Topic: Aluminium Foil for Noise Shielding RCA and Speaker Cables?

[netken]

I have heard some DIY using our daily food wrapping Aluminium Foil used as shielding for RCA and Speaker cables ....

Apparently it can protect the cables from noise and also problems like aeroplane sound, static, electrical noise caused by nearby power cables or cris crossing them with a bundle of cables ..

anyone have tried this DIY method before and wonder does it work??

[Zenn]

yes tried ages ago, 2003 competition, courtesy of mr liew, just to grab some extra installation points but no audible difference probly bcoz there wasnt any noise issues before hand.

[netken]

yes tried ages ago, 2003 competition, courtesy of mr liew, just to grab some extra installation points but no audible difference probly bcoz there wasnt any noise issues before hand.

How was it done? the pic link don't work lerr ...

ur homepage says that the rcas were wrapped with aluminium and then with PVC ... can we just wrap it with aluminium and leave it as that?

what about speaker cables?

[kevyeoh]

very interesting input here... :D
might try tht out sometimes... should be pretty simple to wrap...

[calvinhpk]

my personal opinion is it will not work on speaker cable..... because they're running at high level signal

the aluminium foils is a kind of shielding to reject EMI (electromagnetic interference). I think alot of rca now do have extra aluminium shielding internally, even some of the home-based RCA such as VDH 102mk3
so.... putting the aluminium foils is a repeating procedure

if your cable does not have this foils, trying the foils is 1 of the way, but i would try isolating the cables from power cables 1st,

[netken]

how about conduit casing? will it help a little abit ?

calvin, does that mean the singal being carried in RCA and speaker cable is different'?

Care to explain .. :D

[calvinhpk]

conduit casing??? you meant those black plastic conduit?? they're for cosmetic only....
if you're talking about metal conduit, it might help abit... but have to be metal conduit from 1 end of the cable to the other end.... which is almost impossible in car environment

RCA signal and speaker cable signal sure different
RCA is low level signal, means, usually music signal is less than 4V if you measure
speaker cable signal is usually amplified, and i measure before, is above 10V playing music

low level signal is usually easier to be induced with those EMI noise, ie. aeroplane noise or others...

[mnkh27]

Just hampalang wrap everything. Yes, it does work. Once upon a time, I wrapped the HU cables, Speaker cables (QED Silver Anniv.) and most importantly, the RCA... can't rem what I was using then. It does cut down noise considerably. For cosmetic and a clean install, you can then conduit them. However, cooking foils are not that cheap if used in such extent. You might want to source for some industrial bulk ones. Yellow pages perhaps!

Hmmm.... Still, I think wrap the whole car is the best.