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[Klaus Heyne]

I would like to have an intelligent discussion about the audio quality of interconnect cables.

'Interconnect cables' defined as:

1. multi-conductor cables between tube mic and a power supply

2. XLR cables between  phantom-powered or non-powered mics and pre amps, or between power supplies preamp.

'Intelligent discussion' defined as one that:

1. Uses the most articulate terms possible to describe audible impressions.

2. Suggests scientific methodologies to verify, if at all possible, listening impressions.

3. Proposes or reports about experiences with comparative test set ups that eliminate as many stray, foreign inputs which may contaminate test results as possible.

4. Correlates certain construction features of cables to audible impressions.

5. Does not waste time arguing that all cables sound the same, because no scientific proof of cables' differences in sound can be obtained.
Because I hear audible differences in cabling, I am not interested in opinions which deny my experience. Please have that discussion somewhere other than my forum.


I'd like to limit participation in this discussion to those who have seriously, and over  time, experimented with audio cabling for microphones, and thus, may be experienced with audible differences through practice.

Why the discussion?

The immediate impetus was a recent thread on another forum which, no offense intended, did not seem very productive, maybe because the discussion was meandering off topic.

More to the point: I do periodic cable testing for manufacturers who would like me to endorse their products, and for manufacturers who are new to the field of mic cables and would like to get my help in the development stage.

The bottom line so far:
I have not had much good to report  to and about manufacturers of mic cables.

Almost by default I have used  for many years now  mic cables, both multi-conductor and XLR,  I regard as the least offensive of the bunch: Gotham's double Reussen layer products (also marketed by Neumann, and in former times supplied as OEM  to AKG, Neumann, and others by the Austrian Doerfler company)

I say by default, because I am not 100% satisfied with the Gotham product-
despite a largely frequency neutral, fast and highly resolved delivery of audio, and despite the fact that this cable seems to have the least amount of congestion and grit in the upper mids when bombarded with complex wave forms, it nevertheless is a tad bass shy and un-robust in the mid bass region.

I have tested all the well known products, established and emerging, which in my opinion range from inoffensive but too sluggish (Belden's rubber products) to downright nerve-assaulting, with high frequency sizzle and offensive congestion in the upper mids (too many brands to mention here)

In conclusion I'd like to make one more observation:

Good audio reveals itself to my ears not at its frequency extremes but at its ability to reproduce the broad mid range in a relaxed, inoffensive, time-aligned manner. (Stubblebine's Theorem)
That's why I still use the Gotham product, despite its shortcomings.

Let me know what I have missed out there in the market place, or in my goal to discuss the subject in a different, more productive manner than was done in the past and on other forums, and how we may advance towards the Holy Grail.

Kind regards,

[Yannick Willox]

Klaus, thanks a lot for resurrecting this discussion in your forum.
I sincerely hope your guidelines will be respected.

Since years we have been upgrading our monitoring chain (including cables) and frontend. Mic cables have been neglected thus far. Problem is, how does one pay for 200-400m of extremely expensive cable ?

I will follow this thread with great interest, the only thing I can add (for now) is that I have been using Gotham mic cable (VLZ and star quad and a Gotham 12 pair snake) for 6 years now. We never did  thorough testing, but we tend NOT to use our other brands of cables/snake, since we upgraded our monitoring.

So, on a subconsious level it would seem that we do prefer the Gotham cables.

We still have to do some tests - in collaboration with the designer - with solid core silver interconnects (unshielded) that could be used for balanced microphone use. As a note of interest, we use these for line level connections, but they're difficult to construct (and easy to destruct ?) on lengths above 2m. But the raw material originates from a Boeing 747's wiring.

I suspect the absence of shielding could have a benign effect (apart from the predictable disastrous ones !), but using rather unflexible solid wire could introduce some microphony problems (which become an issue working at mic levels). I remember reading an article on using expensive unshielded Kimber (?) cables, where part of the conclusion was : more detail and less (!) noise.

I will report back on this, but it will take some time.

[Daniel_Dettwiler]

Hello

I hope that this is informatic, it is based on several personal test that I have done in the last 16 months. Sorry for bad english.


Mic Cables imo are a very important thing in the signal chane, and the choice of cable I take as serious as the choice of the converter I use. Oposite a Mic or a mic pre where personal taste is an issue for a converter or a cable there is no such thing as personal taste, the more transparent the better.

