expensive cables, worth it ?

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Wide Awake

Wide Awake

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I am shopping for cables and I'm amazed by the price differences. Is there any real sonic difference ? I have thick Monster cables for my stereo speakers and I think they do sound good but I wonder if they really make much a difference. I make music for myself and I don't need the upmost quality but I also don't want to be cheap and not get good audio. Anyone have opinions on cables ? BTW-if Monster Cable ever goes public I would probably buy their stock...they seem to have the home theatre/stereo market wrapped up !
 
I think you answered your own question when you said that you just make music for yourself.
If that's the case, then I wouldn't spend the extra dough.
But, if you ever want to get radio airplay or sell your recordings, then yes, get the best possible cables.
It really DOES make a big difference.
 
Don't think about it, if you can afford it get the best possible cables (notice I said best not most expensive-it does and doesn't follow). So many people spend thousands on a set-up and then try saving by having shit cables.

Bottom line-you want your equipment to work to it's potential?
 
I agree with the others...

In a test run by Keyboard Magazine a year or so ago - They tested a number of cables and found that sonically the cables didn't differ that much in performance...

However, they DID find that the more expensive cables LASTED longer than the cheaper ones...

Personally, I like the cables that have good metal ends with solder joints I can get at... I also really like using "Hosa" cables... These are sealed end cables (Plastic encased connections), but seem to have given me the best performance in patching situations... For my monitors, though - I did spend about 20.00 bucks each for tip-ring-sleeve metal ended cables that work really well...

You could also consider soldering your own if you're handy with an iron...

Hope this helps...
 
I Recommend Doing A Search Under "Cable" Here

Also, you're not gonna go wrong with Belden, Canare, Mogami, Monster Cable. There are a few others if you're interested...
 
RE... didn't you buy like a 1000ft of Canare Star Quad(is that what it's called???) a while back... how's that working out?
 
You Got It!!!

Oh so nice... I still have about 300' left. Don't worry guys. Soon, Ed the sonusman is going to be doing a mic cable shoot-out like he did before but with 5 or 6 or 7 "standards of the industry" I sent him...
 
I’m new to this bbs, yet I find myself about to type words I must have said a hundred times before. Why does it surprise me?

Riverdog is right. The only thing good cables gain you is reliability - solid connections and less likely to break. If you want to pay more for better “sounding” cables, then go right ahead. I’ll just buy sugar pills because they’re much less expensive. There are also double-blind studies published in the Journal of the AES to back this up, but still it just stands to reason. Have you looked inside any of your components lately? There are resistors, capacitors, inductors, transformers, transistors and miles of copper traces in the signal path. Do you really believe a few extra feet of cable will make much difference?… Bla, Bla, Bla……….

Don’t believe me? Read the SCIENCE. Then buy solid, reliable cables and let’s not waste any more time on this tired subject.
 
I disagree...
Even if you do something as simple as plugging in your home stereo speakers with 8-guage wire, and then plug in the same speakers with 16-gauge wire... there is a noticeable sound difference.
The same goes for mic and guitar cables when you are doing digital recording, only the effect on the sound is even more noticeable. Cheaper cables make noise just by stepping on them or moving them around... is that what you want to hear on your digital recording?
I don't know all the technical aspects of it, but I know what my ears tell me... and cheapo cables are NOT comparable to the high end stuff.
Have you ever had your music professionally mastered at $75 to $100 an hour, barefoot? I have. And a good sound engineer CAN hear the difference. It might not be a huge difference, but if you ever want to hear your music on the radio, that could be the one thing that holds you back from airplay.
If that wasn't true, then all the top studios and radio stations around the world would be using Hosa and Radio Shack cables.
According to your logic, a Yugo will get you around town just as good as a Mercedes... I don't think so.
 
I don’t know what sort of logic Buck62 is following but it’s not mine. A better analogy to this situation is a bunch of big cities, full of narrow streets and traffic lights. The cities are connected by quarter mile long super highways 20 lanes wide. We are civil engineers who want to improve the commute, but we’re on a tight budget. So here’s the question. Do we spend our scarce time and money on widening some city streets and removing stoplights, or do we make all of our highways 40 lanes wide? The smart engineer knows to work on the cites.

Upgrade your mics, monitors and electronics first (in that order). Avoid Buck62’s cheapo noise makers and buy fancy cables when you have money to burn.

