Cables again

[aron]

Is it more than just capacitance and resistance? Is there more to measure. My friend bought a $100 cable the other day and he swears the "mids" sound better, clearer.

Then I read this:

http://www.petrucciforum.com/forums/archive/index.php?t-969.html

hmmmmm

Can take his cable and measure the difference? I would assume it's capacitance and resistance, but anything else?

hmmmm

http://www.lavacable.com/Suitability_Guide.htm

and

http://www.lavacable.com/cable_101.htm

[Pushtone]

You can measure what you can't hear,
but you can't hear what you can't measure.

Not sure if I heard that here or made it up?




<<<Warning, Rant Ahead>>>

I don't buy into the cable has a sound thing because "everything has a sound" and the tonal difference of just about any active electronics is way beyond
what a cable will impart. To me, the mechanics of a cable are more important.

Like, does it have a carbon shield to eliminate microphonics?

Is the insulation rated for high temp? I soldered some Monster cable once and as soon as the iron heated the center conductor
the insulation melted back inside the jacket like the witches legs in the Wizard of Oz.

Whats the strand count - more strands equals more surface area and more high frequency transfer because of the skin effect.

Whats the capacitance per foot. Almost a nonexistent specification in commercial cable because it's only important when going a long distance. It's an issue for us because of our high impedance passive pickups but is meaning less to a keyboard player so manufacturers frequency don't bother specifying it..

Spiral shield or braided? Braided is tougher on stage but spiral gives better shielding.
However spiral shield cable tend to "corkscew" over time.

To what precision is the manufacturers extrusion machines? Conductors that are thinner in some places and thicker in others create phase offsets. Why I can't remember but I'll try to look it up. That could be the reason why your friend can hear more/less midrange.
Insulators that are thicker in some places and thiner in other increas capacitance because the conductor will be closer to the shield than intended in the design spec.


As far as that Lava cable goes I think the guy is a joke along with all the other "boutique" cable assemblers. I read an interview with him in Canadian Musician magazine and his business is total run out of a spare bedroom but he charges super high prices for cable you can make yourself. He just buys cable from manufacturers, like all assemblers do.
His "big" innovation is that he uses two bench vises to "immobilize the cable while soldering".

The worst thing I've ever seen in commercial cables is the heat shrink that goes on the outside around the plug.
Dumb. You can't unscrew the backshell to inspect the solder points and you have to cut it away to fix a broken cable.
I wouldn't put up with that backstage in the dark 10min before a show and I have fixed cable 10min before a show with my butane soldering iron.
I think thats what got me the gig I have now.


Don't even get me started on Planet Waves and those stupidly large connectors with the dome logos. Built for looks.
It's bad enough when a standard connector swings out of control and dings your Les Paul, or worse, you custom paint job on your DIY pedal you just finished but those PW connectors will do even more damage.  And just try and plug on into audio grear where the jacks are crammed together, like on a Mackie VLZ mixer. Lots of recording audio gear is made for the standard Switchcraft plugs and the Neutrik and other oversized ones don't fit.

Just give me good quality cable, standard plugs and some solder and I'll take care of it myself.


Consider how the cable manufacturing industry works. Mogami and Canare are the only manufacturer that I know of that extrudes copper in a location other than the Michigan Great Lakes area. There must be others but 99% of guitar cable comes out of a small number of copper extrusion manufacturers there and EVERYONE buys from them. Horizon, ProCo, Whirlwind. If you order tens of thousands of feet you can get you company name printed on the jacket. Then it looks like YOU manufactured it instead of just assembling it. Note that I'm taking about cable you buy as a stocked product in a retail outlet and not those cables that come with a new guitar.

Now consider the metric ton price of raw copper has increased daily for the past several years.  We buy eight conductor 13awg speaker cable to run our tri-amped speaker boxes and I can not get any kind of price quotes that last more than a day! I ask for a price list from Horizon and they reply, "are you placing an order today?" I tell them no, I want to know so I can quote on custom installs jobs. They won't guarantee any price for more than a couple days. There is no price list for bulk copper cable these days. Much the same for steel and other raw materials in our global marketplace.