The difficulty imo with comparisions is to make sure to really listen to the difference in the cable. If a singer sings in a mic, then you change the cable and the singer sings again the difference in the tone produced by the singer is much bigger than the difference of the sound of the cable.

One interessting test I and a friend of mine have done was that we splittet the output of a brauner vm1 (the XLR Output of the powersuppley) with a mic splitter into 3 outs. the 3 outs went to a GML 8304 Preamp (then to a meitner 8 channal converter). From the output of the VM1 Suppley we used a  very short cable. Then we connected three identical cables (with identical lenth) to the 3 outputs into the GML. This was to check that the outputs of the splitter and the inputs of the GML all were identical. We listened carefully and did phase filp tests to make sure that this was the case.
Then we used 3 different cables. There was a quite big difference, certainly bigger than I thought, and with a good monitor system easy to hear for everybody. For all the peoples involved (Me as soundengineer, my friend the Mastering Engineer, one other engineer and two musicians) there was no question of taste, it was just a clear order of which cables sounded the most transparent and uncolored while not "stressy" and agressive.

Another test we have done was that we thought the difference in cables should also be there with linelevel signals. If so, it should be more easy to do tests. One test we did was that we had a musictrack in the DAW going out of a Meitner 8 Channal AD (2 times stereo) and go to directly to the Meitner AD, using different cables for the stereo pairs. The difference where a little harder to hear, yet still there and very well reproducable. We recorded the signals that went throug the DA/AD back to the DAW, so we could also compare to the original.

So to sum up (without going to much into the details)

Some of the most expensive cables seemed to have much better marketing then sound...

Some that I liked:

The Gotham

(which one did you use? Please edit the model into your post, for clarity, then remove my note- K.H.)

was a good cable, very equal in frequency response imo and not "stressy", not harsh, very enyoing. However it seems to me that it is not great on transients, and it is not able to reproduce the depth of field information absolut corectly.

The Epilog Kabel (Sommercable). Very Equal in frequency response, extremly transparent. Does not have the shortcommings of the Gottham. It is more expensive, but still payable. Klaus: I am sure you would like that cable!

The Vovox Cable:
New on the marked, made by a swiss firm. I am still checking that cable, but I think it is extremly interesting. Very good on transients and depth of field information. A little (really only a little) stessed on the range between 2 and 5 khz.
Btw: Dirk Brauner was totally convinced by this cable, and the more expensive of his tube mikes now comes with a vovox cable to connect the Mic to the Power supply.

(Not the KHE! I hated that cable's coldness, constriction and stridency in the midrange- K.H.)

I am currently also comparing the Vovox-Brauner Cables to the original Braunercables.

(He used different cables over the years- K.H.)

Difficult to find a setup where one is really listenig to the cables and not other attributs.

Thanks
Daniel Dettwiler
idee und klang studio
www.ideeundklang.com

[Gunnar Hellquist]

Hi,
  I must also add that I find this discussion very interesting. Hopefully some of you could post some example sound files for us to listen to. I´ve long been under the impression that the difference simply has to be very small, and here is possibly the time for me to change opinions.

I do have one suspicion that you could perhaps help me out with. The suspicion is that depending on the kind of source you connect it may be more or less susceptible to the difference. I would guess (guessing, not postulating) that, say, a band microphone with transformer output may incur more difference than, say, a transformeless condensor microphone of modern design.
(Has not been my experience. The timbre of the cable stays intact throughout the ranges of microphone types and brands- K.H.)
And since all my mics right now are modern transformeless, that might be the part of the reason I so far has not heard much of a difference.

Gunnar

[Soundboy]

I would like to shed light on a seldom mentioned yet extremely important consideration - the cables orientation relative earths magnetic field.

For me, the enligtenment took a while. I never quite felt that I got the silky smooth highs that I was supposed to get from my equipment. The imaging was flat and there was a tangiable lack of flexibility in the upper low bass.

Then one day I was struck by how great everything sounded. The problems were almost gone and a friend (who has great ears and knows my gear) who came by asked if I had installed new power outlets or something since he could immediately hear the improvement!

But I couldn't for the life of me figure out WHY the sound had gotten so much better all of a sudden. I was about to give up when I suddenly noticed it: All of the cables on the studio floor were all aligned exactly in the west-east direction!

