I've self-made my speaker cables many years ago. I took two wires and turned them against each other. In technical terms today we call it 'twisted-pair'. Each of the two channels is connected to the box via a 10 meters cable. I don't really know if 'twisted-pair' for analog signals makes any sense but digital signals are very happy about this circumstance...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

Sheriff,

Twisted pair cables work fine for both analog and digital signals, however, only shielded cables provide protection from spurious radiation, such as cellular telephones, nearby radio stations, and wireless communication systems such as those used by some fast-food restaurants.

I have a friend who lives a quarter mile from a radio tower who had similar problems using speaker cables. The radio station's music was coming over his speakers--loud and clear. Turns out that when he switched to shielded cables the problem went away.

I played a big job in a major hotel for the Saint Andrews Society (400 old guys wearing kilts and tuxedo tops, all fairly drunk) and when the nearby McDonnalds fired up their system, I clearly heard someone say "Do you want fries with that?" Pretty scary. Fortunately, when I was playing, the amp overpowered the signal from McDonalds, and when I was not performing, I quickly turned down the amp to help eleviate the situation.

Gary

Ah, now I see! Twisted-pair is used to reduct noise from its own signals only and a shielding is used to reduct strange signals only. For that case it could be very helpful to combine both technics (I thing that some newer SCSI connections are using this combination).
Also it's good to use thicker cables for a lower impedance (to lower the noise level). But thick cables are not easy to twist so that we normally won't get a twisted-pair speaker cable. Engineering is quite fantastic...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)

thanks for explaining that don, i must admit to not having heard of them, but here in Oz theres quite a few brands we either cant get or dont hear about..

dennis

I want wireless speaker connections!

Cassp,

This technology is already available, but you still have to plug them into the wall outlet. Kinda' expensive though!

Gary

YES YES YES YES.....

...but if your using wireless technics then you have neither shielding nor twisted-pair. I would like to hear your concert with all the knick-knacks and beeps caused by handies and wireless LANs...

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Greetings from Frankfurt (Germany),
Sheriff ;-)