This forces the cable companies to come up with other marketing strategies to sell cable. Monster Cable is at the top of the heap in this department and I see several other come around in the last few years trying to get a piece of their market share.  It's the same copper folks but with fancy connectors or stupidly thick rubber jackets to make you think your getting more for your money.


Don't flame me. I warned you it was a rant.

[Shepherd]

I read an interview (I'll have to dig it up) where a fellow made some cables.  He went back to check on them months and years later and they sounded BETTER each time. 

P.S.  This guy wasn't no fool.

[Pushtone]

I'am all for trusting your ears over a meter any day but...

The frequency response of your ears change over time.

Metals just oxidize.

[Shepherd]

Tape Op
No. 53 May/June 2006

Interview with Danny McKinney.  Requisite Audio is his boutique outboard gear company.  Standel is his company that designs guitar amps.

Let's talk about your cables.  What makes a cable like yours so expensive?  I mean, your cables are really pricey.

It's mostly the time.  The materials are moderately expensive, but the time to make them is where it really gets involved.  It's a lot of labor.  It's all hand done.

How long did it take you to develop the high-end cable line--in terms of the R & D process?

Actually, the way I got started in cable was I met a fellow who was a cable designer.  At the time I was a recording engineer - and when he brought them by for me to check out I was strongly skeptical.  I just didn't want cable to mean anything because it's just going to make my life more complicated.  You know, you've got all your money tied up in all the gear and everything, and then you find out that maybe it could be even better with cables and you see what's involved with that, and you've already spent a lot of money on cables.  So cables were something I wasn't interested in, but after some time it really started to click with me.  Along the way there were a couple of cables that I had heard and liked better than what we were doing, and so I wanted to study more what they were doing and see what was happening there.  It took about three or four months to come up with what we are currently doing.  That was all strictly, "Build a cable and listen to it.  Maybe build a dozen cables and listen to all of them and see what they're like."  We had a lot of good ones and a lot of bad ones in there and it's just a matter of trying things and listening to them.  As far as calculations or doing measurements or anything like that - I don't do anything like that at all.  I just build them and listen to them.

How about consistency between cables?  If you're not using test equipment, how do you make sure there is consistency between cables?

Once you have it down, it becomes very consistent and repeatable.  It's very moderate in terms of machines that we have - it's mostly hand work and you get a feel for it.  The cables also have a break-in time and it's very interesting to listen to say, an older cable that we did - and then you hear a new one when we finish it and compare it to say, a cable that might be a year old - and it is amazing how over time they seem to get better.

Over what period of time would you say you notice a difference?

Well, in the last year I redesigned our power cable and I took it over to a studio in Los Angeles that has been using our cables for a long time.  They had one of our original power cables there, and for my comparisons of making these new designs, I took over a brand new cable of the old design and listened to one of the same cables that had been used for a year.  It was amazing how mush better the year-old cable sounded.  They just seem to break-in, so I would guess maybe a year.  I don't know if some point if they stop breaking in and there's no improvement to be made, but there's definitely a break-in time and that's true with mic pres - it's true with compressors.  When I make guitar amplifiers it's also true with those.  If I get a guitar amp in for repair and it's a couple of years old, it always sounds better than a brand new one.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

To what precision is the manufacturers extrusion machines? Conductors that are thinner in some places and thicker in others create phase offsets. Why I can't remember but I'll try to look it up. That could be the reason why your friend can hear more/less midrange.

Well, that won't be a problem under microwave frequencies.
But I agree with the rest of the 'rant'.
Were Dante designing his Inferno today, there would be a special circle in hell, just for the exploiters of audiophools.

www.somethingawful.com/d/news/monster-monsters.php (language, offense, rudness, and TOO FUNNY!!)

[Dai H.]

here's a link that looked interesting re: cables:

http://terrydownsmusic.com/technotes/guitarcables/guitarcables.htm

[Gus]

The dielectric used might make a difference. 
Think different film caps

Also look at some of the plugs construction

[Pushtone]

Were Dante designing his Inferno today, there would be a special circle in hell, just for the exploiters of audiophools.

www.somethingawful.com/d/news/monster-monsters.php (language, offense, rudness, and TOO FUNNY!!)