The very next session I tried something out: I made sure to orient all loose cables in the west-east direction. This was a rock-jazz type band with two violins and a banjo.
To my dissapointment I heard the exact same dissapointing sound I had always had. I was devastated until I suddenly realized that I had put all cables in the east-west direction, not west-east!
After re-cabling I immediately got that sweet tone again.

Instead of resting on my laurels I had a contractor rewire all installed cable the following week.

But that couldn't solve all problems, I still had to go considerable distances (in the wrong direction) with loose cable. So last winter I had the control room moved to the eastern wall. Boy was it worth it!

Whenever I cannot place musicians on a straight west-eastern line (and is forced to draw cables in the nort-south direction) I make sure to grab a long cable and lay it out like a high frequency square wave moving towards the source - to maximize the distance in the west-east direction.

/Magnus

[smj]

Soundboy wrote on Fri, 01 April 2005 14:19

I would like to shed light on a seldom mentioned yet extremely important consideration - the cables orientation relative earths magnetic field.

Now that is far out.  This is definitely getting into the "Voodoo Audio" realm....lol.

Sean Meredith-Jones

[Soundboy]

Ha! Got you.

/Magnus

[Daniel_Dettwiler]

Quote:

Hopefully some of you could post some example sound files for us to listen to. I´ve long been under the impression that the difference simply has to be very small, and here is possibly the time for me to change opinions.

That would be no problem, I could upload the files to a server. Maybe even with fantasy name, so you do not know what you listen.

Daniel Dettwiler
www.ideeundklang.com

[Barry Hufker]

I have heard differences in cables but I have always contended that outside of things like shielding, the sound of a cable is not due to exotic materials or special winding (layout within the cable jacket).  It seems to me it is a large matter of source & load impedance and cable capacitance.  Does anyone think it is truly more than that?

If it is, then how practical is it to work with such cables?  I do more location recording than studio work.  It would be horribly expensive to run the number of wires I have to while making them suffer in dirty areas (such as under stages) and through brass player spit.  Even for a conventional classical session, I want the best possible sound, but what is realistically to be done?


Barry

[Klaus Heyne]

Barry Hufker wrote on Sat, 02 April 2005 09:44

... It seems to me it is a large matter of source & load impedance and cable capacitance.  Does anyone think it is truly more than that?

That would logically imply that all cables with roughly the same capacitance over the same length and connected to the same identical mic and preamp would sound the same, which they definitely do not.
There goes that theory.

Quote:

...how practical is it to work with such cables?  I do more location recording than studio work.  It would be horribly expensive to run the number of wires I have to ...

That implies a correlation between cable price and performance.
(Manufacturers of expensive cables would probably welcome your assumption!-
But do we know that this is so? I am not sure.)

The GAC 3 Gotham cable I use (and I use it not because it is cheap) costs about  50 cents retail/foot.

The MIT cable I auditioned a while back costs ca. $100.-/foot. It had so many artifacts that I would not use it, even if given to me for free.

[Barry Hufker]

Well Klaus, I am not so sure.  I think that theory was too easily dismissed.  Has someone measured cable capacitance and actually done this experiment?  Surely the impedance of the cable has got to be a factor, after all a low impedance cable will pass signal better than a high impedance one.  And I would question how carefully controlled capacitance is from spool to spool in a production run.

Monster Cable visited the university some time back.  They demonstrated their "high tech" cable (along with all the voodoo that goes with it) and I heard an improvement over the cable we were using (nothing fancy).  Then they demonstrated their "jazz" cable using a guitar and amp.  Again I heard a difference between a conventional cable and this one.  The sound was "mellower" than the other.  Assuming the cable characteristics were developed and not found by accident, the results had to mean they knew something about how to consistently achieve that sound.  I attribute "mellower" to reduced high frequencies caused by capacitance.

Having been a reader of The Absolute Sound and Stereophile for a number of years, every so often some "authority" touts one cable as superior to all others.  A few years ago that was standard Radio Shack wire.  Then it became lamp cord.  Most recently orange outdoor extension cord (at least 14 gauge) from Home Depot was considered to be the "best money can buy."  If this is true, based on their listening experiences (and forgive me for including heresay as I haven't done these tests but am trying to report here a pattern of results by people who do these tests frequently), then it seems an actual "theory" of wire physics is not really any better than shear accident.

