mic cables...what's the deal?

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ghetto3jon

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hi.

what are the audible differences between cheap xlr cables and expensive ones? or is it just a durability thing?
 
I have never heard any audio diffs but reliability is another matter. The easiest way to get quality at a good price is to make your own. Get some good connectors i.e. Neutrik, Switchcraft etc. and some decent cable, Belden make a good range of gen. purpose twin core and solder your own. Practice on some cheap plugs first if it is all new to you.
Of course there are people on this Forum that will claim they can hear major diffs. in the sound of cables, I am just glad that I am not one of them, life is short enough as it is.
 
Yes, there really is a difference besides durability!
Sound quality is significantly denigrated by cheaper XLR cables.

Do a search on this...
I believe sonusman and Blue Bear have done comparisons (with audio clips) of the differences between the "cheap vs. quality" cables. You may be surprised at what you hear.

I can personally attest to the differences of cable quality.
My recordings have improved immensely with the better cables.
It makes mixing easier, too... because you can hear the subtle things much better.

Buck
 
Better mic cable usually means lower impedance. Lower impedance means that less energy is lost when you transmit from one end of the cable to the other. Less energy lost means both a hotter signal and better High Frequency reproduction. It also means things like less noise and distortion.

Better connectors can also have lower impedance (this is the primary reason for gold connectors, but this is really a marginal improvement over standard connectors), but more importantly means better strain relief of the cable ends. This ultimately means less failure/repair.

You can make your own "High Quality" cables at about half the cost of comparable quality store cables or roughly the same cost as the cheap cables. To do this buy good quality balanced cable such as Mogami Neglex Quad or Balanced Cable or Canare Star Quad cable with Neutrik connectors. If you are handy with a soldering iron you'll only spend 5-10 minutes making each cable.

You can buy cable and connectors from http://www.markertek.com
 
Mogami makes that Quad cable, but XLR connectors only have three pins. What is the purpose of the other wire? I think there is also a shield in addition to the 4 wires. Anybody know?
 
You double up the wires.

XLR has 3 pins one is for ground which goes to the sheilding wire on the cable, you then solder 2 wires to each of the remaining 2 wires.

The theory is: First with a bigger wire you will have less resistance and better sound. The second and more practical is that you now have 2 wires that need to break before the cable fails. Finally with 2 twisted pairs of wires you can reduce hum (like a humbucker sort of).
 
aaronscool said:
Better mic cable usually means lower impedance. Lower impedance means that less energy is lost when you transmit from one end of the cable to the other. Less energy lost means both a hotter signal and better High Frequency reproduction. It also means things like less noise and distortion.


Any decent Mic cable will have electrical characteristics that means it will perform well in the Audio frequency spectrum. Most of the tests show that any degredation in frequency response etc occurs in the VHF and above range.

Me, I listen to music not cable!
Click to expand...
 
Thank you Aaronscool! I was looking at the cable at Mars the other day, wondering what the deal was. You have answered my question!

This whole cable thing is a subjective matter. Some hear the differences and sone don't. I figure its worth a try for the cost of making one mic cable. I use the George L's stuff for my guitar and its great, so what the heck...
 
A great cable for studio mics is the monster cable studio line. It is so night and day you won't believe it. I participated in a demonstration by monster cable where they had us bring our favorite studio cable in and side by side test against theres. UNBELEIVEABLE!

I guess the low freq's travel down the center of a wire and the higher freq travel down the outer part of the wire.

They have figured a way to sort of time align the signals by how the core is wound. THe center of the cable which carries most of the low freq's has considerably less windings than the outer threads. The outer threads carry the hign freq's which move faster and usually arrive sooner. SO by lengthening the time it takes to get the hi freq"s there, it matches up better to the low freq.

I'm no mathmatician but I got good ears. I'm amazed by the sound difference.

Only down side is a 30' Monster cable XLR to XLR is like 90 bucks. OUCH!

