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Ed Fisher
DC
Joined: 05 Sep 2012
Posts: 605
Location: East Coast, U.S.A.
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 Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 11:20 am Post subject: The CABLE Fable? |
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Monster, Mogami, etc.
I once listened to a podcast interview with a top level VO guy who talked about how the Cables he uses are super important in his work. As if it were the "secret sauce" in his productions.
Now, the engineer in me wants to think that a "connection is a connection"...an "electron is an electron"...that any decent cable is electronically identical to any other.
BUT....there are plenty of heavy hitters in this forum who deal in what actually works for them in the REAL WORLD...and not in the theoretical.
I would be interested in knowing if AUDIO WISE anyone feels that the brand of cables you use makes ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL.
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Bish
3.5 kHz
Joined: 22 Nov 2009
Posts: 3738
Location: Lost in the cultural wasteland of Long Island
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 12:01 pm Post subject: |
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... and there are Audiophiles that pay $21,000 for three meters (ten feet) of Audioquest Everest with "Counter-Spiralling" and "Spread Spectrum" technology. Yeah.
Anyone who has ever had a cable fail at a critical time knows pain... but as long as you stick to "good" (as opposed to "crappy") cables you are fine. My personal rules are non-moulded plugs and gold plated pins on my input signal chain. MonoPrice Premier series are fine for me... I've never had one fail (but I have spares for emergencies). I'm an engineer by training and inclination and I will argue until the cows come home about just because something is technically better by the numbers it does not mean that it is actually better in any practical situations.. Audiophiles and evangelists are are strange bunch... there was that guy that designed and built his whole house around giving a stable platform for his record turntable. Oy!
... and apart from anything else, Monster has been discredited as marketing hype and BS 
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
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ricevoice
Cinquecento
Joined: 28 Dec 2007
Posts: 532
Location: Sacramento, CA
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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The market for those $40,000 cables (yes they actually exist) is basically just really rich guys who just want to be able to tell their friends how expensive their sound system is. That happens in pretty much any type of consumer good... a friend just told me about a reality tv show where one of those "Real Housewives" went $350,000 over-budget for new kitchen cabinets. If you're stupid and have stupid amounts of money to spend, there's always a manufacturer or contractor willing to help you part with said money.
Mogami cables aren't cheap but they are reasonably priced... if the rest of your mic chain is over $1000, $50-100 worth of cables from what appears to be a pretty universally accepted brand is a sound investment in your business. And you're paying not just for materials but for build-quality. Some of my Mogami cables are over 10 years old and they've never failed me. I have no way of knowing if cheaper ones would've died by now but why take the chance over a $20 savings?
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todd ellis
A Zillion
Joined: 02 Jan 2007
Posts: 10491
Location: little egypt
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 5:06 pm Post subject: |
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mogami, canare ... i like those. good quality, reasonable price.
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Glenn Moore
Been Here Awhile
Joined: 24 Jan 2005
Posts: 240
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 6:09 pm Post subject: |
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| How long should you use a mic cable before replacing it with a new one? When you start to hear noise? Or a few years??? |
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Bish
3.5 kHz
Joined: 22 Nov 2009
Posts: 3738
Location: Lost in the cultural wasteland of Long Island
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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My personal regime is to periodically "waggle" the cable as it enters the shroud and generally abuse it a little. If a cable is going to fail, it's usually at one of the ends, so the occasional stress-test will prove how it's coping. The slightest audible disturbance relegates the cable to the bin and the spare is installed and another ordered. This has happened once in ten years since I standardized on the MonoPrice cables. Before that, the moulded-end cables failed with alarming regularity. So, it's when I can force a fail, rather than waiting for one.
The audiophile comments earlier were a bit flippant... but the principle holds true... cheap will let you down, but once you get to certain quality level, any more is just redundant. We are talking about runs up to 12/15 feet... if I was running 30+ feet in a hostile environment, or where I was breaking down the system on a nightly basis, I may look more closely at physical construction and shielding (RFI/EMI are you enemies!)
