I'm still trying to grasp this cable issue. Sorry beat a dead horse!!!!!!!!
So, how does a guitar cable (see the first one) become balance vs. coaxial?
QuoteIt is a balanced design (not coaxial like others)
http://www.analysis-plus.com/pro_guitarinstrument.html
When I test this cable, what should I test for besides capacitance and resistance?
Quote from: aron on November 16, 2007, 03:02:18 PM
I'm still trying to grasp this cable issue. Sorry beat a dead horse!!!!!!!!
So, how does a guitar cable (see the first one) become balance vs. coaxial?
QuoteIt is a balanced design (not coaxial like others)
http://www.analysis-plus.com/pro_guitarinstrument.html
When I test this cable, what should I test for besides capacitance and resistance?
You should do a decent ABX test. http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_new.htm (http://www.provide.net/~djcarlst/abx_new.htm)
It takes only a few minutes.
Make sure you can return those expensive cables, else you will feel depression comming up.
Quote from: aron on November 16, 2007, 03:02:18 PM
I'm still trying to grasp this cable issue. Sorry beat a dead horse!!!!!!!!
So, how does a guitar cable (see the first one) become balance vs. coaxial?
QuoteIt is a balanced design (not coaxial like others)
http://www.analysis-plus.com/pro_guitarinstrument.html
When I test this cable, what should I test for besides capacitance and resistance?
I assume they call it balanced because they don't use the shield as a signal carrier ( only attached at one end?), but only the two inner cables...but it wont be truly balanced unless the receiving end is balanced...a guitaramp isn't...also, with that much cable surface area, the internal capacitances shouldn't be significantly lower either, even if the shield isn't attached...
..why do you worry so much about these things Aron?..you are a working musician..I bet, on a loud stage in a noisy bar, you wont be able to tell these cables, soundwise, from any other OK quality cable like ProCo or Whirlwind..seems a little bit to me like audiophoolery for the bedroom rockstar...perhaps I'm wrong....
johan
aron -
Don't give in to the dark side! These are hifi loonies looking for new territory to sell to.
Dirk and Johan have given you good advice. A guitar is not a balanced source, so balanced cable doesn't help. The amp can't do the receiving end balance to take advantage of it.
Your variables will be capacitance. Period. The series resistance of any metallic conductor from a guitar to an amp is so far below the impedance of the guitar and the amp that it can be neglected entirely.
Notice that these cables are made with two oval braid sections lying face-to-face. That helps make the inter-conductor capacitance ... bigger... than a pair of small twisted wires or a single conductor inside a round shield. The grounded shield will make the capacitance bigger on the outer side of the one conductor that can be carrying signal. I would expect these things to measure and perform worse in terms of treble loss than something like George L's or Belden low capacitance coax. I could be wrong, but that's the first glance.
Your guitar pickup simply can't generate enough current to make the voltage drop across even a long cable matter compared to a 1M input resistance on the amp. So all that heavy copper stranding is simply wasted. Your pickups are inductors between 2H and 10H, so no matter how low or high the cable inductance is, it cannot add any significant inductance to the signal impedance, and it can't block any signal in the face of that 1M amp input impedance. What counts is cable capacitance. THAT will kill your signal dead.
Guitar cables need to be low capacitance, and something under maybe 1K ohms resistance. The lower the capacitance the better, and that's usually a large diameter coax with enough stranding to be flexible and not break under repeated use. Anything else is wasted.
the variables that i might consider myself even more so interested in are signal/noise ratios. good shielding and low noise when you move the cable around. i haven't really had heaps of experience personally gauging lots of different brands of cables with instruments that i am familiar with and know what to expect. i suppose the developer actually believes the twisted cable helps? ...
Quotei suppose the developer actually believes the twisted cable helps? ...
No, it's more like the developer actually believes the twisted cable ...sells.
