DIY Cross-connected Coaxial Speaker Cables

[Jazzman53]

I use these DIY cross-connected coaxial speaker cables to drive my ESL's. The Teflon jacketed Belden coax cable is rather pricey but the performance is quite impressive.

A quote from the cable designer, Jon Risch:

“Cross-connection is used to reduce the inductance to an absolute minimum. Merely paralleling the center wire and shield would create two separated different polarity composite conductors with an inductance much higher than the cross-connected pair.”

 

[JonFo]

Thanks for sharing, might go ahead and make some up for the three front panels, all of which are direct drive to the amps (no passive X-over).

 

[Jazzman53]

You can buy that Belden cable by the foot HERE

 

[Speedskater]

At audio frequencies and loudspeaker voltage levels, the cable dielectric doesn't matter at all. Now for small voltages, long cables and 100 MHz signals the dielectric matters a lot.

 

[Jazzman53]

At audio frequencies and loudspeaker voltage levels, the cable dielectric doesn't matter at all. Now for small voltages, long cables and 100 MHz signals the dielectric matters a lot.

Hi Speedskater,
Are you referring to the Teflon jacket? For someone like myself with quite limited knowledge in this field, I figured the designer (Jon Risch) chose the higher priced Teflon jacketed cable because it performed better (i.e... provided lower inductance for the coupled cable pair). I imagined the better insulator would allow less coupling between cables; giving less inductance at the cost of adding to the capacitance. If you have a different take on that, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on it.

 

[Speedskater]

He chose Teflon for audiophile reasons, there are no good engineering reasons for doing so.

Also there are no good engineering reasons for making a cable like this.

Yes for better high frequency response, you want less loop inductance.
Thinner insulation like Teflon sometimes is, allows the conductors to be closer together in a twisted pair or twisted quad.

You should stop reading people like Jon Risch. They just add to the confusion and misunderstandings.