speaker cable question

[chris857]

I have a cable that looks exactly like a 1/4" TS cable, but it says "for speakers only" labeled on it. Will this work for connecting outboard gear to mixers, line outs to audio interfaces, etc? Will it effect the sound quality? What is the difference between a speaker cable and a TS cable or TRS cable? Thanks for the help.

[mshilarious]

Speaker cable is usually thicker gauge than instrument cable. I don't use mine for instruments, but that's because of the length of the speaker cables I have (50'). In theory it should work better . . . But open a connector to make sure the cable is shielded.

[boingoman]

It might work. Well, it will definitely work, it will probably be noisy (as in hum).
Speaker cable lacks the shielding needed to keep out noise. If you look inside a guitar cable you will see that one of the wires attached to the connector is actually braided around the other. This wire is attached to the negative(sleeve) . With a TS cable the braiding helps to keep out a good part of the noise. Ideally if you can (budget and equipment allowing) you should use balanced(TRS) cables for your gear. Three conductors-plus, minus, shield(ground).

The shield is connected to the chassis of the gear at both
ends. Gotta keep everyone grounded, audioisn't supposed to hurt.The plus and minus are "floating" meaning not connected to ground. When noise enters the cable it tries to enter your gear through the plus and minus at the input jack. They cancel out, no noise. A balanced input. It's the same principle as a humbucking pickup, which is two coils wound in opposite directions. You only get the noise you want. Unfortunately it only works if all your gear is balanced. Otherwise don't waste the money on cables. Also don't bother if noise isn't a problem. If you keep your stuff at home you might luck out. I do a lot of live work, so I try to keep chance down to a minimum(though I can't give up my Effectron JR. delay, my only unbalanced gear)

Microphones and rack gear and instruments operate at such low levels relative to the interference(usually <1 volt or line level for gear and guitars and millivolts for mics) that they are susceptible to the low-level interference of other poorly shielded gear, a/c lines, your local 8000000 watt country station, etc. Then of course we turn up the gain on our mic pres, "crank it" any way we can, and up comes the noise.

Speakers run at such high levels(many tens of volts) that speaker wire doesn't require that kind of shielding.

Sorry if this is a bit more than you were looking for. If you want more info on balancing there are tons of websites, and I recommend the Yamaha guide to sound reinforcement.(kind of a classic)

[chris857]

Thanks for the info. That helps me out a lot. I never realized cables were so complex!

[boingoman]

Me neither. If I knew I was going to know what I know I don't know if I would have gotten into all this stuff, you know?

[Massive Master]

Yes - Speaker cable is for SPEAKERS. Nothing else.

[TexRoadkill]

Originally Posted by Massive Master

Yes - Speaker cable is for SPEAKERS. Nothing else.

Using speaker cables for line level sends isn't anywhere near as bad as using line level cable for speakers. THAT is what you NEVER want to do.

[boingoman]

LOL, roadkill