I made a guitar cable from a length of Straighwire audiophile balanced cable like that before with the shield only attached at one end... it was very microphonic. If I still had it, I'd rewire it to see if attaching the shield at both ends helps with the microphonic issues, but it was stolen - which probably gives another good reason not to have expensive cables.
I bet that nice Mogami starquad stuff probably makes a good guitar cable. Of course, since a guitar signal isn't balanced, there really isn't anything being gained as far as any kind of CMRR is concerned when using "balanced" cables. It sure would be nice if balanced guitar signals became popular - it would definitely solve alot of problems.
Just nitpicking:
For a correctly balanced connection from guitar to amp, you only need a balanced input for the amp. Because the pickup behaves just like a transformator. The chassis earth from the amp should then be the shield for the guitar cable, but it must not be directly connected to the pickups! (It should be connected to the strings of cause.)
Dirk,
I was just thinking the same thing!
You *could* wire-up a guitar as a differential output (balanced) and use something like shielded twisted pair cable to send the signal... Of course, the amp at the other end would need an appropriate input and you guitar would be somewhat incompatible with the rest of the universe, but it would be an interesting experiment!
Quote..why do you worry so much about these things Aron?..you are a working musician..
I know. But it really, really bugs me when my friends who (I really do believe have good ears), tell me that these cables make a
huge difference.He even said he has to alter his amp tone controls because the cable has made such a huge difference and has added more fullness and bass and clarity.
Now, I have heard this from the bass player who has an active bass setup - presumably it's low impedance out right?
Now I hear it from my guitar playing friend who has an Ernie Ball Luke guitar .... HMMMMM also low impedance right - with EMG pickups.
What is going on here. There _must_ be some difference right? If not, I must hear it for myself.
There's a local store selling these for over $100/cable - sometimes up to $150 I think for 10 feet. I really want to test this cable.
>Your variables will be capacitance. Period.
OK, then I would assume the capacitance to be less for "good" cable.
OK, here we go, I can't wait to test those cables:
http://www.aqdi.com/cablecap.htm
Dirk & John,
Yeah, I don't see why a guitar couldn't be rewired like that... seems easy enough, at least for the average passive pickup. What I'd like to see is for guitars to go to a fully balanced system like microphones. At least we could do a thing like run balanced from the guitar to a buffer with a balanced input, then the buffer can do a nice low impedance out that will have a better time driving long unbalanced cables to the amp.
I'm going to do it!
Quote from: aron on November 17, 2007, 11:26:33 PM
Quote..why do you worry so much about these things Aron?..you are a working musician..
I know. But it really, really bugs me when my friends who (I really do believe have good ears), tell me that these cables make a huge difference.
He even said he has to alter his amp tone controls because the cable has made such a huge difference and has added more fullness and bass and clarity.
Now, I have heard this from the bass player who has an active bass setup - presumably it's low impedance out right?
Now I hear it from my guitar playing friend who has an Ernie Ball Luke guitar .... HMMMMM also low impedance right - with EMG pickups.
What is going on here. There _must_ be some difference right? If not, I must hear it for myself.
There's a local store selling these for over $100/cable - sometimes up to $150 I think for 10 feet. I really want to test this cable.
What's going on is perseption. And that does not need to the same as reality.
Our senses can fool us:
(http://bp2.blogger.com/_cxmptAPYR-s/RzscHpRr7MI/AAAAAAAABls/vZ9-xGTiJpA/s400/hands.jpg)
The "hand" in the window is a mother holding her child.
This is an optical illusion, but all our senses can be fooled in the same way.
Don't dispair, all is not lost!
A decent double blind test can reveal the truth.
So if you want to find out yourself if these cables are worth their money, you need to do a double blind test. If your friends did not do a double blind test, it is very very likely that their perseption is not analog to reality. I can say this with some confidence. Because up till now no person has ever noticed an audible difference, between a normal cable and an exotic cable, in such a test.
Comments on cables and snake oil...
