I’ve been making electronic music for 30 years now, and never once really thought to the existence of a cable tester, or its necessity…
… but the biggest bane to my studio is getting all my boxes patched up through a patchbay only to see the levels aren’t equal on the mixer displays. Often troubleshooting that becomes a minor nightmare of 8 possible cables for a basic routing (A4 to Chroma Console back to stereo mixer input for example).
Granted, issues like this can arise from the patchbay itself, but I suspect dying cables are more readily to blame.
Anyhoo, is a cable tester the answer to this dilemma in your experience? I imagine I’m not the only person who pulls their hair out trying to keep a stereo signal equally balanced through patchbay routings, yeah?
TBH I don’t use cable testers myself, no need for it yet. I noticed Devine (and other companies) have similar devices. Seems to test continuity and wiring order.
Yeah, that’s basically what I stumbled into. Honestly, I never much thought to their existence in the past.
In some ways this post is to see if anybody stands by them (or even uses them at all).
p.s. I’ve been doing this since about '93~, and while I cannot attest any of my cables are that old, I also cannot deny the possibility (you just collect stuff over the years, as other stuff flitters away). Could be I’m in a bit of a unique position given the potential age of my cables.
if you only need to test audio cables (mono/stereo) or even MIDI, you could get away with a cheap multimeter with continuity test, not that you can’t test other types of cables too but it ain’t that much fun for instance to check an ethernet cable with a multimeter
Setting up a test jig for any cable connector with a multimeter is easy enough, especially if you have a junk drawer. You can even do things then like test for Type A or B TRS MIDI, or for shorts, etc.
Junk Drawer Power
Wire, a resistor, a power source and an LED, is all you need for a continuity tester. ( post )
TIP : When testing any cable be sure to wiggle it while testing to find the intermittent failure. You’d hear a drop out in audio, but with MIDI a drop out can be a WTF ?
