My fun DIY project! Trash can cables :D

Rinascita

Active Member
I work at an Audio Video store. It is fairly common at my work to find random wire being thrown away. This wire is either small runs that didn’t get used at installs, or old wire pulled from jobs where we installed something new for a client. Generally, most of it is trash or too short for most applications. However, I recently saw a coworker throwing away a bunch of 12-2 wire. This made a very fun idea pop into my head. What are the best speaker cables I could construct using salvaged materials that were being thrown away? Trash can cables: Here we come!

The wire: 12-2 copper. Exact Origin unknown. I believe it came from a relatively high end home theatre our installers were working on recently. I believe this was the wire used in said theatre. I imagine it was used to wire in wall speakers.
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I decided to do double 12G for each run. This gave me an effective 9 gauge equivalent cable. So I cut four runs of the trash can wire to the desired length. Then used 2 runs per channel. I had originally planned to either run bare wire, or use terminations I found around work (keeping with the free/ trash can theme). However, the wire was too large to fit any of the terminations I could find. So, I terminated the wire using some Banana plugs from Parts Express I had at home. At this point, I was having fun and decided to actually put a little effort into these. I thus took the time to twist each pair from end to end, and use some heat shrink tubing. The end result, is a fairly attractive cable.
Now how does it sound? innitial listening has been very promising (surprisingly haha). I will post updates on the sound of these over the weekend.

A very enjoyable, lighthearted, and simple project. Happy listening friends

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Very nice. My kind of project too... love the initiative of it.

Thanks! I love this kind of project as well. Take a silly idea, and see how far you can go with it haha. It’s also nice to save useful materials and give them a new life!
 
Lookin' and hopefully sounding good!

Thanks Imral3! They are actually sounding really impressive so far. Once they get some more hours on them, I’ll try to make a better assessment. Honestly, I am genuinely surprised how good they sound. I kept my expectations reasonably low on this little project. My expectations have already been surpassed :D
 
To make assessment of the wire fair, I made 9 gauge effective (double 12gauge) jumpers for the binding posts of the speakers I would be using (B&W CDM1NT) out of the same wire as the trash can cables. I thought about making these into bi wire cables (with four terminations on the speaker end). However, I decided to stick with the original concept: big, mean 9 gauge (effective) cables. Plus this way the cables will be more versatile switching between speaker variants. With the jumpers now complete, the signal from the amplifier to the speakers is passed completely through the trash can wire. I demo’d both high frequency and low frequency post wiring arrangements (I usually have a preference. But I don’t like making assumptions, so I did my due diligence and tried both). listening impressions coming soon!
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Nice job !!!
It’s always fun to tinker. I’m always happiest at the work bench fooling around with small audio projects.

Bill
 
So now that the cables have some hours (around 40) on them, here are some early...
Listening impressions:

Rotel RCD 1070 (source)
Rotel RX 1050 (used as a preamp)
B&K EX-442 (power amplifier)
B&W CDM1NT (speakers)

These cables are being used in a second system that has been somewhat cobbled together using various components. Several recent changes have been made, so I won’t be able to do a direct comparison of the cables to the many cables I have used over the years. This will not be a proper scientific approach to analyzing the cables. The following will be a basic overview of their observed characteristics, and performance in the system used for analysis. While listening, these are the things my attention was drawn to.

The good :D

Nuetrality:
Almost immediately my attention was drawn to how neutral the system sounded with these cables in place. I took note of this early in listening. I found this to remain true in subsequent listening, when the cables had more hours on them. The system had, perhaps, lost a bit of warmth from the simple, homemade cables I had been running previously. However the sound was clean, clear, and resoundingly... neutral.

