yesterday we had a discussion about how big the difference (or not) between a cheap and a expensive cable is.
The discussion has been started by someone who bought a OT/A4/MD trinity recently and was asking for tipps regarding audio cables.
Someone told him that the difference is not audible especially with cables < 1m lenght.
Anotherone said, that there is clearly a difference between a cheap cable and a highend neutrik for example.
What is your opinion?
Balanced or Unbalanced?
What cables are you using to connect your gear?
The difference has mainly to do with noise. Unbalanced cables are cheaper and work on all type of connections, while balanced only work on some outputs/inputs. Balanced cables cancel out noise.
The more expensive unbalanced cables have better shieldings and connectors, so they are much less prone to noise. And they last longer when you need to move them alot.
Personally I like a little noise in a live recording. It makes it less sterile/more real to me. But for studio productions I can imagine you want to keep noise to a minimum
For me it’s about reliability and quality of construction.
Enough of those flimsy fragile cheap cables! we want military grade MIDI cables! Something worthy of the Elektron build quality! Elektron grade cables!
Yes, balanced on paper is less noisy…
in reality… I cannot hear the difrence… (but that doesnt mean it isnt there)
I usually went for the cheapest cable i could buy… (as short as possible)… and never had problems with that until… I found 1 pound-cables… suddenly i could recieve radio with some gear
so yeah… u can be to cheap… radio-interference i can hear…
from all the cables i bought the last 20odd years… the majority was just a “guitar-cable”
nice and thick… not to long… didnt replug most of them for a while. and it worked without troubles…
I think you are right saying that it can maybe make a difference in terms of noise, but there where people persist in saying that they can spot differences in the audio quality itself.
For example that a cheap sssnake cable with even cheaper connectors tend to thin out the signal and stuff.
I was also reading about that topic on gearslutz where quite a few people saying the same.
I was confused if this is just a myth or my listening skills are simply not advanced enough to spot the difference between a cheap sssnake and a much more expensive sommercable with neutrik connectors.
balanced connections reject ground hum, RF interference & other down the line noise better due to their out-of phase pin / core & are obviously a better choice particularly for longer runs.But of course this totally depends on you having gear with balanced connections to plug them into! No point plugging a TRS jack lead into an unbalanced synth out / mixer in ! So yeah, in an ideal world everything would be balanced - certainly eliminates any ground loop noise problems 90% of the time anyway.
But that’s it. Then you’re down to build quality & how much abuse your cables are going to take. Better quality cables & connectors = less chance of crackles buzzes & intermittent noises & bangs. More copper ( i.e… thicker cables ) do have more resistance, so theoretically they’re electrically better in terms of the fidelity of your end to end signal. But in practice I wire entire studios for people using multipair FST cables ( 2 core + earth, foil-screened ) where each discrete pair is only about 1mm sq. As long as your wiring is sound & you keep cables as short as possible you won’t have a problem.
But as for them ‘sounding’ different - it’s a load of hi-fi geek baloney. I truly defy anyone to say they can hear the difference in one cable from another.
Generally I prefer buying balanced cables these days, usually custom made with Neutrik connectors and Mogami quad cable by zenproaudio.com. Only slightly more than much cheaper cables, the build quality is amazing (these things are seriously sturdy), and lifetime warranty.
Why balanced? Because you can still use balanced cables with unbalanced connectors. So I don’t need to worry about if I have the right cables depending on which gear I’m using them with, balanced will work with anything (though obviously they will function as unbalanced cables with gear that has unbalanced sockets).
Cost is only a little bit more for balanced versus unblanced, so it’s worth it for me.
^
yep. me too T. I make all my own cables up & I always wire to TRS jacks, as you say it makes no difference with unbal gear as the Ring is just unused.
First thing that comes to my mind is obsolescence.
And I am not talking about gear only: relations between people has come to this as well…
Would you not agree?
I have used hi grade audio and usb cables, up to the point I realized (stupid me) my audio chain did not benefit these: between ADDA converters, electrical issues of a common household, it is clearly not adapted.
Though I have to say (nothing to do with quality) going from unbalanced to balanced results in a hum free audio setup
Food for thought:
Edit: so yes, for me, cables ARE a myth It is like having thousands of $$$ in hardware synths connected to a 100$ mixer… Which is very common based on the setups I see here
the question is more like, do u actually really need to spent those xtra bux for good cables…
in many many cases, the difference just does not result in such a big difference…
people stating there is no such thing, are also those who think 8 focusrite converters sound the same as this one hi end converter that costs twice as much as those 8 ones…
the whole biz is full of myth…but also full of math…