And as far as his 8 gauge speaker wires – bulky expensive placebos.

I'm done.
 
This Guy's Laying Down The Law

I think I might A Spotted A Potenial A Flame A Startin'...

Buy the way. This is ART. Not SCIENCE.

I think Ed the sonusman needs to post his mic cable shoot-out again. Or, hopeully he can do the shoot-out with the cables I sent him, soon.

Maybe this guy's using as high of quality monitors as he is cables...
 
8 gauge vs 16 gauge. I've never used 8, but between 12 and 16, there is certainly a difference. Resistance is resistance and the bigger the cable, how many strands, how good quality the metal itself is - is science.

I do find many of these cable manufacturers go a little over the top in their marketing stratagies and some of their claims. It doesn't matter that your signal than passes through various transformers, resisitors, op amps etc.. The idea is to optimize ever link in the chain. I mean, it will end up being played back on shitty systems, does that mean everyone should just record with a getto-blaster?

I bought some star-quad, and although I can't tell a significant difference, it is there. Star-quad is kinda odd stuff, I mean, sure 2 wires for + and -, big deal, why not just use 1 wire + and - with that combined guage to reduce the resistance? Surplus of 5 conductor cable... marketing ploy? :) It is nice stuff though, coils easy, pre-trained - that's what I like about it.
 
Ok, I guess I can’t resist a rebuttal.

Recording Engineer, according to your calculator the worst cable I found was #2368, having a roll-off corner frequency of about 30kHz. I’ll grant you that this is audible, but this was for the 50m preset cable length. Are you normally in the practice of running you mic cables 150+ feet? I would suggest throwing a preamp in there. Changing to a more reasonable length of 5m pushes any hint of roll-off out beyond 50kHz and the corner frequency out beyond 200kHz. Any passband transient degradation or phase distortion introduced by these cables will be dwarfed by the effects of the antialiasing filters on your ADC. Not to mention that just a few degrees temperature change, or a low pressure zone moving in, altering the mic and monitor responses will have at least as significant an effect on your sound as these cables. I know this because I spent a few years designing speakers for a living.

8 gauge –vs- 16 gauge speaker wire? For 5m cables that’s a 0.012 Ohms difference between the two cables which translates to a 0.2% change in series resistance for an average 8 Ohm speaker. Capacitive and inductive effects are even less. Maybe a well trained listener might be able to perceive this – maybe. But once again, manufacturing tolerances and small variations in temperature, pressure, listening position, etc will wash this effect out. Furthermore, I guarantee most speakers are not designed and optimized using 8 gauge wire. I use 10ft of 12 gauge OFHC as my standard. Even if I agreed that it mattered, I still say you’ve probably picked the wrong wire.

I never said test instruments can’t detect differences in cables. I said double-blind studies show that humans cannot detect these differences. And, if you read the papers, you’ll see that they did include “golden ear” experts in the studies.

Mantra: Spend your money where it matters.
 
Hear,Hear!

I agree.I can hear the difference between those Rca cables that're in the box when you buy a CD player and say Monster cable,but I personally can't hear a diff between the mid priced Monster and the 1000 series (certainly not $50 per cable's worth of difference!)And now that I've got a digital multitrack,a digital mixer,and a CD recorder with digital inputs and I'm having to get to know digital cables as well as analog,I would venture an opinion that there's a lotta hype in them hills as well,'cause a $49 Apogee S/PDIF 2 meter cable so far hasn't yielded a noticeable improvement to my ears compared to a $14.99 Whirlwind.It does look cool,though,all purple and shiny...
 
Try Again

Well barefoot:

What you fail to realize is that every cable on there is Mogami. Not really considered "cheap" cable "sound"-wise; maybe cost-wise (but ONLY when you consider the cost compared to Monster Cable). Otherwise, it's usually considered "expensive" cable.

How about putting in the specs. for Pro Co or Hosa or any other cable you might use?

Even when I put the specs. in for my Canare L4E6S, anything longer than 12' looks shitty on paper; especially when you compare the frequency response to the Mogami star-quad on paper. Yet oddly enough, I think the L4E6S sounds damn nice even at 40'; I bought 1k' of it.

Even more odd, when I switch back and forth between L4E6S and ANY Pro Co cable I've had my hands on, speaking through only an AKG C1000 and listening through AKG 240 headphones or my 20/20bas monitors, I notice a HUGE difference; most substantial being that the L4E6S has A LOT more high-end than the Pro Co.

