Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Cables

Jack,

Do the Dayton's tips have that thread that "flexes" to fit inputs better? My cables have a hard time fitting on some of my inputs. When my dad bought his PSB sub, the dealer threw in a subwoofer cable made by Silversonic. My dad didn't need the cable so he gave it to me and I love the tips. They seem to adjust to the input for a perfect fit. Is what I'm saying making sense?

Ajax,

For the cables between your amp and preamp would you be using 5 (if 5.1) of these:

Coax

And on another note, can someone tell me how to get the link to stop going to the next line!
Thanks!

In reply to:

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Do the Dayton's tips have that thread that "flexes" to fit inputs better?

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They don't flex, but I've never had any trouble getting them on or off. They do fit snugly, but you want that. I've had other cables (AR?) that REALLY gave me problems getting them on and off.

In reply to:

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For the cables between your amp and preamp would you be using 5 (if 5.1) of these?

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I don't have separates so I'm not real knowledgeable about this. Those are labeled "digital" audio cables. It is my belief, that being labeled "digital" doesn't make any difference so you could use them between your pre/pro and your amp. But, wait until somebody a bit more knowledgeable confirms or denies that.

If you really want to get fancy, you could use these from BlueJeans cable. They are a little less than double the price for a 6 foot, 5-channel cable, but they sure are slick. If you can make do with a shorter length, they also come in lengths of 2 ft., 3 ft., 4 ft., and 5 ft., which are a little cheaper.

Owen, welcome. Particularly as a student with a limited budget(which I can remember)you should minimize what you spend on wires to connect your components. The best minimization would be to zero by using what you already have, wherever possible. Don't worry about banana plugs or any other connectors for the speaker wire; the bare wire is fine unless you're going to be frequently connecting and disconnecting the speakers. As for the speaker wire itself, regular 16ga lampcord which you might already have or can get very inexpensively works as well as anything else up to 30 feet or so.

Next, you don't have to worry about the ambient noise in your apartment cancelling out the gains from expensive connecting cables because there aren't any gains to cancel out. The requirement is for a wire with an RCA connector on each end; until the length would get longer than about 40 feet or there would be some unusually heavy interference that called for extra shielding the usual inexpensive "RCA" type(RCA actually refers to the connectors rather than the cable itself)cable works well for both the sub cable and other connections. This was discussed in more detail in a reply of mine a few days ago by Steve Lampen, Belden Cable engineer. Search his name on the board and read his comments and the other matters that I linked.

The cable you have with the yellow connectors is a 75ohm coaxial cable; the other two(usually red and white)commonly aren't 75ohms, but this makes no significant difference for the wavelengths and distances involved. Any of them are usable.

Huff, the Dayton cables from Parts Express are excellent and have a relatively moderate price; certainly no more than that should be spent. Note however that the five connects between a pre and an amp just carry analog signals a few feet and don't have to be "digital"( strictly speaking there is no such thing, since any reasonably conductive metal can carry both analog and digital information), so an even less expensive cable such as this is suitable, although of course, shipping charges wouldn't make a small buy cost-effective.

Alright, now that we have all this stuff cleared up (and, after learning YET AGAIN that as a newbie on a message board you should SEARCH for the answers to your questions because they have probably been asked before -- although I haven't seen any flames for this yet) I have one more question.

Anyone here know of a good way to hide cables? I plan to wall-mount my surrounds and I do not think that my girlfriend will like the idea of having 20 odd feet of wires snaking up the living room walls. Any one know a way to hide the wires in this case? is it worth getting the more expensive Monster Navajo wires with the white jackets so that they blend in with the white walls? Any other cheaper cables that are white that anyone knows about?

Well, thank you for the welcome and the advice. I think I will go with bananna plugs for the receiver connection because the way the terminals work is such that it is a pain to connect the bottom -ve wire and I think that the $10 I will spend on plugs is worth the inconvenience.

If you can, try running the wire along the baseboard and then up through the wall. If you rent or don't have the time and or skill to risk holes then you can buy flat wire that will stick to the wall and can be painted over. Wire Mold is another option. You can browse PartsExpress for the tools and materials needed for this type of work. I ran most of my wire through the walls, I was lucky to have all of the fish tapes, pull sticks and special drill bits to complete the project.

feel free to PM me if you have any questions.

Tom

I bought some excellent wire from Accessories4Less. It's flat, navajo white wire, no adhesive. They also sell adhesive tape to go under it that doesn't screw up the paint on the wall. Just make sure they send you the right cable; they also have adhesive backed "cable" that's pretty much two flat pieces of copper in between two pieces of tape. Looks horrid, and tears off your paint. They sent me this one by accident, and it took me a couple of days to figure that out. When I called them, they sent me the right stuff free, and said I didn't have to ship back the wrong stuff.

Anyway, my surround wires are almost invisible; I could have done a slightly better job and made them even more invisible.

They're routed up the coreners and along the ceiling corner out to the QS4s.

I agree. Ken's surround cables are very well hidden, even though they're in plain sight.