Dirk is absolutely correct. The only way to really tell if there is *truly* an audible difference is to perform an accurate double-blind test. If there is, in fact, something other than the placebo effect at work, then a statistically meaningful sample should pick the "fancy" cables as sounding better... If they, in fact, do pick the "better" cable, then one must understand what it was about the cable that made people select it. In other words -- is it a statistical superiority in some measurable quantity, or is it a psychoacoustic phenomenon of some sort (harmonic content, frequency curve, etc). It would be interesting -- and very revealing -- to actually conduct this test. I suspect that there would be a large number of snake oil vendors objecting to it loudly, however...
Comments on balanced wiring:
Yep -- differential signaling/balanced lines have been in use for small signals successfully for quite some time. Microphones do it all the time. Heck -- even computers do it. 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet operates with a 1V peak amplitude signal on *unshielded* twisted pair (2 pairs, 1 xmit/1 recv). The segment limit is 100 meters -- far longer than anything we run in the unbalanced world. Most newer network cable (cat 5e or better) is certified to 350Mhz... While I understand there are differences between a baseband-style digital signal and what we're talking about, I'm illustrating the point that it seems within the realm of reason.
QuoteHe even said he has to alter his amp tone controls because the cable has made such a huge difference and has added more fullness and bass and clarity.
The first time I did a side by side comparison with a high end cable I "thought" I heard the same thing. After recording and listening back it became obvious that the added "fullness and bass" was really just less high end. :o
i normally buy guitar cable that looks cool and really expensive! lol Yes I bought a planet waves! lol
Hell at bedroom level does it really matter and I'm sure the wife can't tell.
Just out of interest I have a lot of TV aerial RG59 can I use that for patch cables and the like I'm sure I read somewhere a blues guitarist uses this for his 100ft guitar leads
Would be nice to use the other 50m spare of the cable
Aus
Quote from: aron on November 17, 2007, 11:26:33 PM
I know. But it really, really bugs me when my friends who (I really do believe have good ears), tell me that these cables make a huge difference.
He even said he has to alter his amp tone controls because the cable has made such a huge difference and has added more fullness and bass and clarity.
Now, I have heard this from the bass player who has an active bass setup - presumably it's low impedance out right?
Now I hear it from my guitar playing friend who has an Ernie Ball Luke guitar .... HMMMMM also low impedance right - with EMG pickups.
What is going on here. There _must_ be some difference right? If not, I must hear it for myself.
There's a local store selling these for over $100/cable - sometimes up to $150 I think for 10 feet. I really want to test this cable.
Just be sure you can return them. And do yourself a favor - set up a test where you cannot prejudice the results by knowing which cable is which, nor can any helpers "telegraph" the knowledge of which is which to you, perhaps unconsciously as in "Clever Hans".
One important test is to see if you can tell which is which without knowing ahead of time. Many times, the first test is to just alternate the two randomly and see if you can pick out which is which at more than a 50% rate like you'd get from guessing randomly. If it fails that one, no preference test means anything, does it?
Finally, for a lucid send up on cables and other stuff, go read http://sound.westhost.com/cables.htm (http://sound.westhost.com/cables.htm), especially the part on "Interconnects". Remember that guitar signals are much LOWER frequency range than general hifi.
I am a so-called audiophile and I can say cable can make difference in a well set up hifi system (loudspeakers in the right position, good amps, etc.), I remember a good number of afternoons passed making blind tests with my friends, switching from one cable to another with significative results.
But guitar is a different beast: the frequency range is narrow and amps and effects in the signal chain are everything but hi-fi system components.
Most important thing for me is the fact (even if the cable could really make any difference and I have some doubt with guitars) I can't see any reason at all to look for hifi: we're talking about musical instruments and not system to reproduce recorded sound of musical instruments.
I still think, in my romance view of this stuff, we're here making music, not broader bandwidth :D!
Ciao,
Marcello
PS. BTW, I use a flexible type of RG58 for cables, very cheap, very effective.
Active that might be a hint. Maybe the cable has a lot more capacitance and is interacting with output of the circuit.