BTW..they make guitar cables for JAZZ, ROCK AND COUNTRY. They each sound different using the same guitar. Go Figure!

Joe
 
mogami and canari are both good cable manafactures you should check into...of course there is Monster but thats way overpriced.
 
If high frequency moves faster than low frequency? Why don't I see blue light before I see red light? Frequency times Wavelength equals speed. I've got this bridge in brookl.....

Larrye
 
Monster Cable is a bunch of hooey. As far as I know they don't actually manufacture any of their own cable they just assemble it. They still buy from the big cable manufacturers like Mogami or Canare.
 
Can't say for sure about the red light blue light thing. But the two freq musttravel at different speeds. (why would we need time alignment?)Also, Why do I need so much more power to move Low Freq subs than High freq horns. It takes less power to travel farther. Maybe I have mis-stated what I was told but the ears don't lie.

It would be intersting for some of you with freinds in the business to take your favorite cable to thier shop and compare it to any other brands. They do sound different, I gaurentee it. You may or may not have a favorite cable now, but do a side by side and you will end up with one. Which ever it may be.
 
I've used up my personal allotment of cable advice on another forum, but I'll second Philboyd in saying that if Musician's Friend has the B. L. U. E. Kiwi (bright green with gold ends) mic cable for $30, it's a great buy on a reliable and well respected cable.

I paid more like $55 a piece (delivered price) for my Kiwi's.

Mark H.
 
I think that time-alignment is a crock of crap that they're feeding you so you spend more on a cable. Electrons are traveling down a wire like water in a tube. The electrons cannot pass in front of one another, just like the water in the back of the tube can't pass the water in front of it.

And that's way too deep anyway! You don't have "high-freqency waves" and "low frequency waves" in a wire. You have ONE continuous wave that is a superposition of all of them. This ONE wave does not spontaneously split up into different frequencies and somehow force certain electrons to move faster than other electrons.

I don't disagree that your ears heard a difference, but why are they demonstrating these wires in their store? Why don't they come out to your place and use your equipment, as you change the cables back and forth? Obviously, that's not good business, but the point is that this sounds just like a Bose demonstration. That's the kind of demonstration where you can't take your own CD's in and play them, but they have prerecorded music that could very well be altered slightly. Or, how are we to know that all of the equipment remains exactly the same for the two comparisons? Or, getting even more general, maybe it sounds better on their equipment, but maybe it sounds worse on yours.

There are just too many variables in a store-front environment. To really compare them, you should do your own BLIND test at home with several different people listening.

Personally, I believe a wire is a wire. The only thing that they can really improve is the impedence and the quality of the shielding--that is, the amount of signal lost to heat and the amount of interfering noise from external electric fields.

Think about it--if these electrons (which all have a fixed current), still somehow need time-alignment, then you need to go buy a new stereo, too. Your stereo isn't time-aligned. And I bet the windings in your speakers aren't time-aligned. Your speaker cables need to be time-aligned Monster Cables, too. Hell, there are a lot of power sources that use a superpostion of alternating current to achieve square and sawtooth waves. You need new power sources, too!
 
Also, the reason you need more power to produce low frequencies is because you need to move a heck of a lot more air. High frequencies are generated by very small wavelengths repeated quickly--the speaker cone does not travel far at all, but it goes back and forth very quickly. The subwoofer must move back and forth a tremendous amount to produce longer wavelengths. This means that the magnetic force necessary to repel the subwoofer must be large to get it out to that distance, thus there must be a large current and thus a large amount of power.
 
The cable area is the sector of the audio business that seems to have the most snake oil. I've had good service from good old ProCo mic cables...Belden wire and Neutrik connectors put together solidly. Cheap cables *will* fail prematurely...it's only a question of when. If the cable used is of the proper impedance, it will sound just fine.

As for the "Jazz, Rock, Country"-flavored guitar cords....smells fishy to me. Anyone do any double-blind comparisons, where the subjects didn't know what they were listening to?

TP
 
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