Piping Hot Sound - Cables?

I have some thin guage copper piping left over from some DIY central heating repairs. I am considering using it and a solid copper core, polyurethane covered wire running inside the pipe to connect my amps to my speakers. I wonder what effect it may have on the music!! - ANyway Ill order up the cable and give it a go - you never know might start a trend..... The things you do to get through a long winter!

 

Piped musak? Nice!

Not very flexible though .

 

I have some 'sound pipe' interconnects (just busted em, whoops!).

Anyway, the cover came off and it looks like that stuff.

 

Do you mean running the cables inside pipes that are filled with water? If so, I like the lateral thinking but it might have a bad effect on the sound. Water Has a very high dielectric constant, around 80, whereas normal cable makers strive to get as close to 1 as possible for the insulation or covering. The fact that the wire is covered with PVC or whatever won't prevent the fact that the signal will set up a field that extends into the water. Also the water will contain some ions. I'm no expert at all, but I imagine from brief browsing that these factors will affect the sound adversely. If you're not convinced, some googling for cable, dielectric absorption, water, etc should let you find out more.

 

The sound pipes ....are very interesting

A chap in st neots whos name escapes me ....was running a full cyrus set up using sound pipes [relatively new ones] .... between cd and pre .. the sound of the system was flat and nassel ....I did some bits and peices with limited results until we removed the sound pipes....even his older ic's seemed sound better ?? which is a real shame as I'd expected far more from the sound pipes ....but it could be they just didn't like the cyrus kit.

I've tried to use micro bore central heating tube ...as speaker cable in just the way you suggest....but the 10mm stuff was just too hard to work with out the pipe bender and straighteners so I gave up .....

do let us know how yours turns out if you take this forward.

 

I'm using 30cm NVA sound pipes between SUT and my phono and they sound pretty good - comparable to and virtually indistinguishable from stereovox Vespas and a third of the price -still, I have just realised they are a third of the length too. Anyone remember the connecting links between pre and power on the Nad 3020 - I wonder if they were pipe like inside ? No-one ever talked about substituting them with cables all those years ago, did they.

 

Cant imagine it will do anything to the sound really. But perhaps if you run some water down the pipe you may get something like Handel's water music.

 

Chris ....I did !

the nad links were solid brass? and I swapped them for 4mm copper earth wire ... then later I picked up another nad3020 and used silver rod....

For the cost the sound pipes are good value ....though do sound heavy and turgid ...in the cyrus combo, compared to a set of silver twisted pairs

 

Cogan Hall cables from the USA were/are copper tubes. Sounded pretty good for the time - but stupid construction - pos & neg legs were un-insulated (!) and kept apart only by plastic spacers. Damn easy to short and blow up your amp !

NVA sound pipes are individual legs, so that's OK. Sound fair vfm.

I've just tried (yesterday!) some copper tube cables from Oz-land - TMC - the-music-cable.com. Same sort of sound. A bit vague/hazy imaging, bass a liitle soft/loose, 2D depth/soundstage.

TBH - the £10 Gotham cables on eBay trounce the lot of them (as well as any other cable I've tried). Lot of fuss about these on hifiwigwam at the mo. Great cable - state of the art bass depth and definition, great image focus, perhaps just a little dark - silly price.