Detail:
Another observation noticed early on was that detail with the cables in place was much better than I had anticipated. I was pleased to hear a very respectable amount of low level detail, and nuance reaching my ears. Based on the simple anatomy and construction of these cables, I anticipated this is where the cables would really loose ground to both high end retail products, and quality custom builds using solid core conductors and more advanced construction techniques. They aren’t on par with some of with some of the better cables I have tried over the years with these speakers (Synergistic Research, Audioquest, blah blah). However, I am a lot more impressed with these silly trash can cables then I have been with some of the lower end offerings from major brands. I remember borrowing a pair of lower end Analysis Plus cables from my employer for some reason. They were so lacking in low level detail ,and had such rolled off frequency extremes, that I eventually just pulled them out of the system and said, “NEVER AGAIN!”. That isn’t very high praise if some random guy can build something comparable to, or better than your product using materials found in the garbage haha (Im sorry that is kind of harsh... but it is sort of funny. I know there are good Analysis Plus cables too. If you own them, I did not mean to offend :D). Over all, detail was actually quite good. As they say, “Who would’a thunk?”

Bass:
Some of the magic with these cables in the system resided in the reproduction of low frequency sounds. The bass was quite respectable. Remember, this test was done on CDM1NTs so bass was still not amazing, but impressive from a relative stand point compared to other cables used on the speakers in previous set ups. 9 gauge (effective) wire and an amplifier with decent current capability yielded solid bass performance. No real surprises here.

The not so good: :dunno:

Air, space, and presence:

If there was one thing I could knock these cables for, it is these three things. There was not quite as much space and separation around instruments and vocal performers as I would have preferred while using these cables. They still faired well here, but definitely can not run with the best cable offerings in these areas. Despite this comparative lack of “air”, I must say I observed realistic, and natural decay of instruments and voices.

Neutrality:

I listed this characteristic with the positive aspects of the listening sessions, yet, the great mystery of sound is often complicated. As time went on, I found myself wanting a touch more warmth. It seemed as if the cables had maybe slightly leaned out the sound of the system. Many people would prefer a sound like this. Neutral, clear, accurate. However, I just wanted a slightly more warm, and embracing sound than I was getting from the system. There are many system changes that could fix this, but I am analyzing what the cables did to the sound. Thus, I figured it was worth a mention.

Conclusion:

Are these cables world beaters that cure all hifi problems and take you to another dimension? DEFINITELY NO! Are they pretty darn good for using wire sourced from a trash can? ABSOLUTELY YES!

Take care friends!
Happy listening,
Rinascita
 
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After some more listening, I definitely think these cables have earned the title, “King of the trash heap”. This represents the best I have been able to do using trash can sourced materials. Look out for a possible “trash can cables 2.0” if I find some more decent wire to work with, or modify these.

Now if only people would start throwing away some Neotech solid core haha :naughty:
 
:thumbsup::thumbsup: That's the way to do it. With no real cost to do it right. And it sounds great best of all. And Welcome to AK.

Thanks my friend! I’m enjoying these cables more than I expected. Thank you for the welcome. I am glad to be here with all the great people of AK :D
 
On those speakers I'd be tempted to bi-wire them just for the heck of it. You've already got two runs of 12awg to the speaker, so it would be a minor matter to re-arrange the plugs at the speaker end to make it work.
 
On those speakers I'd be tempted to bi-wire them just for the heck of it. You've already got two runs of 12awg to the speaker, so it would be a minor matter to re-arrange the plugs at the speaker end to make it work.

It’s funny you mention that. I actually had planned to do just that when I first put them together. And played with the idea before finishing them. I even briefly ran some wire in that configuration before terminating them. One reason I decided to keep it all 9g (effective) non bi-wire, instead of splitting into 12g bi-wire was..... haha because I only had a few of those silly banana plugs sitting around. Also, I often plop in speakers with only two terminals, so I needed options. I will definitely play around with variations over the next few weeks. In addition, I found some new wire to play with! So the possibilities are endless my friend :D I’ll probably do a bi-wire set here in the future.
 
These look good and Im sure that the directionality and capacity of the electrons flowing along the cables is improved, adding to the conduciveness of the overall happy friend high fidelity experience.
 
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