"I said double-blind studies show that humans cannot detect these differences."

How about your own "test" as simple as above? Hell, my girlfriend can hear the difference. How's that for "“golden ear” experts in the studies"?

virtual.ray:

For me, there is not enough difference between the cable I already do use (various models of Canare, Gotham, Mogami, and a few others; I could be more specific if you'd like) and Monster 1000 or even Monster 500 to justify buying the 1000 or 500. But compare Pro Co, Hosa, or any other cable barefoot might use to some Canare, Gotham, Mogami, or something of that caliber, and I think you'll find "enough difference" approval.

Emeric:

To read about "the point" of star-quad cable, go to http://www.canare.com/starquad/html
 
My new "Anti-Flaming" Policy...

prevent's me from saying that barefoot is deaf....:D

So, I will say maybe that he doesn't "listen" to his recordings???

Okay, enough with the slams. Just couldn't resist on this one because I have been where he is at.

I DID compare about 4 different grades of wire a few months ago. The test consisted of putting a mic in front of my studio monitors and recording the same sample of a song using the same mic, preamp, soundcard. Just changed the cables.

I posted the results as .wav files, and a few people actually went through the 18-25MB download to hear it (it took me three days of on and off uploading to get that stuff on my ftp...). Anyway, everyone who was listening to this stuff through studio monitors agreed that the the Monster Studio Pro 1000 cable sounded more open, with better resolution and detail then the others that where tested against it.

I DO agree though that making good investments into mics, preamps, and even studio monitors and monitor amp is probably going to net you better results though. But once you are there, high quality wiring is a must to realize the potential of that nice gear. Using barefoots "city" analogy, the inner cities may have great traffic flow, but between them, it would suck. Anyway....

If you can afford good wire, get it!!! Avoid Hosa, it is not durable at all!!! and cannot be fixed is it ever get a bad connection (because of the molded plastic ends....). Mogami and Canare are standards in big time studios (have been for a long time, and certainly you can hear the difference between their recordings and yours...) , and it isn't just the talent), and for good reason.

Ed
 
Hey Ed

Speaking of cable, I can't get my hands on that Ramtech cable for at least another 2 wekks; so...
 
I bought high quality Neutrik TSR and XLR connectors for $3.00-$3.50 each and Canare StarQuad cable for $0.65 ft. Now I can make a 12' top quality mic cable for about $15. Why would I not want to do that?
 
Barefoot,

Besides doing the math, you should check out a couple different cables for yourself. When I made the upgrade from Hosa/ProCo cables to Mogami, I HEARD a noticeable difference. To me that's what count's... what you hear. It remains to be seen if the price differences between Monster 1000's and Mogami or Canare (other "high-end" brands) are justified, because I consider my Mogami cable to be real good. But there IS an audible difference between "low-end" stuff and "higher-end" brands. Many world-class studios use Mogami, Monster and other high-end brands. Believe you me, they don't waste money on stuff that really doesn't matter. Fortunately for me and others on this site, we found this to be true.

The more and more I live (not that old, 27), the more and more I'm amazed at the comments from people regarding the finer points of high-end recording. People, equipment manufacturers and designers don't waste time and money on stuff that don't matter! When you buy a Neumann, you pretty much know that you're getting a mic that has quality parts, that will last a recording lifetime and will give you a "certain", desireable sound. When you buy a Neve or Avalon mic preamp, you know.... The same thing goes for cables. Don't think that your ProCo's are going to compete with Monster, Mogami or the like. Life does not work that way, as much as we would like it to.

I'm not saying go out and buy $2,000 worth of cable for the heck of it. I'm just saying buy atleast a minimum amount of cables where it's most critical (mic-->mic pre; mic-pre-->recorder; recorder-->mixer; mixer-->amp; amp-->monitors). Even if it's just 2 channels on this wire chain, then atleast you'll know that you've got two ultra clean and pristine channels. If you're even more "on the cheap", then you could eliminate the recorder-->mixer and mixer-->amp cables and just substitute the first two cables for them during mixdown (assuming that you're mixing down from a two track source... i.e. computer DAW stereo out). What's the sense in spending $1000 for a mic pre, $X000 for a mic, loads of money for processors, plug-ins and recorders... only to put all of your signal through noisy and CHEAP cables.... some things just make you go "hmmm".

Rev E
 
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