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Well the thing is better doesn't mean better quality here. Better means you can use a longer cable or abuse the cable for longer till it dies. This is a big pa
by atoav 7mo ago
Well the thing is better doesn't mean better quality here. Better means you can use a longer cable or abuse the cable for longer till it dies.
This is a big part of what makes any pro gear expensive: reliability. If you just connect your home hifi to your speakers in an acoustically untreated space, you could also just use a bunch of steel wire coathangers and get an indistinguishable result. Even a el-cheapo store brand music shop cable will do the trick for years if you don't habitually change your setup four times a week (most people don't).
But if you need reliability and predictability in a studio or live context giving a damn about cable quality is mandatory since a broken cable in the wrong place can ruin your day and reputation. But it is an absolute myth that they will affect the sound in any meaningful way.
Exeption: guitar cables. The capacitance of guitar cables can shift the resonance frequency of the pickup up or down leading to audibly different results. But that id no magic either, you could just take a low capacitance cable and add in arbitrary capacitor for 10 cents as needed.
- jmalicki 7mo agoI have seen shielding and gauge make quite a difference for cables carrying analog signals!
- atoav 7mo agoSure shielding is important, especially for high impedance signsls or very small signals (e.g. microphone cables). But the difference in shielding between a 10€ cable and a 100€ cable is not going to be audible in anything but edge cases. Gauge is only important if the driving or receiving sides suck or you're using ridiculously small gauges or driving high currents (e.g. speaker signals) for long distances. In my lab tests I drove line signals over a spool of hair thin wire without audible difference. A famous experiment that gave me a good chuckle came to similar results: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/copper-wire-vs-bananas-vs-mud-an-interconnect-test.420367/page-9#post-8235170 https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/copper-wire-vs-ba... You could literally use CAT 6 ethernet cables and call it a day. There have been tests running balanced audio signals over a kilometer of ethernet cable without audible loss. And since you got 4 twisted pairs you could run 4 channels over one cable (commercially available here for example: https://store.monkeywrenchpro.com/thomann-5fc-cat-snake-splitter-rj45-to-4-5-pin-xlr-female-tails/ https://store.monkeywrenchpro.com/thomann-5fc-cat-snake-spli...). I use this in combination with an ethernet patchbay to route signals around our event spaces and it works well even for unamplified mic level signals.
- jmalicki 7mo agoI have seen cables for powered computer speakers make cat5, or coat hangers, look amazing