If you can get a pulse generator. Inject a pulse at the guitar/bass input to the amp section. Use a 1meg resistor at the other end of the cable. Use a scope to look at the signals Calibrate the scope probes, Then look at the input to the amp the output of the amp( adjust the controls to change the shape full treble might be interesting Then look at the signal across the 1 meg at the end of different cables with t e controls set the same.
Get a two channel scope one channel to the in of the cable and the other to the out. Invert one channel and sum then together this shows the difference in the signals. This only checks the cable, to check the amp cable interaction one would need to get the tone controls as flat as possible to do the invert and sum test(invert if the amp is not inverting as it is built).
Maybe the active amps "don't like" the extra cable cap "hanging" on the end of the circuit and might cause the amp to become somewhat unstable. This might show up as extra ringing on the waveforms.
What active amp in the bass? maybe there is a schematic of the circuit we can look at.
>After recording and listening back it became obvious that the added "fullness and bass" was really just less high end.
This is what I am thinking. Exactly this.
Another thing I could try is to record the guitar into my computer (with guitar input) on a recording interface. I should be able to hear and see the difference.
Aron
looking at this link from Aron
http://www.aqdi.com/cablecap.htm
How did they measure this using the 1990 strat(3/4 down graph)? What mean is how did they get a consistent pluck or how did they do a frequency sweep using a guitar pickup. It reads well at first look but what did they do? Did they unsolder one end of the pickup and use a signal gen to drive the pickup end? What pickup the bridge middle or neck the same pickup I hope?
I might use a small nonshielded loudspeaker at a set distance from the pickup and sweep the speaker the EMF from the speaker coil should be picked up by the pickups.
Make a holder for the speaker and index it to the same spot and distance from the pickup and set the tone controls at one setting or make a test guitar.
Maybe this is a good way to test the guitar pickup cable system.
Quote from: Gus on November 18, 2007, 12:40:33 PM
http://www.aqdi.com/cablecap.htm
A midrange hump?
Serendipitous.
Here's my $.02: I've used the Analysis Plus cables and they sound good. Are they worth the ridiculous price compared to other cables? I don't think so and I would never buy them. For my job we make every cable that we use on the road. We get giant spools of Canare GS6 and Switchcraft ends from Tour Supply and we always make our own cables and looms during rehearsals for every tour. There's no reason that everyone on this board shouldn't be doing this too, it's MUCH cheaper, the cables are very low capacitance and they sound as good or better than anything that you could buy for a comparative price. Add to that the fact that you can repair them when they go bad, which does happen, and I don't think that there's any reason to buy commercial cables. I never will again.
Andy
Excellent, insightful and practical advice!
QuoteThere's no reason that everyone on this board shouldn't be doing this too, it's MUCH cheaper, the cables are very low capacitance and they sound as good or better than anything that you could buy for a comparative price.
Thanks Andy. But the question remains, does the Analysis cable sound better than your cables? If so, then why. I should be able to measure them soon.
When I just needed a straight cable, I bought the DiMarzio. They aren't that expensive here in Denmark, and it's a good cable with Switchcraft-jacks in each end. I usually play a coiled cable, of the Bullet-brand, because I think they look cool, and do something to my tone that I like. Some might find that bad, but my setup can kill mosquito's if everything is "hifi".
That being said, when I'm playing my PRS/Bogner-setup with my other band, I'm using Switchcraft and Mogami, which I made myself. It's cheap and it sounds great - when I say sounds great, I mean my sound as a whole. Danish amp-guru Lars Reinau told me back in the days, that it's kinda silly to say that a certain component has a "sound", but instead listen to what it does to the sound and how a setup functions as a whole with that component. He breaks it down by saying that a cable works as a sort of passive equalizer or tone-control, and one equalizer might fit one application, and ruin another.
I like a little treble-cut EQ in my first setup (Strat/Tele -> Super Reverb) and full-on in the other (PRS -> Bogner).
To quote Public Enemy; "Don't believe the hype!"