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Bish a.k.a. Bish
Smoke me a kipper... I'll be back for breakfast.
I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls... I will not feed the trolls. |
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Jack Daniel
Cinquecento
Joined: 23 Jun 2016
Posts: 576
Location: SoCal
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| Posted: Sat Nov 26, 2016 11:03 pm Post subject: |
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| ricevoice wrote: | | ...basically just really rich guys who just want to be able to tell their friends how expensive their sound system is... |
Truth. Which is not to say that returns of a nearly infinitesimal degree can't be had for that extra $40 thou; just that the insanely great can be the enemy of the very, very good.
I've spent very good money on speakers, amps, and the other accoutrement of excellent sound reproduction, because I love it. But I've never gotten anywhere near the way-major esoterica chased by the way-major-moneyed. If I had the cash to burn, I might just well blow a superwad on crazy-spec'd cables. But I doubt it. I have gear lust as much as the next guy, but I also have a gear-lust governor (aside from my pesky financial restraints) that steps in and says "whoa, li'l fella."
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FinMac
Lucky 700
Joined: 14 Jan 2013
Posts: 705
Location: In a really cool place...Finland!
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| Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 2:00 am Post subject: Re: The CABLE Fable? |
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| Clutter Ash wrote: |
I would be interested in knowing if AUDIO WISE anyone feels that the brand of cables you use makes ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL. |
That is a very interesting (and potentially expensive) question you raised.
I use Belden 9182 cable for my 416, Gotham with the Bock Audio 195, and Vovox with the TLM 103. Just going by what sounds best to my ears, for what that is worth!
Got interested in this same subject some time ago, especially after reading these comments by Jim Williams of Audio Upgrades. His clients range from Dolly Parton to Stevie Wonder, and companies like Warner Bros. Pictures, Disney Corp, etc. So I imagine he knows his stuff.
Here is one post he wrote regarding cables...
"I use a lot of Belden 9182 lan network cable here for audio. It's low cost, 8 pf capacitance per foot and 14 ohms resistance for a 1000 foot length. 22 awg FEP teflon construction. It's also 150 ohms impedance, perfect for most microphones. The propagation delay is 78% the speed of light, quite good. It's made to carry 200 mhz data signals for thousands of feet, mostly between industrial buildings and facilities. Paramount pictures re-wired their entire foley building in Hollywood after I brought down some rolls of it to try with their modified Neumann KM-81 shotgun mics. You can hear it along with the Audio Upgrades High Speed mic preamp on every Paramount release since that 1995 Star Trek movie.
Compared to Gotham and other audio cables, it has a more open top end. It is also 100% shielded with foil. Most audio cables made with a single layer of mesh screening are only 85% effective.
The other cable I use here is Kimber AGSS pure silver/teflon. It's a 19 awg stranded wire in a 3 braid configuration. Besides having greater details than any audio shielded cable, it's also very quiet. Ray Kimber demoed his wire to me at his factory in Ogden, Utah. I brought my Belden wire, mics and preamps to test.
First thing I noticed with that unshielded 3 braid 20 foot run of silver wire was that all that background noise just went away. It was as if a noise gate was inserted but the audio was still all there. Ray looks at me and says, "pretty quiet wire, ehh?"
Meanwhile, I'm left dumbfounded explaining all that missing grunge I've been hearing all of my recording life. That wire did not pick up any EMI noise at all. I even wrapped it around the power transformers of his Krell power amps, still, no hum nor hiss nor grunge.
I left sold. I use it with my mics and a pair of 3 footers out of the analog console to the PCM4222 ADC. I use his wire inside all of my mics too. The console has it wired to the faders and mic inputs. It's just something you have to try yourself as I can't describe the sonics here.
I joke that I no longer wear jewelry, I listen through it".
Jim Williams
Audio Upgrades
Would love to try that Kimber Kable AGSS myself, but until 100 dollar bills start dropping from the sky, it will have to wait a while
Jim also wrote this interesting note in another post about Mic Cables...
