Do cables count for much in your recording setup?

[Mr. Lin]

I'm picky about the cables I use throughout both of my systems, and since I've started recording so much I try to use some of my nicer interconnects, at least from CD to preamp and preamp to tape deck.

When possible (meaning one pair isn't tied up) I prefer to use all Kimber Silver Streaks, which uses a silver conductor. This IMO is sort of like the icing on the cake, if you will, one more way to ensure I get a nice final product.

I understand that many people just use basic quality cables, as they can't or don't want to spend lots of money on it, and I see no problem with that. I happen to be a little obsessive about these things, so I want everything as close to perfect as possible. Do any of you put extra thought into the cable part of the equation?

I beg you not to start a cable debate, although I doubt that will happen as we have such a great group of people here.


Dave

[NAD613]

I'm picky about the cables I use throughout both of my systems, and since I've started recording so much I try to use some of my nicer interconnects, at least from CD to preamp and preamp to tape deck.

When possible (meaning one pair isn't tied up) I prefer to use all Kimber Silver Streaks, which uses a silver conductor. This IMO is sort of like the icing on the cake, if you will, one more way to ensure I get a nice final product.

I understand that many people just use basic quality cables, as they can't or don't want to spend lots of money on it, and I see no problem with that. I happen to be a little obsessive about these things, so I want everything as close to perfect as possible. Do any of you put extra thought into the cable part of the equation?

I beg you not to start a cable debate, although I doubt that will happen as we have such a great group of people here.


Dave

I have some gold-plated RCA Monster Cables, along with some regular Magnavox cables & ones that came with stereo equipment I've bought new. Everything sounds good, but I'm thinking of upgrading the Magnavox to some gold-plated Dayton Audio cables from Parts Express.

[Fast Forward]

I use some pretty HD cables from My Power Amp to my Pre and from my R2R to Pre outside of that just the standard RCA,s are all I can Afford right now

[Mr. Lin]

I use some pretty HD cables from My Power Amp to my Pre and from my R2R to Pre outside of that just the standard RCA,s are all I can Afford right now

That's the problem with cables, they can be really expensive. One fairly inexpensive thing I've tried recently and been very pleased with is Paul Spelz's Anti Cables. I got the speaker wire, huge improvement. Four feet is $45, and they beat the pants off my $120 pair of Kimber 4TC speaker wires, and those are not bad at all.

Now I'm dying to try his Anti Cable interconnects, which I'd probably use with my tape setup. They're supposed to be even better than the speaker wire.

[macster]

Yup!

*reelspin*

M~

[braxus]

Best cables I have are Monster Cables. The rest are a mix of the stock ones that came with the units to slightly odd ball aftermarket ones which aren't much better.

[niklasthedolphin]

I have more than 120 pairs of desent to high quality RCA cables and around 20 HQ XLR cables.
I also have a fair cable collection of everything from 6,3mm Jack to 5/3 pin DIN and converters of any kind.

Every source in my set-up is matched to whatever cable they sound the best with.
Starting with the connection between preamp and power amp and then the source that have the highest quality and so on.

This means the sequence from the best to to the worst is:

R2R
TT
RIAA
Microphones
MC
Home Studio HD
MC2
MC3
FM
CD
VCR (not worse than CD but seldom in use)
DVD
PC
MD
Set top box
TV
MP3
78's
AM

My loudspeakers are connected via multicabling.
This means that I parallel connected three different principals of cables.
In this case Nord Ost flat cable, Exposure multicore and plaited 1,5 single core homemade.

I wish I had the patience to do the same with all my RCA cables because my experience is that no matter the price of a specific cable, multicabling is better sounding.

No cable does the music any favour.
It's more a question about what kind kind of damage to the music and to what extend it does it.

If one specific cable damage hurts the treble (but has great microdynamics besides that) and another cable tear apart the micro dynamics (but has a gret treble besides that), the result of a parallel connection of the two is that they eliminate each others down sides.

It seems that different principals of cables have different typical characters of damaging the music.

When I talk cable principals here are some examples:
flat cable
multicore
plaited cables
twisted cables
silver cables
tempered cables
single core cables
cables with added circuits (these are NO good for multicabling)
etc. etc.

Work on it.................



But bear in mind that the influence on the sound quality is very much higher other places in the set-up than at the cables.

Let's say Transducers (cartridges/loudspeakers/tapeheads/microphones) in the set-up has the influence of 1:1

Then I will claim that the sequence of influence on the sound quality from other parts of the set-up is the following:

Matching parts in the set-up (this is the secret, the trick, the art of our hobby) 1:2
Antenna circumstances 1:5
Accoustic invorements 1:10
Mechanical movements 1:25
Amplifiers 1:50
Digital equipment 1:100
Cables 1:500
Power condition on the outside of appliances 1:2000


"dolph"

[stuwee]

Expensive ones scare me. I can hear the diff and I'm not ready to "go there" yet *devil* I'm getting by just fine with nicer A/V interconnects Dale gets from work since the TV and Radio stations are gearing up for Digital.

There's an idea for ya'll, call your local station, and see if they will donate to you instead of pitching them in the dumpster (where alot of them are going to end up)

Ask nicely, Do Not climb the fence and rumage around, It's a US Federal offence to be trespassing on station property, thanks to the terrorist*devil*

[Mr. Lin]

My take on cables goes something like this: A good audio system should always use "solid" cables at least, but by solid I mean things you can get for less than $50, they're still high quality. Once everything in your system is up to speed, no major weak links, you're at the point where you can choose to start tweaking your system by playing with the $100+ (or sometimes less) cables. It gets very expensive very fast, and sometimes the differences are quite small, sometimes not. But overall I'd say the large amount of money and time I've put into acquiring a lot of good cables was worth it.

It's very nice when I'm setting up my secondary system for headphones, which includes the Nak for recording, etc, and I have a couple spare silver interconnects just lying around waiting to be used.

But again, for some people this is not really an option due to cost, fortunately it can be done right for a small price if that's the way you prefer to go.