Paul, that article sums up my frustration, as a consumer who knows better, with the M*onster Brand.

That for posting the link.

[PerroGrande]

I have, for a long time, been somewhat incredulous with the claims of the various high-end cable manufacturers.  In the Audio spectrum (hell, even into the spectrum of composite video) there are really only a few key performance metrics of the cable itself, and then a LOT of the "performance" of the cable comes down to the quality of the mechanical connectors.  It is at this point that one really needs to consider that most mechanical connections involved BOTH a plug and a jack.  If both sides of the mechanical equation are not high-quality, you're back to the least common denominator ruling the day.

Are there different qualities (and correspondingly costs) of cables?  Sure.  I've got some el-cheapo Radio Schlock 1/4" to 1/4" cables (vintage 1977) that I wouldn't trust for anything of importance. 

So what do we really have in terms of cable quality?

Temperature rating
Braid coverage (for shielded cable)
Strand Count
DC resistance per foot
Capacitance per foot

Most of these become issues as the length of the run increases.

Arguably -- reducing/controlling oxidation during the manufacturing/assembly process *might* impact the cable quality -- but Oxidation is something that occurs over time and is dependent on any number of environmental conditions.  So for these boutique cables, it isn't beyond the realm of possibility that what you're paying for is the *possibility* that the cable *might* oxidize less 10 years from now... assuming you haven't lost the cable, crushed the end, dropped it in a puddle, spilled beer on it, strangled your perpetually-rushing bass player with it... etc, etc.

And then there is the placebo effect.  I mean -- somewhere in one's psyche, a $100 cable had BETTER sound damn better.  So it will.  To the buyer.

I'm surprised someone hasn't marketed superconducting cables, complete with a tank of liquid nitrogen.  Somewhere, there is someone who would surely drop $157,000 for a 25' version...

Now -- that rant complete, I *have* heard cables make a difference.  Ones without broken center conductors usually sound better than broken ones.  My 30-year old coiled cable (with its obnoxiously high capacitance AND broken conductors, not to mention oxidized jacks) doesn't do so well.   Likewise, poorly shielded cable in a fluorescent-rich environment plugged into an amp with insane front-end gain can add some hum... 

At the end of the day, I'm going to continue to stay very far away from "esoteric" and "boutique" cables.  Snake Oil.

[greigoroth]

I got sick of one of my 5 euro cables being microphonic, so I went out and bought a planet waves cable. I know naff all of nothing about this sort of gear but kind of hoped for a "you get what you pay for" approach to shopping paying off. I don't tie up my cables in any stupid manner, nor do I spill beer and other such things on them. I'm pretty anal about music gear. But this cable, after 1 year is even worse than the 5 euro cable it replaced. So I have developed a hate towards planet cables gear, which was furthered confirmed when I foolishly bought one of those "finger trainers" so that I could keep the muscles in shape while guitarless... It too has broken.

I dunno where to turn with cables. I hate microphonic cables but I am buggered if I can decipher the rubbish marketing that comes along with all this stuff.

Speaking of snake oil. Musicians get off easy, try hanging around "hi-fi" types. Just looking at a popular website in Sweden we have the cheapest brand going for around 2.5 euros per metre. When you click on the link you find out that the cable is the cable is "good and practical" and suits hi-fis in the "economy class". The most technical detail is that it is oxygen free copper. The most expensive cable, costing 2500 euros for a pair of 3 metre cables, is "open, neutral and revealing". Techical details; "the total copper area is so large that the bass and dynamics maintain absolute first class"... Revealing alright...

I know it has come up on the forum before, but if anyone has any tips, of the measurable kind as pushtone mentioned, I'd love it. It feels like it is time to sort out my cables, see if I should invest in my good ol 5 euro cables or trade "up" to something else. I've heard words such as Canare, Belden being bandied about, and also words such as "snake oil". Capacitance, impedence matching... help for the uninitiated and possibly gullible consumer?

