how come audio cables have a white fibre in them?

[phantasmagoria]

My rat just chewed through my headphones lead and i'm in the process of fixing them, the lead is split into two, one for left and one for right...

but inside each of these are two white fibres, contained within different coloured copper strands. What is this stuff for, apart from to make my repair job infuriating by getting in the way of the soldering iron?

[Dr_Watson]

its sheilding.

[phantasmagoria]

but it seems to be contained within the copper wires?

[Guest]

Why would anyone want a rat?

[phantasmagoria]

because when they're not chewing cables, they're extremely entertaining pets

[teriba]

It could be a ground.

[Nightshade]

I've seen cable made like that before, usually with weird flat conductor wire. The conductors are wrapped around the fiber, and it's basically just thread. That type of construction is either cheap or has some desirable frequency characteristics.
Either way, it's annoying as shit to repair.

[phantasmagoria]

They're Sennheiser headphones (all be it budget) and it seems if anything like extra effort to put this stupid fibre stuff in, so I doubt it's an expense saver.

I really can't see the point in having it, it doesn't seem like a conductor, and it's certainly not insulating anything. I just wondered what the point in it was, I doubt they'd go to all the extra effort to put a fibre in if they didn't need to and could just use a standard multi-core wire. Pain in the ass.

[jmt]

It strengthens the cable (prevents the cable from tearing from tension).

[SOAPboy]

It strengthens the cable (prevents the cable from tearing from tension).

yup

[phantasmagoria]

ahh ok. Thanks

Seems obvious in retrospect.

[Giraffe }{unter]

my understandiung of the white fiber is to keep the cable from streaching and prevents the pairs or sets of wires from getting longer than each other.

[losCHUNK]

its sheilding.

[obsidian]

Depends. I've seen some that have a fiber that is actually the conductor, wrapped in shiny sheilding. It's a super skinny wire that looks really fragile. I have those in my headphones and it took me forever to soder the fibers back on.

[Foo]

If you simply embed lengths of wire through a plastic moulding, then even small tugs on the wire will seperate the wire connections inside the mould.

The fiber crap is there, IIRC, to cushion and protect the wire. It's not related to electrostatic shielding.