Marvey's Cable Rolling Adventures

Naming Brand is kinda like naming car brands Ford, Chevrolet, etc. Without knowing "which" wire you have people will be offering random generalities. Is it a Mustang or a Pinto. As for RCA connectors the Reans if they are the cheapest silver colored barrel ones ones sounded cheap in my DIY trials. Standard Switchcraft silver colored barrel ones that folks rec were much better but the sky is the limit on pricing for connectors.

All the companies you mention, though, make good wire if you pick it for the right cable. I made and purchased RCA cables out of some Mogami that was not so great and great ones out of other Mogami wire. Same with Canare and Belden, although those were with mini phone and phone respectively.

I'll try to find the Mogami wire I used for the really good sounding RCAs I eventually bought. Not too expensive either.

 

@caute

I found it. Actually, this wire is great and the Amphenol connectors are too and not too dear. This cable is used on my Prism dac and replaced some excellent Grimm TPR cable when I needed to move from XLR to RCA. No regrets at all.

Mogami 2964 wire with Amphenol RCA and Neutrik phone plugs

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B097ZYB41F/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is their offering for 2964 and Amphenol RCAs.

https://www.amazon.com/Foot-High-Definition-Interconnect-Amphenol-Connectors/dp/B01GNXO67K

Good luck with your cable adventures.

 

Okay, this makes a shitton of sense, thank you so much. So, since the Pangea is a "known" quantity, should I just reterminate that? And with better connectors, I guess? If I use the Reans with the relatively "better" Pangea wire, will it still sound cheap?

I just asked this silly question elsewhere I think, but is it the wire that matters most, e.g. ofc, occ, up-occ, or the connector, e.g. regular ol' neutrik, furutech, ones I don't even know the names of they're so expensive, or is it a mix of both? Which one would you rather put your money into?

 

I would NOT re-terminate the Pangea with the Reans, it will hurt the sound quality of the cable, even not knowing what Pangea uses. The cardas wire is good stuff and has a rich textured sound on the warm side, yet musical.

Wire matters and I think based on my 40 years of listening so do connectors. While I used to buy OCC wires and fancy $400+ a set RCAs, I have learned that I can get equal quality with way less expensive wire and connectors. You just have to know which ones to try. I would put the Amphenol connector up against my favorite normal priced Furutech (cannot remember model numbers, atm)

Put your money in a good wire and equally good connector. Spending $$ on either at the expense of the other is not the way to go. Try going to Audio asylum and search budget friendly wire and connectors for RCA cables, you will get a lot to research. Try not to go back too many decades though. haha.

eg: Switchcraft RCAs on Canare Star Quad for desktop dac to JBL powered speakers.

 

Good call on that & lookin out fam. But since I'm kinda broke atm, I think I will stick with the neutriks I already ordered, and just solder them onto the quadstar Gotham wire, since I got it all for free anyway lol—it's gotta be better than the two-for-$9 RCA cables from Amazon I am using now, seems like just about anything would be an upgrade from those. Will either keep or sell the Pangeas. Thanks for the tip on Switchcraft & Amphenols tho, I will use them in future builds!

 

2964 is useful because it's 75 Ohm, so is good for digital connections as well as analogue interconnects. For DIY, it's available by the foot from Performance Audio:

https://www.performanceaudio.com/mo...ture-miniature-coaxial-cable-by-the-foot.html

who also have Amphenol RCAs at the best prices I've seen:

https://www.performanceaudio.com/sh...l?connector_gender=5416&product_list_limit=15

and free lower-48 shipping on orders of $49 or more.

 

anyone think there is any chance this Aliexpress speaker cable is actually OCC copper? I'd like to avoid spending hundreds of dollars on speaker cable at least at first. It seems legit, they make multiple references to OCC copper wire in the diagrams etc, (as opposed to the fake ads which just list OCC in the title and the specs, but no where else and it's not actually OCC if you send them a message and ask)

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOXfXEU

I like the 16 core weave.

 

I do not trust it, its a copper/silver hybred? Would suggest going for just OCC copper.

 

No, it's not a hybrid, they just have a white sleeve over half the copper wires. It's all OCC Copper, if the product is genuine.

I don't like silver either.

 

I'm pretty sure this Ali-Express knock-off Kimber 12TC is coming from the same factory that Danny Richie is using for his 16-wire and 24-wire braided bulk cable. I'm not sure if it's true UPOCC (since that's only coming from Neotech these days, AFAIK) but lots of folks on AudioCircle seem to really like the GR-Research bulk stuff. Like I said, it looks identical to the Ali stuff floating around so it wouldn't surprise me at all if they are actually identical.

 

this is from the description, not sure what it means
Structure: 24 core copper silver three-dimensional hybrid

 

Kimber is OFC, and this GR-Research link is also OFC. If the Ali stuff is claiming OCC that would be sus.

 

I wouldn't think anything on Aliexpress was actually UPOCC. Like @yotacowboy pointed out, only Neotech is a guaranteed producer of OCC. I know years ago major cable makers were trying to find alternate factories that could guarantee UPOCC, but I don't know how successful they were - I am assuming they were, but in the end who knows.

