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Looper's Delight
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On Thu, 20 Aug 1998, Steve Lauder wrote: > Get yourself some oxygen-free cabling - the thicker the better (I have to > admit, I'm not familiar with brands - I just go to a car Hi-fi store, and > buy lengths of the stuff). If you buy large lengths of cabling, and cut >it > yourself, it works out marginally cheaper than buying cabling kits. For single-ended line-level connections (phone and RCA jacks), a very good and possibly cheap solution is CAT5 computer network cable. If you work around someplace with a computer network, you'll find they often throw used lengths of the stuff out that are yards long. It has 8 high-grade copper wires inside, in twisted pairs. Don't separate the pairs. Speaking of RCA jacks, avoid them like the plague! If you have some in your system, convert to a decent termination mechanism as soon as you can. The misanthrope who perpetrated standardizing the RCA connector on the audio equipment of decent human beings should be tortured, forced to listen to Barry Manilow, and tortured again. If your equipment supports it, use balanced connectors. XLR or 1/4" phone jacks both work fine. The whole point of balanced lines is hum and noise rejection, and they work very well. If you must use single-ended connectors, use 1/4" phone jacks, or better yet BNC. Pro video equipment uses BNC for sound connections. It's a solid, constant-tension, low-force connection designed to be connected and disconnected often. Moreover, BNC is so widely used in computer networks that you don't have to pay audio-industry markup for it. It's easier to use, cheaper, and provides a better connection than phone jacks (much less RCA, which is useless if you actually connect and disconnect regularly). Audio-grade wire is usually a ripoff. You're paying for packaging and advertising, not quality. Find some well-made satellite dish coax with and all-copper (not copper plated!) conductor and copper foil shield. Stranded is more flexible if you need that, but solid-core sounds better. Wire size isn't NEARLY as much of an issue as Monster Cable would have you believe. Wire quality and decent insulation are, though, and there's more to quality wire than "OFC". I build homebrew tube audio equipment. For internal signal wiring, the best cheap wire i've found is Radio Shack 32ga wire-wrap wire! It's so small that it's a pain to work with, and it's impractical for the home studio. But it's silver-plated OFC with excellent Teflon insulation (speaking of silver, use silver plated connectors rather than gold if you can. Gold conducts better, but the crap they have to put under it to get it to stick to base metal does not. Silver will plate directly to copper. Again, what looks good and what sounds good are different things) > If you do cut to length and find that you've left yourself short, don't >tie > more cabling to the end of it - the more naked wire you have, the more > interference you pick up. If you have to use phono jacks, don't use > solderless ones. Although they're easier to attach to your cabling, the > connection isn't as good as a soldered one, and thus, you get marginal > degredations of sound quality. Don't knock crimping - IF you use proper crimping tools. A properly crimped connection forms a "cold weld" where the metals are bonded together. But this only works well with high-quality crimping tools and practice. You won't get a decent crimp with a pair of pliers, so you may as well solder. For soldering, try spending an extra buck or two on decent solder. Radio Shack sells fine gauge silver-bearing solder for little more than the cheap stuff. Get that, and a tube of rosin flux, and i *guarantee* you will get better connections! And learn to solder right... heat the joint, not the solder. A bad solder joint will crack and fail, and can even generate RF noise. > I hope you get some improvement in your sound quality through this, >believe > me, it helped a lot with my setup. I'm sure it did! -dave Practice beautiful randomness and act kind of senseless. <dstagner@icarus.net>