;D
Kind regards, Jake
Quote from: hairyandy on November 18, 2007, 02:02:17 PM
For my job we make every cable that we use on the road. We get giant spools of Canare GS6 and Switchcraft ends from Tour Supply and we always make our own cables and looms during rehearsals for every tour. There's no reason that everyone on this board shouldn't be doing this too, it's MUCH cheaper, the cables are very low capacitance and they sound as good or better than anything that you could buy for a comparative price. Add to that the fact that you can repair them when they go bad, which does happen, and I don't think that there's any reason to buy commercial cables. I never will again.
Andy
That's what I do. It has been nice dragging a cable around to shows that's rugged enough that it is one of the less likely things to break. Plus it has a such a ridiculously heavy center conductor it works as a speaker cable too.
Quote from: aron on November 21, 2007, 08:54:57 PM
QuoteThere's no reason that everyone on this board shouldn't be doing this too, it's MUCH cheaper, the cables are very low capacitance and they sound as good or better than anything that you could buy for a comparative price.
Thanks Andy. But the question remains, does the Analysis cable sound better than your cables? If so, then why. I should be able to measure them soon.
When we compared them on the road I didn't think so but then what do I know? ::)
Andy
Get your Wheatstone bridge on and do some snake sorting.
Y'all (especially RG's explanations) confirmed my longstanding viewpoint on these expensive guitar cables that manufacturers that are selling these days - it's mostly all a load of crap. :icon_rolleyes:
QuoteThe first time I did a side by side comparison with a high end cable I "thought" I heard the same thing. After recording and listening back it became obvious that the added "fullness and bass" was really just less high end. Shocked
That's what I was thinking when I read R.G.'s comments about how it could have more capacitance than other brands.
Aron, here's my little cable story- short and sweet. (This is not a guitar cable story.)
So I got an HD TV and HD DVD player and I wanted to get an HDMI cable for it. So I went to Circuit City (big mistake, I know) and the least expensive was $70. The "monster" stuff was > $100. So I went to Radio Shack and the cheapest one they had was $50. We're talking a 6ft digital cable here, looks kind of like a USB connector on ea end. No need for gold-plating and other nonsense- it's digital. I decided that $50 was more than I wanted to spend on this little cable, so I went home and spent 2 minutes on google and found a 6ft HDMI cable for $8, shipped. A week later I'm enjoying full 1080p video with no complaints. (No one has to know I spent less than $100 on the cable...shhh... :icon_mrgreen: :icon_mrgreen:)
My conclusion is the cable market has to be one of the stupidest consumer markets on the planet. We have a local upscale mall with a swanky shop that has a $300 pair of flip-flops too. :icon_eek: Don't get caught up in this stuff, Aron... Try borrowing the cable from your friend and trying it out for yourself before you spend any money.
>Don't get caught up in this stuff,
Yeah, I'm not going to get stuck on this other than wanting to measure the difference.
1) Cables matter. I've mentioned this before but will mention it again. Take a pedal patch cable of 1ft or less, and plug your guitar directly into your amp with it, and with your amp set for clean clear tone, listen. Now take the longest cable you have and plug your guitar directly into the amp through that cable and listen again. If your hearing hasn't been damaged yet, you should hear a fairly pronounced difference in the clarity of the high end. That is the sound of cable capacitance added up over the length of the cable. "Better" cable can improve this, but more length of even the best cable erodes sound quality and definition in the absence of buffering, which leads us to....
2) WHERE the cable is matters. All other things being equal, the impact of a 20ft cable on your tone when it goes from a buffered effect to your amp is less than the effect of that very same cable when situated between your (unbuffered) guitar and the first pedal (or amplifier). Spending money on the shortest possible decent quality cable you can get away with between your guitar and the next device in line is a good idea. Spending big money on the cable between your pedalboard and amp, maybe less so.
