We here at Custom Cans try to make good quality high-end cables that give the best balance of cost vs. performance.

These cables are constructed a bit differently from most RCA cables to give better sound in most but not all situations. In a normal RCA cable, there is a central signal wire surrounded by shielding that carries the return signal. This helps screen out interference from radio and electromagnetic sources – it is a good way to cut down on interference and on longer cables, it is a good option but does have a few disadvantages. The return signal is carried through the shielding so no matter how good the conductor in the centre is, it will be held back a bit by the lower-quality conductor used to make the shield. For the shield to be properly effective it should only be grounded at one end, and as it carries the signal it has to be connected at both ends reducing its effectiveness the cable can also suffer from quite a lot of capacitance which can affect timing and cause smear.

In this cable, as it is only short, we have decided to do away with traditional shielding and instead have both the positive and negative wires made of the same high-quality SPC cable and they are then covered in PTFE, twisted and braided to cut down RFI and EMI.

For most setups, this configuration should give better results but if they will be being used somewhere with a lot of very high-powered equipment nearby, then a shielded version may be preferable. We will also be doing a shielded version with more advanced shielding than found on most cables.

These use silver-plated OFC copper which is made of nineteen 0.15 mm silver-plated strands giving them a high silver content, as the silver has lower resistance than copper, most of the signal travels down the silver. Many people say a solid silver conductor is superior but it pushes the price up quite a lot for a small improvement and makes them less flexible and more brittle which is why we stuck to SPC for this rather than solid silver.

The cable is coated in a thick Teflon / PTFE dielectric. Teflon is one of the best dielectrics for audio cables apart from air which can be a bit impractical.

The cables are then wrapped, twisted, and braided to further reduce interference from RFI and EMI as well as cutting inductance and crosstalk between the cables.

The RCA connectors are high-end locking connectors similar to the ones offered by Furutech, which are gold plated to stop corrosion and everything is soldered together with silver solder to keep the signal path cleaner. Any cable is only as good as its weakest link which is why we have pushed the boat out a bit with the connectors and gone for locking ones. With standard RCA connectors, the push-on – some are too tight and scratch up the gold plating or worse cause damage to the equipment due to the force needed to plug them in and some are too loose and don’t give a good connection plus they can loosen over time. With locking RCA connectors you twist the outer casing to tighten up the plug. This lets you get them on easily and then tighten them up so they are locked in place and making the best connection.

Please note that the left and right cables are braided together with a Y split at either end, rather than 2 entirely separate cables.