"AES/EBU 110 ohm digital balanced cable will have less losses and stray capacitance than audio grade cables".
Anybody using these for mic cables ?
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Lance Blair
M&M
Joined: 03 Jun 2007
Posts: 2279
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 11:39 am Post subject: |
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Oi vey - I had taken the Mogami cables out of my studio and put in some decent but not top of the line cables from a reconfig - but now things are back the way they usually are. I change my room around in the summer because of noise issues.
I just put the Mogami back in. So much better! I just recorded on the end of a saved raw session file. Day and Night! More low end, smoother top.
I'll make sure to have enough Mogami length for the summer config in 2017!
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and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too! |
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DenaliDave
Club 300
Joined: 09 Jan 2016
Posts: 307
Location: Anchorage, Alaska
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| Posted: Sun Nov 27, 2016 2:42 pm Post subject: |
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Are you read for dry, red eyes and a headache?
LOL
I went down the cable rabbit hole. I read as much as I could get my hands on about the differences in cables...
In the end, the reality is that yes --there *IS* a difference in quality cables vs. cheapo cables.
However...the difference between say, medium to high end vs. extreme high end isn't as apparent. Just like with speakers, headphones and other audio gear -- the quality in sound gained shrinks as the price exponentially increases.
Mogami gold cables are pretty much what I've settled on as the best "high end" to price to quality cables. There's much, much more expensive cables out there (I can't remember what the ones I saw were called...).
I'm half tempted to get an inexpensive soldering iron so I can just make my own cables. I'd be able to make custom-length cables, and I'd know exactly what the quality of the connectors and cabling.
Neutrik connectors and mogami gold cabling...that's a pretty solid cable that you won't really notice any improvement by going more expensive.
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roger
King's Row
Joined: 30 May 2007
Posts: 1064
Location: Central Kentucky
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| Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2016 3:22 pm Post subject: |
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My go-to cable and connectors, mainly since I do a lot of location sound for TV, is Canare L-4E6S Star Quad cable for its incredible EFI and RF rejection. It is of a four conductor plus shield deign with 2 high and 2 low sides.
The insulation jacket is soft and pliable at any temperature and has no memory when winding up the cable.
For connectors nothing beats the Nuetrik XLR connectors because they are tough and mostly the fact that you repair them without tools and they provide good strain relief too.
The mic cable can lay side by side an AC cable with out producing AC hum.
I know I'm recommending this stuff for field work but this doesn't exclude them from studio use as well. They same advantages apply.
My two pence worth. YMMV.
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http://rogertremaine.voices.com/
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Ed Fisher
DC
Joined: 05 Sep 2012
Posts: 605
Location: East Coast, U.S.A.
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2016 8:54 am Post subject: |
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This is ALL..very good info.
Very valuable.
I was not familiar with Canare , but will be looking hard at them.
My studio is a spaghetti of wires, so RF rejection would be a very good thing and from what I gather since I'm only running less then 10 ft. normally, any supposed high frequency drop off compared to mogami should be minimal.
Thanks.
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SteveToner
Contributor IV
Joined: 03 Oct 2016
Posts: 101
Location: LA & Sundance
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Lance Blair
M&M
Joined: 03 Jun 2007
Posts: 2279
Location: Atlanta
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2016 4:26 pm Post subject: |
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We used 100% Canare when I used to work at a production house. Made all of our cables ourselves with spools of Canare and Neutrik connectors. They are excellent, robust cables.
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and now, http://lanceblairvo.com the blog is there now too! |
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chuckweis
Contributor IV
Joined: 27 Feb 2008
Posts: 136
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| Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2016 8:29 am Post subject: |
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The only cable I've heard a VO swear by in terms of making a very noticeable difference is the Vovox. I have no clue how they sound because I won't pay that much for cable.
I used to use Mogami but got some Blue Quad cable as part of a package deal, and thought why not try this pretty, new, green cable. It's not a night and day diff from the Mogami, but I really like it and use only the Blue now. |
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