3) Signal type matters. Every instrument has harmonics, but some instruments cover a much broader range of the audio spectrum (e.g., acoustic guitar vs solid-body bass). When different signals from more than one source are combined, that generally means even more of the spectrum will be covered, and the need to keep all the fundamentals and harmonics of the different sources aligned even greater. So, all other things being equal, what you need to go from your bass pedalboard to the amp 8ft away at your seated light jazz lounge gig, is not nearly as demanding as what you need to go from your 24-channel stage-monitor mixer (including mic'd drums) to the power amps 50 feet away. Multi-source signal paths always require better performance from cables than single source signals do. And of course, cable carrying video signal (talk about wide bandwidth and high frequencies!) will benefit from cable quality infinitely more than guitar signal with its pathetically narrow spectrum.
Context matters, and before one extrapolates too far one has to consider the circumstances under which cables are tested/measured and the extent to which that context mirrors your own usage needs. There WILL be better cables as the technology moves along, but not all of them will necessarily translate into audible benefits in EVERY situation. Many will only offer improvement is specific circumstances.
So, spend money (wisely) when you need to, and don't spend it when you don't need to. And yeah, although our budget was a little different than Andy's typical client, the last band I was in, back in nineteen seventy-bgdfrwnb (covers mouth and mumbles), we bought a big roll of Belden 8410 (it was one of the best you could get at the time) and a wad of Switchcraft plugs and rolled our own. I'm still using those cables.
QuoteMy conclusion is the cable market has to be one of the stupidest consumer markets on the planet.
For the most part, I'm afraid that I am going to have to agree.
That's not to say that what Mark says isn't spot on. None of these details really matter much to me as I use the neck pickup 98.5% of the time and I boost the mids a fair amount. I like a smooth, fat sound. Never could stand piercing ice pick in your forehead treble, at least not while
I am playing guitar... :icon_neutral:
Quote from: Mark Hammer on November 26, 2007, 02:40:48 PM
1) Cables matter. I've mentioned this before but will mention it again. Take a pedal patch cable of 1ft or less, and plug your guitar directly into your amp with it, and with your amp set for clean clear tone, listen. Now take the longest cable you have and plug your guitar directly into the amp through that cable and listen again. If your hearing hasn't been damaged yet, you should hear a fairly pronounced difference in the clarity of the high end. That is the sound of cable capacitance added up over the length of the cable. "Better" cable can improve this, but more length of even the best cable erodes sound quality and definition in the absence of buffering, which leads us to....
Now the cable acts as a lowpass filter.
This can easily be compensated for with an inverse filter.
Iow: Turn up the treble.
The problem with turning up the treble is that you're going to end up turning up noise, too. You're moving your "treble-spectrum" noise floor up with the signal level you're trying to recover. It is always preferable to avoid loss than to attempt to recover.
Quote from: PerroGrande on November 26, 2007, 10:07:42 PM
The problem with turning up the treble is that you're going to end up turning up noise, too. You're moving your "treble-spectrum" noise floor up with the signal level you're trying to recover. It is always preferable to avoid loss than to attempt to recover.
Of cause, buffers are whats needed. Not exotic cables.
I've noticed slight treble differences in buffered vs. nonbuffered, long vs. short cables, etc, etc blah blah blah...
If any adjustment is required at all, a very slight tweak of the treble control on the amp suffices. It's not enough to make a noticeable difference in noise, etc. Certainly not enough to justify $100-$300 cables.
It's what those knobs are for, boys. Turn 'em! :icon_mrgreen:
QuoteIf any adjustment is required at all, a very slight tweak of the treble control on the amp suffices. It's not enough to make a noticeable difference in noise, etc. Certainly not enough to justify $100-$300 cables.
It's what those knobs are for, boys. Turn 'em!
I couldn't agree more! :icon_cool:
QuoteIt is always preferable to avoid loss than to attempt to recover.
Which is exactly what you are doing when you turn up the treble control in a passive tone stack- avoiding loss.
