AIR-FORCE ONE
DIY interconnect cable by Guus Das

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Project Identification   Submitted by: Guus Das Contact: ghcdas@hetnet.nl Other: Any response regarding this article please send to Mr. Guus Das   Introduction   Reading about audio cable design, one can easily get confused about the numerous issues involved. DIY cable designs come in a wide variety of concepts, not all of them with a real scientifically approach. The herein described cable could very well belong to that category. I have only tried to implement some of the theories and see were it would bring me. Well, it brought me at least a cable better than the ones I was able to afford. Better materials could easily bring even better result. Problem for a DIY artist is of coarse how to obtain these materials. I will further investigate the concept off this design and try to improve it.   Concepts of this cable design   1) Air dielectric.  Poor dielectric materials are known to store energy (skin effect), and are responsible for a "blurred" sound. Air and vacuum are considered to be the best dielectrics. Any such cable known to me is hand-made and therefore terribly expensive! For a DIY cable it is however fairly simple. Just take a good conductor and lead it through a (Teflon) sleeve with an inner diameter 1.5 to 2 times the outer diameter of the conductor. There will only be incidental contact between the two. 2) Air-tight construction. Pure copper will easily corrode; so silver or silver plated conductors should be used. Although silver-oxide is also a good conductor, oxidation should be avoided. Therefore this design features an air-tight construction. 3) Hollow braided conductor. In some literature about audio cable design, it is stated that a "tube-like" conductor will have audible benefits (less electromagnetic interference). If this is so, a braided hollow conductor (such as a shielding in a coax cable) should have similar benefits. 4) Semi balanced symmetric design. As most interlinks are not balanced, the shield and the "return" signal cable are one and the same. So interfering signals can still enter the signal path. Furthermore the "send" and "return" paths have different geometry's, that can't be good, can it!? The Airforce-one lets you choose between connecting the shield to a proper ground-terminal, or have it connected to the housing of the RCA-connector. Both signal paths have the same hollow braided conductor.   next page: