IC Recommendations

[n_maher]

And how many hours?

Looks like an exercise in getting pissed off to me. Can you imagine getting 90% of the way through a 1M coil only to kink it and ruin it? Sure, it's the tits to look at but you can't tell me there's anything functional about that coil.

[Dusty Chalk]

I just emailed him and asked him.

The whole concept behind the anti-cables is using air as the insulator (because it has minimal dielectric effect), so I presume the coil is to force spacing between the two wires. But that's just my theory, I'll post his answer when I get it.

[philodox]

Magnet wire is not THAT stiff... I am pretty sure you could do this by hand pretty quickly.

Regardless, I think it is a pretty good product. It looks neat and people will buy it. Might even sound good.

[TheSloth]

I bet the labor involved in getting that coil perfect is a pain...I wonder what impact having a ground that's 3-4x longer than signal has on the sound...

Are you sure it's that way round? Wouldn't the thicker wire be the signal wire?

[grawk]

I'd bet any amount of money the center wire is signal.

[Dusty Chalk]

They look the same to me. Thickness of the two wires in one interconnect, that is. Any differences in thickness are probably just an optical illusion.

[grawk]

I'd say that the center wire is definitely thinner. Like 30ga vs 24ga

[bhd812]

I had pauls autoformer thingys before..simple but they do as stated or what he intends them to do. sure the really do the job but they turn your tube amp into a solid state and the tube amp will clip faster...in other words why not just go solid state and sell both?..still i liked them and he makes a damm good product, well he is pretty honest and cool.

never tried the i/c's before but wouldnt pulse to niether

[deepak]

I was going to make a K1000 adapter cable using the Anticables speaker cable after talking to alwayswantmore. Still might do it.

[Dusty Chalk]

The Anti-ICs use the same design concept as the Anti-Cables. They are simple, cost effective, and perform very well. They utilize the same red coated Copper wire, but of a much smaller gauge, especially for the music signal conductor. This small wire size provides excellent time alignment of the music?s transient events, which helps eliminate time smearing, and helps resolve the dynamics of the music.

Typical interconnect cables usually have a signal wire surrounded with a thick plastic dielectric material, which is then surrounded by the ground conductor to shield it from EMI/RFI noise. This typical approach has the usual drawbacks of accumulating a lot of dielectric material around the music conductor, and an accumulation of shunting capacitance.

The Anti-ICs use a different approach. Since air is a near perfect dielectric, no extra insulation dielectric material (beyond the thin red coating) is used, and the wires are suspended in free air. Shunting Capacitance is about as low as an interconnect can get (RCA less than 10pF/ft). This is due to the topology of the elongated spiral ground wire, with a straight signal conductor passing down the middle (at close to a 90 degree angle from each other). Because of this offset angle, the magnetic field of the ground wire has limited coupling to the signal wire (keeping capacitance low); yet because of its close and surrounding proximity, the physically protective elongated spiral ground wire does a good job of electrically shielding the inner signal wire.

So, (a) grawk was right, the inner is the signal; ( I was right, he's using air as the dielectric, but © there's more to it than that (see the "...at close to a 90 degree angle from each other..." statement).

EDIT: And after looking at the image again, I have to agree that the inner looks thinner.

[philodox]

© there's more to it than that

No, there isn't.

Even if that theory is correct, what happens when the cable bends?

[Dusty Chalk]

Capacitance.

[deepak]

Also interesting Mapleshade Audio ICs:

http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/audioproducts/interconnects.php

Check out the digital clearview cables

I have their paper catalog in front of me. Basically a single wire in a plastic baggie.

[philodox]

Reks -

Capacitance.

Good point... I should have thought that out more. I think that an IC like this would sort of drive me crazy. If it got slightly bent or out of perfect alignment I would go crazy. I am sure that with other interconnect topologys this is happening all the time... but at least you don't get to see your IC degrading over time and with use.

jpak - oh my god... those look so ghetto.

[granodemostasa]

you also try out the Chimera labs cables. they are somewhat organic sounding (ie, like vinyl).. they are thick, warm, dynamic, and very detailed (more so than the UR8).

[TheSloth]

Also interesting Mapleshade Audio ICs:

http://www.mapleshaderecords.com/audioproducts/interconnects.php

Check out the digital clearview cables

I have their paper catalog in front of me. Basically a single wire in a plastic baggie.

I'm assuming that those sheets of copper would break if they got bent around a great deal? What's the principle involved - they seem to be trying to use as little conductor as possible.

[deepak]

I'm assuming that those sheets of copper would break if they got bent around a great deal? What's the principle involved - they seem to be trying to use as little conductor as possible.

I just looked again and aside from some clever marketing, I can't find any explanation why they're technically better.

[n_maher]

I know, I know, ancient topic but I've got news...

I decided to take one for the team and order some of the bulk anticables speaker wire. At $1.25/ft it's pretty impossible to beat for high quality 12ga copper and he'll also sell you the spades and heatshrink to go with them. Based on my emails with him Paul seems like a genuinely decent guy and is actually quite the DIY electronics enthusiast. Color me gullible but most DIY guys I know are more skeptical than your average "audiophile" when it comes to the typical snake-oil type stuff. Heck at $100 for a 10' pair of speaker cables he's probably not charging enough.

[deepak]

I know, I know, ancient topic but I've got news...

I decided to take one for the team and order some of the bulk anticables speaker wire. At $1.25/ft it's pretty impossible to beat for high quality 12ga copper and he'll also sell you the spades and heatshrink to go with them. Based on my emails with him Paul seems like a genuinely decent guy and is actually quite the DIY electronics enthusiast. Color me gullible but most DIY guys I know are more skeptical than your average "audiophile" when it comes to the typical snake-oil type stuff. Heck at $100 for a 10' pair of speaker cables he's probably not charging enough.

Nate was going to PM you, but thought others might benefit from your impressions. What do you think of the cable?

[n_maher]

Overall I'm pretty impressed with it. I don't do all that much critical listening at my HT rig but the anticables certainly don't do anything objectionable. They replaced a pair of MIT Terminator 3's which were probably triple their price so I'd say as a "value" the anticables more than hold their own. My only complaint, and it's not much of one, is that they are pretty stiff regardless of what Paul says. Sure, they're able to be maneuvered easily enough but they take a bit more setting up than typical cables. In the same vein you can pretty much tailor them to look however you want since they hold a shape. One other thing, if I were to do it again I'd just have Paul make them up - it was a bit of a fussy process to measure, cut, coil, crimp, etc.

[deepak]

Overall I'm pretty impressed with it. I don't do all that much critical listening at my HT rig but the anticables certainly don't do anything objectionable. They replaced a pair of MIT Terminator 3's which were probably triple their price so I'd say as a "value" the anticables more than hold their own. My only complaint, and it's not much of one, is that they are pretty stiff regardless of what Paul says. Sure, they're able to be maneuvered easily enough but they take a bit more setting up than typical cables. In the same vein you can pretty much tailor them to look however you want since they hold a shape. One other thing, if I were to do it again I'd just have Paul make them up - it was a bit of a fussy process to measure, cut, coil, crimp, etc.

Cool. Any pictures before you installed them?