[PerroGrande]

Apart from simple mechanical breaks, the general rules I tell people are:

1) The higher the frequency, the more problems you are likely to encounter from "physical layer" stuff. 
2) The longer the cable run, the more problems you are likely to encounter.
3) Voltage extremes are more likely to experience problems, but for different reasons.  Very low voltages may be more subject to interference, very high voltages may be more subject to finding alternate paths to ground.
4) The best cable can be offset by a poor quality connector (on either end) or connection (solder)
5) Using the wrong category (type) of cable is a formula for disaster, even with the best cable  (for example, using a speaker cable to connect a guitar to an amp).

I agree -- the hi-fi world is replete with such snake-oil.  The irony is that the "audiophile" world doesn't subject their gear (or their cable) to anywhere NEAR what happens in the world of a guitar player.  Just the number of plug-unplug cycles alone from the guitar instrument jack is way more than most hi-fi systems experience in their lifetime -- let alone the amp and effects jacks...

[Satch12879]

Pushtone, I agree 100% with everything you've said.  Well, everything except the heat-shrink tubing on the outside of the plug; I do that myself on the cables I make.  My thinking is if the cable was assembled correctly in the first place, you'll never have to open it up to fix it.

Very well put, indeed.

However, you didn't mention the "solid cable" scam which anyone who's taken at least high school physics knows is total bollocks.

[Processaurus]

Seems like if people really wanted to hear a transparent cable bad enough they would stand right by their amp and plug the guitar in with a 6" patch cable.

[petemoore]

  The old-gone music store had me calling monster. I got the shipping/return adress ..and shelved the cable.
  GC, when faced with otherwise lots of business, and 2 bad monsters, happily [and without testing for '1/2 badness'] replaced them with the closest monster product currently available.
  So..in my case, the quality of the lifetime guarantee improved markedly with time/circumstance.
  The new one looks different, and provides much better quality sound than the old one when new [which very much picked up the floor or other surfaces touched, a poor cable IMO.
  So eventually I did get good cableage out of my Monster investments...YMMV...
  The GC short patch cables look heavy duty, but pieces fall off and the tips spin, right off the bat.

[aron]

OK guys, here is real data via my Sencore Capacitor tester.

The Analysis cable which improves the detail of your guitar etc... etc.. etc... has a whopping 910pf for a 10' cable!!!!!

That's 91pf per foot. Ridiculous. I think Bill Lawrence cable is something like 15pf. I need to measure.

I tested a cheapo plain old cable and it came out as 684pf for a 15 foot cable. 45pf per foot, not very good, but even so, less than half the Analysis cable.

Do you want the detail of your instrument to come out? Put a cap across your cable until it reads 910pf on your meter.

There we go.

Aron

[puretube]

They don`t make vintage copper anymore, like they used to...

[PerroGrande]

Vintage copper has more mojo... 

[ampman50]

Especially vintage copper from Copper Harbor, Michigan where you could get pure copper ore not like the copper ore from Arizona.

[Roobin]

a LOT of the "performance" of the cable comes down to the quality of the mechanical connectors.  It is at this point that one really needs to consider that most mechanical connections involved BOTH a plug and a jack.  If both sides of the mechanical equation are not high-quality, you're back to the least common denominator ruling the day.

I totally agree with this - I've gone through too many cables (and fixed nearly all of them!). Admittedly, one or two were whilst I just started playing guitar, but even so, it was purely bedroom playing, nothing strenuous or dangerous. And yes the Planet Waves are super annoying...although they do have 'lifetime warranty' on them (I'm not holding my breath though). The only way I would pay extra for a cable is if it had an excellent mechanical connector. At the moment, the Van Damme ones have lasted the longest. They have Neutrik connectors, and actually look rather good.

However, in term of cable quality, I did once service a friend's cable which broke in the middle. Then I cut it, to make shorter cables, and it broke again, somewhere along the cable. In both halves. Not what I would deem as acceptable.

Then again, I also have some JHS really-cheapo patch cables. And none of them fit into any of my jacks. In the end, I found out that the plastic bit near the tip was too large and had to be filed down carefully on every plug. Now that is cheap.