Building a Screened Speaker Cable

Everyone is familiar with screened interconnect cables;

The screen is soldered to the earth at the source end (pre-amp), and attached to the earth of the plug, with the signal wire soldered to the signal pin. At the target end (power-amp) the screen is cut short (and either soldered over or use heat-shrink to make sure there are no stray wires) and the signal soldered to the signal pin, and the earth wire soldered to the earth pin on its own. 

With a screened speaker cable the premise is much the same, but often appears more confusing and is not as common. So here we explain how to wire up a screened speaker cable.

For this demo we used the Neotech NES-3003 MKII and the Audio Note CON-060Ag Banana plugs and wiring single connectors not bi-wire.

Starting with the simpler target end (speaker end) the main large screen is cut short and isolated. The 4 screens on each conductor are then cut short and isolated individually. Next solder the blue and black conductors together and into one banana plug, and the red and white together and into another banana plug.

At the source end (amp end) you need to cut though the outer jacket of the 4 cores to expose around 5mm of the screens, then solder an additional wire to the screens to link them, and connect that wire to the main screen. (This should be done around 50mm or so from the end of the cable - see drawing for spacing) Next cut short and isolate individually the screen at the ends of the red and white conductors, solder together and into a banana plug. The final step is to connect the blue and black conductors to their individual screens (and therefore connecting all of the screens and the outer screen to the amp negative) and solder them into a banana plug. 

If you wanted to bi-wire this cable, the process with the screens is the same, you simply wire each colour connector to its own individual banana plug. You must use the red & black for the bass and the white & blue for mid + treble - because the cores are not all the same AWG.

Review by Astin Trew Ltd; "This loudspeaker cable is very open, has a natural uncoloured sound, fast and detailed without being aggressive.  The micro-detail and 3D 'sound-stage' is impressive - and a very low noise floor.  Bags of detail and musical colour across all frequencies without being clinical. Perfect!  We now use it as our highest reference loudspeaker cable whilst developing our amplifiers."

TM from Mauritius received a 2 metre pair that we made in house for him - he says - the first listening are very encouraging, the cable has taken its place with ease, the sound is much more beautiful and natural .After 7 hours of listening, no fatigue, only pleasure, I am very happy. Thank you for your advice.

For more information on the Neotech speaker cable used in this article, please click -  HERE

For more information on the Audio Note banana plugs used in this article, please click -  HERE