Maybe long time diyers lost a bit perspective, but from someone that learned how to solder not long time ago:
Soldering an interconnect or any other audio cable is not the easiest thing to do for the newbie, it is definitely not like soldering a through hole resistor:
- Cables tend to be heavy, you need a decent third hand or some way to hold the cable and connector well in place. Many newbies don't think about it the first time (
) and everything ends up in disaster.
- Cables and connectors tend to dissipate the heat fairly well, a newbie used to solder leds to a PCB will wonder what the heck is going on here, or even worse, leave a nice cold solder joint without even knowing.
- Quite often, i.e. with trs connectors, the space between solder points is very limited, the cables thick, and the position the cables need to adopt not so straight forward to achieve so that everything fits in the connector capsule once the job is done.
- last but not least: when your pushbutton in your Arduino project is badly soldered, well, it is not the end of the world, but when you short something that should not be shorted in your audio system....
just go and buy your finished cable, they are not that expensive.