peter@apple.com (Peter Tapscott ) (02/08/91)
I stopped by the local Fry's Electronics to check out the interconnects (for intellectual curiosity only). For those without access to a Fry's, these stores are a techno- weenies delight: larger than any supermarket I know, with all manner of the things that make Silicon Valley folks excited. Peanuts, magazines, PCs, lo fi, mid fi, ICs, cables, chassis boxes, Coke, printers, Macintosh, tech books, etc. I found the following: Interconnect Construction $/1Meter $/2Meter ============================================================= Recoton (cheapie) Coax 2.40 Memorex Gold Coax, gold plating 4.15 Super Link Coax 18.50 Monster Interlink 300 2 cond. w/shield 25 27 (1.5M) Monster Interlink CD 2 cond. w/shield 28 Monster Interlink 400 2 cond. w/shield 35 45 Monster Reference 2 2 cond. w/shield 95 150 I found it interesting that all the Monster cables used two conductor shielded. The REALLY expensive ones apparently used REALLY expensive cable, note the increase in price for an extra meter of cable. Also, there was some printed matter on the package talking about how the high frequencies follow the little strands, and the bass follows the big strands in the cable. Maybe I'm not paraphrasing correctly, but I wasn't sold by the description. All Monster cables had arrows on the cables pointing away from the source. If anyone has a pair, perhaps you could take the cover off the connector to see if the shield is connected on the side where the arrow points. The connectors on the cables seemed to get better as the price increased, but I'm sure there is a law of dimishing returns here. I'm positive there is a law of dimishing returns on the cable part. Monster Phonolink plugs were also offered at $15/4. That indicates that the Interlink 300 have about $10 of cable and labor. I guess they can make the cables a lot faster than I can for that labor rate! I also found some Belden twinax, Number H8B, that was 22 awg twinax 90% coverage tinned copper braid. This is normally used for Appletalk cable. Since Appletalk can run at speeds of >200kbaud, I'm speculating that this would make good audio cable. Unfortunately, I couldn't get a price per foot on the twinax. Your faithful reporter, |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | peter@versatc.VERSATEC.COM -OR- {ames|apple|sun}!versatc!peter| | Peter Tapscott - Xerox Engineering Systems, Versatec Products | | 2805 Bowers Avenue, Santa Clara, Calif (408)982-4235 | |----------------------------------------------------------------------|