Ever since I dumped those crappy Audioquest snake oil cables back to Amazon, I needed to find interconnects.  I checked many brands, and let’s just say that the prices are crazy on some of them.  And each company has its own spin on cables.  Some are pure silver.  Others, silver-plated copper.  Some are pure copper.  Many are bundled together.  Some are braided, like the Kimber Cables.  And the RCA plugs…brass or copper base metal, silver plating, copper plating, cryogenically treated, etc.

Staaahp!

From the marketing hyperbole, you’d think some of them would make you shit magical rainbows.

Having read around somewhat, I came up with the idea of using the Silver Sonic cables from DH Labs.  They base their cables on a copper core with a silver plating.  The premise is that lower frequencies travel deeper into the core of a wire, while higher frequencies reside closer to the skin.  With that in mind, they use the copper core to provide better conduction of the lower frequencies, with the silver assisting the top end.  The wires arrived with an attractive blue jacket and directional arrows.

For RCA ends, I used the Neutrik ProFi plugs.  They come with a unique pressure-fit strain relief system, as well as a unique spring-loaded grounding shield that contacts the RCA jack first when being plugged in, and loses contact first when being removed.

While I don’t believe that the metals in the wire are directional (it is, after all, non-magnetic), the arrows do come in handy.  These cables come with two conductors, plus shield.  I hooked these up in a floating shield configuration.  The red and white conductors are connected respectively to the hot and ground on each end.  The shield, however, is connected only at the source end of the cable.  This prevents a potential ground loop situation caused by the shielding.  The arrows then help you connect the correct end to the source and destination.

Other than some of the lettering flaking off, the cables turned out nicely.

On first listen, they do have a clean overall presentation, perhaps a little bit leaner than I’m used to.  The RCA plugs fit snugly on the jacks.  As for noise, they are dead quiet.

Time will tell as to how they eventually sound once I am used to them.  I made three sets so far.  Next time, I may order up some cable sleeving to neaten things up a bit, perhaps even combining the two cables into one sleeve for ease of routing.

Stay tuned.