What kind of cable for wiring home studio patchbay?

M

mogazi!

New member
Hello all,

I'm currently about to tackle wiring my home-studio. I have a fair bit of experience soldering guitar cables but this time I'll be dealing with mixer in/out, synths and rack gear and I'm a bit puzzled as to what kind of cable I should be using.

Most of my gear is unbalanced (I presume that's a fairly common scenario for those dealing with vintage equipment) but everyone seems to recommend "dual" or "quad" cable. Would that offer any advantage for "unbalanced" equipment? (For example, are there any advantages in wiring the ground on the second internal lead rather than the "sleeve" of a conventional guitar cable?)

Any suggestions appreciated
Thanks!
 
Most any good brand of audio cable will be fine.
AFA the grounding thing....it's kinda' start with the basic/"standard" wiring hook-up, and then if you are finding and issues, try out some of the optional grounding/shielding hook-ups.
Rane's website has a lot of great technical articles with diagrams for a lot of this stuff...great source...but they cover ALL options, and it's eventually up to you and your situation to decided if you need to try some or all of the options to see what is best.

That said, I have a fairly involved studio wiring situation, and it has a fair amount of both balanced and unbalanced...and for the most part, I just went with the more typical wiring hook-ups, and have not had to try the less used options to solve issues.
IOW...I've had few grounding issues...but then, I also followed recommended procedures throughout, and I also have a a few pieces of AC noise/spike/voltage regulation devices...and to top it off, the AC in my area is pretty clean and steady...a little on the high side (which is why I use voltage regulation), but no industry or any lots of heavy users that could dirty up the AC and/or cause interference.
 
I just rewired my entire TRS patchbay last week because I was running into some pretty nasty grounding issues. Like Miro says, start simple and only try fancy stuff if you're trying to solve specific problems.

In my case, simply following the tried-and-true rules of thumb solved my problems, even using the exact same cabling. Don't run signal cables parallel with power cables. If they must cross paths, do it at a 90-degree angle to minimize interference. Use power conditioners, and pay attention to where you plug things in. It turned out that most of my problems arose from having different components plugged into different outlets. Apparently those outlets have slightly different grounds. Once all of my rack gear was sharing the same outlet, things are running dead silent.
 
If you're going to be routing microphone level signals, you probably want to avoid quad, because the capacitance from the extra copper could conceivably affect the sound. For line level signals I don't think it's a concern. Quad is supposed to have better EM interference rejection, but I don't really understand that. Quad is almost twice as much work to solder, of course, and I find it difficult sometimes to get two wires into a space intended for one.
 
antichef said:
If you're going to be routing microphone level signals, you probably want to avoid quad, because the capacitance from the extra copper could conceivably affect the sound.
Click to expand...

Mmm...I don't know about that.
I've never compared capacitance specs between quad-core and 2-core conductor cables, so you may be right that the quad specs are not as good...but I do know that the Canare Star Quad (which I think started all the quad-core stuff) is specifically design for microphone purposes, and can also be used in all other audio applications....and I've never heard anyone say that they are not as good with regard to capacitance as 2-core cabling.

I don't really think quad core is better or absolutely needed...but some folks feel it's more "open"...due to the extra copper for the signal.
I've got a few ready-made Canare Star Quad mic & patch cables in my pile...but all the stuff I make myself comes off a spool of Belden 2-conductor mic cable, and I can cut whatever lengths I need.
The Canare though is a very fine, multi-strand copper wire, so even with the quad-core, I've not had any issue soldering when I've had to. Maybe other brands are stiffer/thicker...?
 
Thanks everyone for your replies.

I guess at this stage my main concern was which cable to buy. I think for now I'll go for Mogami 2552 "Economic" for short distances and things that won't get moved around too much and the significantly more expensive Mogami 2549 Neglex for longer runs or things that will be handled more often.

When using unbalanced TRS I'll wire it as follows:
Red to the TRS tip
White + Ground shield to the TRS sleeve

Cheers
 
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