Mic Cable Question: Regular XLR interconnect okay?

[jbucla2005]

I was reading mic cables are specially designed to be low impedence (usually.) So does that mean I shouldn't use a regular HOSA XLR interconnect instead of a mic cable?

[sweetbeats]

What do you mean by interconnect?

It should be fine...are you talking about a patch cable or something?

Regardless you should be fine. If the Hosa cable is spec'ed for digital (AES-EBU), that could be an issue.

[mshilarious]

The impedance of a mic cable is largely irrelevant. You have some small amount of resistance, which is trivial compared with the input impedance of a preamp. Then you have cable capacitance, which we can consider nominally as 30pF/ft. Better cables are somewhat lower; a poor or small-diameter cable might be higher.

But cable capacitance is generally not an issue until cable length gets well over 100ft (really more like 300ft).

The major issues with mic cable quality are the durability of construction and the coverage of the shield, and also mechanical issues such as how easy it is to strip & solder, whether it lays flat, etc.

AES/EBU cable can be used as a mic cable, but the reverse is not true. AES/EBU cable is specified as 110 ohm, whereas RF performance does not matter for a mic cable.

[sweetbeats]

Ah...thanks for the clarification on the AES-EBU deal...wasn't sure. Good to know though I don't imagine anybody is going to run out and get digital XLR's for analog runs...

I've noticed that the quality of the solder joints really suffer on the cheap cables...they might look nice on the outside, but poor quality solder or terminal cup material plating...dunno but they're just ugly.

jbucla, you should be golden with your Hosa interconnects.