 

Last I saw/read digging around on other fora was that Neotech opened a manufacturing facility in mainland China, in addition to their main facility in Taiwan, so I could understand that there may indeed be some true UPOCC wire showing up in some looming/sheathing facilities that ends up on AliExpress, but I bet it's few and far between. 99.9% of the crap on Ali is just OFC or (more likely) toughpitch copper. Neotech also have a new-ish distributor here in the US: Harmonic Technology — Delivering True Clarity in Audio & Video that can supply bare wire. I bugged them a little while ago about sourcing some of the UPOCC silver, but the bulk prices made my eyes water.

 

What about Lunashops? They're the only ones on Aliexpress I trust to be using OCC Copper.

 

Ehhh, this is just conjecture on my part from going down rabbit holes, but here it goes: Anything on Lunashops that says "ACROLINK OCC" or something like that is just word-salad. Acrolink (as far as I understand it, which could be wrong and misinformed!!) uses a specific high purity copper manufactured by Mitsubishi (7N or 7-nines, which is stupendously 99.99999% pure copper), which is not the same as Ultra Pure Ohno Continuous Cast copper (originally manufactured by Furukawa of Japan as just OCC, but now by Neotech as Ultra Pure OCC). So, ACROLINK OCC isn't an actual thing, it's kinda smooshing two things together, and is probably neither 7N Mitsubishi-sourced Acrolink, nor Neotech UP-OCC. Also, if it's plated copper, it's not UP-OCC, period, unless the plating occurs after the wire has left Neotech.

Oh! and then there's Oyaide, pre- and post-Furukawa sourced wire... but they're mostly knocked-off with their connectors...

Again, I might be wrong about all of this garbage, but I don't really trust 99.9% (3-nines, lol) of anything wire-like sold on the innernets being called OCC.

Edit: Forgot to mention Furutech, as they also licensed (I think?) the Ohno Continuous Cast process and add their own special Alpha cryo treatment and dip the wires in whale semen. But I don't think they OEM for anyone that I'm aware of, unlike Neotech.

 

[QUOTE="yotacowboy, post: 408360, member:

Edit: Forgot to mention Furutech, as they also licensed (I think?) the Ohno Continuous Cast process and add their own special Alpha cryo treatment and dip the wires in whale semen. But I don't think they OEM for anyone that I'm aware of, unlike Neotech.[/QUOTE]

They should be so lucky, lucky….the whales I mean, I imagine Japanese wanking off whales instead of killing them.
Buy our cable make sure whales get wanked instead of being killed, one happy whale per 100 m of wire, buy a stereo set for double happiness.

 

I like your reasoning here and your questioning of a market that is full of bullshit. But I am dubious of these claims for a couple reasons.

When I was coming up with all of my ortho mods for rhythmdevils audio, I bought OCC copper headphone cables from all the usual suspects (or cables claiming to be OCC copper), companies like Arctic Cables, Norse Audio, Forza Audioworks, hell even Lunaships and an Etsy seller that sells "OCC copper" cables. The only ones I didn't try were the ones that reeked of bullshit like the $2000 DHC cables or any other super expensive exotic cable, And they all sound drastically different, in ways you would not expect. Sometimes exotic expensive, huge weaves with low gauges or whatever other impressive feature sounded noticeably worse than more plain cables and not just subjectively, Ii'm talking duller, less air, less clarity, less resolution, not things that are really preferences, I won't name names because of the second reason. But if they were all just sourcing Neotech UPOCC wire, why do they all sound so different? Just the gauge and the weave? I have a hard time believing that,

Secondly, in having long conversations with the owners of these companies they talked about sourcing their wire, and they were either lying or they were not just sourcing it from Neotech, They never told me their sources, but it was obviously not just from Neotech, as in, "contact Neotech and order some OCC copper wire in whatever gauge". It was much more complicated than that. I think there are likely few manufacturers, but I am dubious about there only being one, And the other thing is that these owners of the companies I mentioned are incredibly good, kind, passionate people who are very clearly not peddling bullshit. I know there's a lot of bullshit cables, but not from these people.

One way it could make sense is that there are a bunch of companies that buy Neotech wire and cover it in various materials like PVC, Teflon, etc in different thicknesses and weaves and gauges and wire counts, and that's who the cable makers are buying wire from, so the differences are from a middleman that accounts for the different sources and partly explains the different sounds. I suppose, That feels unlikely to me though just from what I have experienced and talked about with these companies,

But that's possible,

 

Furukawa was a big supplier of and maker of PCOCC-A wire but stopped in 2013.

It appears that Oyaide decided to get into the manufacturing game a few years later and had a big wire company make their PCOCC-A wire with a slight change. You can read about it here.

Creating-the-Ultimate-Copper-Oyaide-new-102-SSC-conductor.pdf (canyonaudio.si)

I have been on the PCOCC-A bandwagon and liked the stuff from Audio Sensibilities (who used to source from Furukawa) but have since challenged myself to see if I could actually hear an advantage (not just a difference). I have concluded for my gear and ears that well made pro wire is all I need.