GZsound Posted April 23, 2001 Share Posted April 23, 2001 I know this has probably been beaten to death, but I didn't pay attention the last time I saw this subject and now I need to know. What brand name cables and ends are you using? What difference does guage make? Why can you use a long run for balanced mic but not for unbalanced mic and do terms like oxygen free and gold plated really make a difference? Thanks.. ------------------ Mark G. Mark G. "A man may fail many times, but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame others" -- John Burroughs "I consider ethics, as well as religion, as supplements to law in the government of man." -- Thomas Jefferson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ethan Winer Posted April 23, 2001 Share Posted April 23, 2001 Mark, I'll add to my comments elsewhere, where I suggested you see my Audio Myths article at www.ethanwiner.com/articles.html . > Why can you use a long run for balanced mic but not for unbalanced mic < Balanced mike wires use two wires to carry the signal, and these wires are independent of the grounding shield. With an unbalanced mike cable only one wire is used, so the shield serves as the other conductor. When two wires are used in a balanced configuration, any hum or other electrical disturbance in the air affects both wires equally. But since the desired mike signal is contained in the difference between the two wires, the interference gets canceled. --Ethan This message has been edited by Ethan Winer on 04-23-2001 at 12:47 PM The acoustic treatment experts Ethan's Audio Expert Book Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anderton Posted April 23, 2001 Share Posted April 23, 2001 Here's my all-purpose cable reply. Otherwise rational people get into arguments about cables - "I replaced all my cables with Monster Cable and the difference was night and day!" "I tried Monster Cable and it's all a big hype, wire is wire!" The reason why these arguments won't go away is that BOTH sides are right! For example, if you have a low impedance output feeding a low impedance input over a 5 foot cable run, you can use just about anything and it will sound fine. But take a Strat with passive, single coil pickups and feed it into a high impedance tube amp, and the cable will make a HUGE difference -- you need one with very low cable capacitance. Same thing can happen with mics. Digital is another situation where cables make a big differenc. Digital signals have much greater bandwidth than the usual analog stuff, so using a regular RCA phono-to-phono designed for audio with SPDIF is going to degrade the signal. Here's an example where expensive cables really pay off. So as you can see, this is not an obvious topic with hard and fast rules. Cables that are designed to be bulletproof might not work well with guitar. Cables designed for audiophile applications might not be able to work with digital signals. This is a subject that's worthy of discussion, let's discuss some more. How many have had positive/negative experiences with certain cables? Craig Anderton Educational site: http://www.craiganderton.org Music: http://www.youtube.com/thecraiganderton Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/craig_anderton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hiraga Posted April 23, 2001 Share Posted April 23, 2001 I'd like to see ALL S/P-DIF connections done with BNC.. BNC, is better, lockable, cheaper (I use Neutrik RCAs and those babies do cost 15USD a pair!), easier to use/easier to make AND confirms to the 50 ohm standard that S/P-DIF is suppose to be.. It's a no brainer if you ask me.. Regarding rolling your own cables, I wrote something here a few weeks ago.. I'll dig it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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