MOTM

Hello, all!

OK - My two cents.  Canare cable.  Back when I was a 'hero' Second 
Engineer at Skyline Recorders in Old Topanga Cyn. in Southern California, 
we upgraded our cables to accomodate Bob Dylan for his "Knocked Out 
Loaded" album.  We went from some standard Belden co-ax to shiny, new 
Canare Quad cable, where you get a twisted pair each for the Hot & Cold 
lines (and braided shielding, too).  I was in charge of assembling these 
cables, since I was the only one with enough soldering/wiring experience 
to do so.

Wiring the cables was easy.  Instead of a single wire to the Hot or 
Cold, a twisted pair was soldered to the terminal, and covered with 
heatshrink tubing.  The wires in each of the twisted pair were very fine, 
supposedly suitable for transmitting high frequencies, and the shield 
weaving was robust.  Everything was insulated with heatshrink, the cables 
were color-coded as to their length... a Pro-fess-ional job, if'n I do 
say so me'self.

We did an A/B comparison with some of our old mic. cables and the new 
Canare ones, and the difference was noticeable.  The Canares were 
"half-a-hush" quieter (Due to the twisted pair leads for each of the signal 
paths, I believe) than the old stuff.  While I won't go as far as saying 
that Monster Cable is far superior to Rat Shark 16-gauge zipcord, I can 
say, with impunity, that my ears heard a tangible difference in the 
quietness of Canare cable, compared to the old Belden mic. cables.

At the time, the Canare stuff cost us the ass-tronomical price of $300 
(mid-'80's) for about 100 ft., but it was worth it.  I'm a BIG 
supporter of the Quad (?) cable, after that.

As I said, my two cents...

     Dave Garfield, synthead

PS - Paul, You 'de MAN!!



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Just some comments:

Thanks Roger T for the single wire Canare tip. When you mentioned guitar cable 
it jogged my memory and that was what Canare cable I was trying to track down 
in the past.

As for using two line cable for patchcords, it seems like one should use what 
fits job, and that would be single wire. I use a cable stripping device that 
has two blades. It can strip the outer rubber portion and about a half inch 
over it strips down to the inner wire. So in one shot I'm ready to start 
soldering. It's a great time savings device and makes it a lot nicer to make 
your own cables. It's not going to work on two line balanced cable. Not to 
mention that I've seen some balanced cable that doesn't bend/droop naturally 
and/or has a bit of a lumpy shape because of the twisted pair inside.

As for cutting down on noise. Maybe in a studio situation where you're running 
long cables, but then again, that's what balanced lines is used for. For 
patchcords it probably won't make any difference.

-Elhardt

And that tool was purchased where?  Details please.
Larry

----- Original Message -----
From: <elhardt@...>
I use a cable stripping device that has two blades. It can strip the outer
rubber portion and about a half inch over it strips down to the inner wire.
So in one shot I'm ready to start soldering. It's a great time savings
device and makes it a lot nicer to make your own cables.

--- In motm@y..., Dave Garfield <daveogarf@y...> wrote:
>
> [...] While I won't go as far as saying that Monster Cable is far
> superior to Rat Shark 16-gauge zipcord, I can say, with impunity,
> that my ears heard a tangible difference in the quietness of
> Canare cable, compared to the old Belden mic. cables.

Apparently star-quad does really well is in "live sound" applications 
(like sound for film or video) where you have mic cables in the 
presence of high EMI (phase control lighting dimmers running thousands 
of watts of lighting or whatever.)  As in - it is pretty good at 
rejecting this type of noise.  As such, it makes sense that the cable 
would also be quiet in less demanding environments.  However, this 
really only applies for balanced interconnect.  So as Elhard suggests 
- for the unbalanced signals on a modular synth, overkill!  It is very 
nice cable though :)