And again, until someone actually does the experiment mentioned above, I hold this theory (capacitance/impedance) is just as valid as any other.

And I would go further in saying, I would suggest it is not just "static" impedance but whatever changing impedance there would be in an actual "dynamic" signal.

Barry

[Plush]

We are using Gotham GAC 3, Mogami 2554 and Gotham purple AES for mic cables.

Sometimes we will solder the shield of the GAC3 to the
Deltron (UK)xlr connector according to the instructions in the Gotham white paper.  

After many years of comparison and listening, we hear most new cables as "different" but not "better."

We have abandoned Canare Star Quad because of its high capacitance and generally bright sound.

We believe that even an inexpensive properly engineered mic cable is just as good as an exotic cable.

[Klaus Heyne]

Quote:

Surely the impedance of the cable has got to be a factor, after all a low impedance cable will pass signal better than a high impedance one. And I would question how carefully controlled capacitance is from spool to spool in a production run.

Barry,
I do not neglect capacitance and impedance of a cable. You cannot defy physics.
Factors like impedance and capacitance can be correlated readily to output at a given frequency. (Maybe that is how Monster mellowed their 'Jazz' cable?)

But I  have tried for many years to correlate the specific sound of a cable to specific detectable (or even measurable) factors.

What is not easy to correlate to "static" measurements, as I called them, like impedance, capacitance and even reactance is timbre, resolution, speed and congestion.

There, it may be an issue of materials used, manufacturing techniques applied, stranding amounts and thickness and so on...
All factors that can currently be evaluated only with the human ear, not much else.

And as such, these parameters of cable design are vulnerable to misinterpretations and lack of listening skills, and as such, manufacturers may shy away from implementing them.

[Barry Hufker]

Pardon me Klaus -- and pardon me all contributors.  I don't mean to be argumentative.  I think the discussion so far is interesting, but I am quite concerned about what is being said here.

So far the information provided is anecdotal.  "I have listened to these cables and have found these differences."  To truly be any kind of believable evaluation, the test must be double blind.  The brand and type of the cables would not be known by the tester (the first blind) or the group of experienced listeners (second blind).  Ony then when listening to various cables and making an assessment can anything be truly known, even if it can't be presently measured.  Anything else may be personally useful but not useful to us all.

And again please forgive me Klaus, but I am not sure we have a clearly understood definition for words like "resoution" "speed" and "congestion."  These obviously mean something to you but I don't understand for instance what you mean by them.  "Resolution" is "detail and clarity" I assume.  "Speed" may have something to do with transient response or slew?  "Congestion" is an emphasis on certain frequencies or is it a lack of clarity, which then would be resolution?

While I think a genuine double blind test should be done.  I wonder here and now if any kind of consensus could be reached as to which audio cable is "best."  Surely as trained listeners we would know what sounds best to us.  I wonder if we can agree on a rating from some sort of "best" to "worst."  If so, then we could evaluate the construction and other similarities of the best cables to learn what may be common among them that could create their fine qualities.

My guess is that we can't reach a consensus as to which is best, just as we couldn't with a microphone.  That's why there are horse races.  But nonetheless, I would like all those who are interested (and who are not financially related to any cable manufacturer) to identify which cable to them is best and which is the one they consider to be worst in their experience.

Klaus, does this have any merit?  And if so how can we assemble the reports into readable data?  A poll?

Thanks!

Barry

[wwittman]

I always do A-B's blind...
I record one, then the other and have it set up by someone else so that whenI do the A-B playback I don't know which is which.

But I also believe strongly in both "anecdotal" evidence, as that's how the LISTENER listens to our records.. not with test equipoment, AND in first or early impressions for the same reason.
If it takes repeated 'critical' listening to discern a difference, I think it's mostly going to be wasted on the final consumer.
I want that FIRST impact to be glaringly "better" subjectively.
Much like smell, i think hearing becomes adapted over time.
I want that first impression to yield a clear preference or I call it a draw.

Having said all that, it's funny but I ALWAYS liked that Gotham/Neumann cable as well.
Something told me instinctively that it just sounded better. Consistently.

I'm currently interested in testing another XLR mic cable but I have not yet.
I switched to their instrument cables in the last year (1/4" phone, 2 conductor 'guitar' cables) and I found they made an enourmous difference.
So I'm eager to give their mic cables a try soon.