion, and I hope Mr. Escallier backs me up instead of insulting my mechanical engineering background. For my part, I think I'll try a blend of Cat 5 and the Sound King next.

P.S. Anybody want to buy some Monster MCX-1S speaker cables? I've got a couple of pairs to get rid of.

Audioholics would like to thank Thomas Goldsworthy for his Herculean efforts in writing this article, constructing the cables, and testing them. In future cable articles we will be implementing the Linear Interpolation method that Thomas established for ranking cables.