But if I understand you, I think you are saying that you should avoid loss at the input instead of trying to recover later. From a "pure signal" EE viewpoint, you are correct. However, in the case of guitar signals I don't agree at all. Taking this logic to the extreme - no one should use anything less than an active pickup system because that's the only way you are really going to reduce loss.
Personally, I hate active pickups (except in bass). And I've started making a move away from "hot" passive pickups as well. I replaced a Super Distortion on my solid body with a PAF. I purposely put weaker Filtertron-style pups on my hollowbody. Why? Because I love the sound and the headroom, and they interact better in some ways with pedals and the amps. That's a subjective choice and everyone has their own opinion. But, my point is that in certain contexts, loss at the input can be a good thing. It can be a very good thing IMO. Most people don't like the sound of a "lossless" low impedance signal blasting through the input of their Fuzz Face. They prefer to hear the effect of that lossy high-Z signal loaded down and frequency shaped by the fuzz circuit, because it interacts in a pleasing way.
So while I understand the arguments for low-loss, being an EE myself, IMO they make most sense in sound
reproduction systems, and less to little sense in sound
production systems like electric guitars. And while I do understand arguments for lower noise, and yes it's always best to lower noise at the beginning of the chain as much as you can, come on... We're talking loud electric guitars in environments like sweaty bars here, not brain surgery or some audiophool's listening room.
QuoteAnd while I do understand arguments for lower noise, and yes it's always best to lower noise at the beginning of the chain as much as you can, come on... We're talking loud electric guitars in environments like sweaty bars here, not brain surgery or some audiophool's listening room.
+1
+2, but.......
The cable is but one player in the complex equation that creates one's tone. The entire signal path, including cable, volume pots on the guitar and their respective loading, on-board tone circuits and their alterations to the resonance, the presence or absence of buffering along the way to the amp, and so on, all form part of the overall "distributed circuit" that one's rig comprises.
I can understand how a person would desire the most "objective" cable they could find such that they could safely think "Okay, I don't have to factor THAT into my overall tone if I change anything else".
And that's part of the debate for me. Yes, it is only rock and roll guitar, and yes a great deal of what might be in the signal is simply lost on ears that won't hear true at high volumes, or that have too much beer between them to care, BUT the player wants to know that if they change A they don't have to change B because B is "transparent" with respect to the rest of the signal path. To my mind that is a legitimate consideration. Not one to be pursued from the pages of The Absolute Sound to beyond the bounds of reasonableness, but at least "legitimate".
Where opinions seem to diverge is where exactly the point of diminishing returns is. Even amongst the most gonzo audiophiles (well, at least until you get out past 2 standard deviations from the mean), there is a point where someone would say, too expensive or time-consuming or cumbersome for what it delivers.
QuoteBUT the player wants to know that if they change A they don't have to change B because B is "transparent" with respect to the rest of the signal path. To my mind that is a legitimate consideration.
I agree to some extent. And if cable capacitance caused all kinds of wild, unpredictable behavior and complex interactions, oscillations, etc I would agree much more strongly. However, IME, the worst that cable capacitance has affected me after plugging in that unbuffered pedalboard, or plugging in that 20 footer for the first time, is a very slight treble rolloff- maybe- if I do happen to notice it, which sometimes I don't. Rectifying the problem is simple, and it is objective enough for my mind (and ears).
QuoteWhere opinions seem to diverge is where exactly the point of diminishing returns is.
Sure. And I haven't heard any cable "issues" yet that were IMO worth spending more than $25 to solve. I don't even change cables until they start going bad, as in breaking the connection. I had a pair of whirlwinds I used for 20 years. Whatever deficiencies they had were made up for by consistency due to their remarkable lifespan, and that was objective enough for me. :icon_wink:
I pretty much agree with that. Of course, I don't have a studio, I don't record albums, and I don't do concerts. Maybe if I was engaged in something where the sonic stakes were higher, I might want to spend a little more than $25. Maybe. Ain't ever been there yet, but then I ain't ever left North America, neither.
Oooooh... You need to get out more... :icon_mrgreen: