I ran some extensive tests that took me 2 to 3 days about 10 years ago with various cables ranging from $5 to $200 each to find that the more expensive cables sounded only mildly better, i.e. they rejected RF and had better signal to noise. I found the more expensive cables to be better, significantly better, in terms of build quality, so they maintained their slightly better sound quality over time as the cables wore. What I mean by this is if you have cheap cables you have to be extremely careful with them and/or replace them much more often to maintain the level of sound quality they produced when new. I assume, in the long term, this will be more expensive than purchasing a good quality but not overly expensive cable initially. I've been a sound engineer since the '80s.
FYI, there another aspect to cables, capacitance. Shielded cable has a capacitance rating per foot = the longer the cable to more the capacitance. This capacitance results in a low pass filter. For these short cables, the cutoff frequency is in the megahertz, so its not going to matter. If you're running 100s or 1000s of feet of XLR cables then cable quality becomes a concern. Thanks for the video, you've shown good demonstrations and your recommendation (near power supplies, crossing AC perpendicular, etc are spot on). Thanks, I've repaired many XLR cables, buy quality ones.
Great intro, it fully agrees with my experience. Another thing I like about Neutrik is how easy is to replace a straight connector with an angled one without soldering.
To note: 'no influence on sound' applies only to low-z sources like active condenser microphones or transformer coupled dynamics. It starts getting more critical with mics like the SM7B which are neither active, nor transformer coupled - and with high z sources (like electric guitar pickups, though these typically don't use XLR plugs) a low cable capacitance is getting real important to prevent high frequencies from being dampened. That said, these lower capacitance cables mustn't cost a fortune, either, but tend to be a little more expensive.
@@curtisjudd Welcome - I mentioned it mainly cause I was caught by this when recording a relatively low impedance (1.5k Ohms, straight from the harp) Fender Rhodes: I switched the cable to a better one, and the sound opened up significantly, which I did not expect, 1.5k being a relatively low impedance. The effect is well known for guitar pickups, but they normally have impedances in the 5-10k range, and they don't use XLR plugs. Subsequently I tested with the SM7B, and, over longer cable runs (10m), I could hear slight differences, too.
I find one of the worst attributes of cheap cables is they typically have a way-too-thick outer rubber sheath, so they're not only unwieldy, but also heavy.
A good balanced input should provide significant rejection from induced common mode currents, I suspect a lot of gear appears balanced but is in fact single ended (or has very poor design leading to a poor CMRR). Also it's not so much of a problem with modern cables but some cables still do exhibit noticeable microphonics induced due to mechanical stress. Good live mic cables often contain cotton or other fibres that allow the wires inside the cable to glide past each other during handling in order to minimise the generation of microphonics.
Amphenol connectors should work well too. As long as it's star quad / quad neglex there shouldn't be any problem. The twisted double conductor nature is key for the blancing to actually work well. Durability can be better with more flexible pvc. I make my own using Neutrik Connectors, Mogami 2534, MDPC-X Sleeving and some heatshrink. Some people add glue in theirs, I don't. I've never seen a cable as high quality as my self made ones.
I do like the flexibility of Mogami but they have gotten too expensive for me. Canare is a good option. Any brand sold by B&H is good enough. Yes those power bricks/warts cause the most problems.
The biggest noise problem most tech nerds are going to run into is USB-powered audio devices that don't isolate the audio from the USB. They always hum if you put them on the same power brick with something else. Expensive cables and/or ferrite chokes won't fix that! But an expensive isolated hub will. Mogami has a really high markup, so it's not hard to get them discounted if you're friendly with the Guitar Center manager or Sweetwater rep. I've never had a problem with Mogami XLR cables, but I have a Mogami Platinum instrument cable that's more of an antenna for noise than any of my 10-year-old Monoprice cables. Like, if I plug something into a big tube distortion or sketchy boutique fuzz pedal, it takes less gain to get a bad humming noise out of the Mogami, and you can move the cable around and change the sound, kinda like a not-hands-free theremin. It makes me think Mogami Gold XLR cables are more legit than Mogami Platinum 1/4" instrument cables.
So Deja Vu a video. I’ve had lengthy discussions with “pros” who swore by directional cables or this type of cable or that gold connector etc. The stereo stores were notorious for selling mega expensive cables since it was huge margin. Things like oxygen free cables etc were the norm. But pivot to broadcasters and studios and you often found some shockingly cheap cables like “Boston green” for racking gear. Mic cables are a unique cable usage since they do take a physical beating often plus can be easily impacted by RF. But long distances for an analog signal can be challenging too. If you stick to the great quality Japanese cables you’re guaranteed great shielding and durability. To my knowledge Canare… usually pronounced can R Eee.. have always been a go to for live application such as theatre or music venues. Neutrik is pretty much industry standard with both TRS and XLR connectors not to mention the combo connectors. Never ever had an issue and the best strain relief without damaging conductors. You may be able to get away with cheap cables on a short distance but for the modest price difference it’s really not worth the hassle. Stick to tried and true
00:50 Mogami and Neumann are not oriented in the same way of the Rode. So in case of interference due any other coil/transformer to the other side of the PSU, you don't get it captured by the cable. You just followed the similar path with the Canare. 02:02 it should be better short circuit between 2 & 3 (as usual done) avoiding any noise generate by the resistor itself. It doesn't create any issue even if you have the 48V inadvertently activated. 04:14 yes connectors can create mechanical issue. I had very very bad experience with Bespeco. Never more! But other cables equipped with Neutrik or similar-quality not any particular issue. Great recall to the correct way to wrap cables up. it makes the real difference in the long term.
More expensive cables are better shielded and generally more durable. Durability aside, the difference will only be minute and then again, only for very long cable runs in exceptionally RF-noisy environments.
Just today during a shoot I was getting a ton of interference and wondering if I may need to make sure every single cable I have is upmost shielded. And boom your brand new video on this topic comes up haha 🔥🎙️ I've had most issues with my internal coil cabled boom pole. And today the issue was using a cheap aux cable from my mixpre 3ii to c70 camera's mic port
Star Quad type cable came from telephone lines. Check that out for best RF/EMI/hum rejection for just the cable not using additional accessories to reduce those noise issues.
I thought I had a decent cable (not amazon basics), but I realized I live in the middle of a massive city, so a lot of radio frequencies to avoid there. Probably gonna go for some mogami cables.
I'm personally a big fan of the Canary cables. We use both audio and video cables from them. Jude has started using a German brand called Sommer I believe. Those are quite nice. Very soft and flexible.
Yes, I was going to mention Sommer Cable, too! I exclusively use them in my studio - from simpler XLR cables to "quad star" for microphones and also Multicore. When you solder yourself, you might appreciate them even more since they are particularly easy to handle in that regard.
The best cables are DIY. Just get neutrik/amphenol/switchcraft plugs and some nice cable like Canare. They're not really expensive and you can make the exact length you need. I did a fair bit of wiring with other brands like Conducfil, Mogami, Sommer, Gepco, Klotz, Cordial. They're all nice. It's easy to do and if somehting breaks, you can quickly fix it. Often a reason of failure is bad soldering. You now what you made.
I’m a new beginner with a small home set up with 2 different Mics and Rode Podmic & the AKG P120 mic & I wanted to know your opinion on the Mogami CorePlus Microphone XLR Cable? Because there’s a online store that sells the 10 FT cable for $22 with free shipping
I have had good experiences with both Neutrik and Rean connectors. Others can be a mixed bag of course. Adam Hall has a "3 star" cable line with their own connectors ("4 sta" uses Rean, " 5 Star" uses Neutrik and better termination, like shrink wrapped solder joints) and they work fine. For long cable runs star quad cable is really amazing at rejecting interference. Not surprising star quad was the stabdard for railroad signalling before the reign of fiber. Mogami, Canare and Belden sell them. As for el cheapo cables, I experienced ones so poorly soldered, the balanced cables picked up differential interference, go figure!
When my company buys first-price microphone cables from "thoXXXX", they last 6 months. Sometimes the plug doesn't fit into the camera's xlr socket. The cable breaks either at the plug (to be soldered) or perhaps along the cable ! To solve this problem, I buy at my own expense the equivalent from Klotz in the nearby store. They last 3 years... minimum.
In the past three decades I've made more mic cables than I can count and I also endorse Mogami and Canare. I buy the latter (Canare L-4E6S) by the spool. That said, there are other excellent cables on the market from Belden, Klotz, Sommer, and others. Gotham cable makes one called GAC-3 which is easy to solder, super slinky / flexible and feels great in the hand. Good noise-rejection, too. Really delightful stuff and one of my favorites. Try it!
Instrument cables are more likely to have problems than XLRs in my experience. I get gold connectors because corrosion seems to be a factor for me, especially near the ocean. Great, solid advice in this video. Thanks.
If you regularly need to haul your cables around, and you can solder your own connectors, I highly recommend Canare L-4E5C Mini-Star-Quad. It's a thinner version of the regular Canare Star-Quad cable, so that your cables don't take up as much space when packed into your gear bag. Markertek sells it by the foot for the cheapest price I've found.
The only thing I would add is that you need good workmanship from whomever you trust to assemble your cables. Canare Star Quad + Neutrik XLR is are definitely superb choices, but care and craftsmanship in assembly still matters.
I am a huge fan of Clark Wire and Cable's Mink4 mic cable. It's a quad like the canare, the jacket feels better, the conductors are different colors -- lt blu, dk blu, yel, & wht, (which is great if you need to use the cable for other purposes using 4 independent conductors), and it has a dedicated drain wire so you don't have to comb out the braid when making a mic cable - you just cut off the braid and use the drain. I think it is the best design of all the best versions of a quad mic cable, and I'd put it up against any of them in quality, and above any of them I've used in design convenience. Bottom line, it is just as good if not better than most, and easier to terminate. And the jacket....there is something sexy about it, it just feels great in your hand.
Thanks for the video. Every time you've posted one, I have learned something new. I am always a bit confused about cable length. I have a 10m cable, which seems too big. Though, I don't know if I will ever need it while recording location sound. Ideally, what length do you prefer for on-set recording?
One more thing I can add is that higher-end cables have some other perks: They have less of a "memory" so they coil and deploy nicely. They have softer outer jackets for a better hand feel. They're more durable and they retain their shape after decades of abuse in the studio (in my case). Really cheap cables feel crummy in the hand, retain twists and can get lumpy even with moderate use. I once had a mic cable that was so bad it was actually microphonic. I could induce noise into the signal by tapping the cable. I think I got it for free with some other gear I bought. I kept it around as a novelty but eventually lost track of it.
This matches my experience. The cheapest cables have spiral shielding instead of braided so they are more prone to external interference. Otherwise, durability and general fit and finish are the biggest differences. I like the Canare cables simply because they are thinner and more flexible, but Mogami is also nice.
Excellent video and all the important points are adressed in my opinion! If it's more than one single cable you need, consider learning to solder. Watch a video on it, give it three shots where it might not work, use Neutrik connectors and some decent quality cable. You save a lot of money and can make exactly the cables you need.
Amen. Use well made (well shielded) cables with good solid connectors, but don't pay the Earth for them. A few audiophiles would do well to remember that. I appreciated the fact that you measured the noise levels. To few audio commentators do that.
I noticed a vast price difference between xlr cables when I started getting into all this and I almost fell for the more expensive the better trap, so I went in cheap and bought some dodgy Urgreen ones. No interference, but the connectors started coming away from the cables pretty quickly. I then went midway and bought Roland ones and I’ve had no issues since. They’re pretty rugged too. Roland make good music gear, so it would be strange if they made bad cables. That was my logic at least. I’m a novice though, so I could be wrong. Maybe they’re notoriously bad among professionals haha. A year in and they’re fine though. I also have some spares called “No bull” by Nordell. Not sure if they’re ok or not but they have good reviews.
You can always test them by putting them right next to an AC power adapter and see how it fares. I figured RODE cables would be ok, but they fared the worst of the 4 I used here, followed by Neumann!! Yikes!
now those are two names I’d automatically view as quality for obvious reasons. Wow. Someone in the bean counting dept’s of those two companies has figured out a way to maximise profits knowing full well people would buy their cables without thinking. Thanks for the heads up!
OMG that's so true about connectors. I like Neutric too! They definitely are my preferred choice. and yip I agree with everything in the vid. Sound-wise they're the same between cheap and expensive. But cheap ones will pick up a lot of EMI issues. EMI usually hits at 3 places (cheap XLR cables, ie Amazon basics), the mic (ie SeV7 and in your case the Jz mic) and the interface itself too (ie the Audient EVO4).
As long as it's the right kind of cable, it should not have problems with interference. Twisted pair, or a starquad, shielded completely and well grounded (properly soldered). You can also add ceramic capacitors in the plugs to remove noise from Phantom power if your mic doesn't have them. See Alice microphone tutorial for more on this. The art of shielding isn't in spending a lot of money but in very careful checking of connections. All the shielding enclosures must be grounded or connected all the way from the mic to the recorder. How it's made specifically depends on the gear, but it's something you can test by ear or with some software like REW. I can assure you that you can take any piece of gear that has hum problem and poke here and there with a piece of copper wire and eventually you'll find the culprit and be able to fix it in 5 minutes. Often it's because of paint that prevents an electrical connection of pieces of enclosure. Other times it's just dirt or a loose fit. With cables most of the time you just need to correct some bad soldering or replace a plug. I find the biggest issue these days can be USB power. The best practice for this is to use a power bank.
5:36 This is more important, than it sounds. I have seen cables tangled and twisted like eights on the shelve. They will never be able to lay flat anymore.
Maybe not so well known or available in the US but both German manufacterers Sommer Cable and Cordial make high quality cables. According to budget the connectors are either Rean, a budget brand from Neutrik Made in China or the original Neutrik connectors. Neutrik is the original inventor of the XLR standard BTW. I soldered numerous cables with Neutrik and you are right about the strain relief, something that counts when cables are under stress. I like the coloured rings that you can exchange on the Neutrik connectors.
Interesting topic, CJ, but I'm afraid it's somewhat mismanaged despite the hard work we know the channel puts into its videos. As a very technical debate on how cables can influence sound quality, here are some points for reflection that some might consider: It's not about price or brand; it's about the technology inside the cables: copper technology, wiring methodology, insulating properties... Be sure, cables are not at all what we think they are. One analogy for a cable is an optical lens, and that's only a simple start... but a lens for what signal? One pragmatic way to choose cables is to listen to musical productions: find the sound you like. Some production are way up high in the skies than others, so why ? Are cables involded or not ? Take your phone and ask the technicians what mic cables were involved that very day when they recorded. Come back and tell us what you got... this could be a very long inquiry.
Thanks for the input. Our coverage here was very high level and pragmatic. I would encourage you to make a video that goes into more depth. I’d be interested to learn the nuances. 🙏
To clarify, _StarQuad_ or just _Quad_ is a specific type of construction that uses four conductors twisted into a tight helix. Opposing helical pairs each carry half of the balanced signal. This helps increase noise rejection compared to standard balanced cable construction which uses two conductors in a helix (and which is already very good at rejecting noise). The most popular quad cables are Canare L-4E6S, Mogami 2534 and Belden 1192A but there are others. Given its four conductors It's a little more complicated to prep and solder, and in the case of Canare L-4E6S, the braided shield is a pain to undo, but it's worth it if you need the added EMI immunity. Of course, if you buy your cables premade then this won't concern you.
My experience with very cheap cables and cheap connectors was the following: Replacing these with a thin cordial cable and Neutrik connectors liftet the sound from mediocre to very good. The mics were then the limiting factor (M5 matched pair from Rode). Maybe I had a very different kind of test candidates ;-)
The first couple of jobs I rented gear and there was an XLR cable that came with them. Both times I had earthing / shorting issues (one of those it was only the goodness of the local pub that saved me, allowing me to borrow cables from their DJ setup). I've purchased my own mic gear and quality cables ever since and have never looked back. It's real hard to go wrong with the thicker, better quality cables.
When I was studying in the conservatory as a performer in 2012, my roommate in our dorm was studying at the sound engineering department. When he showed me how to fold a cable I was stunned by the artform behind such a menial task, since then I had my cheap xlr-cable and it's working today, It's a solid result, considering the fact that I used it very often with my radio transmitter in multiple variety of venues.
wow! now this is a legit video comparison.. it’s not about the sound quality but the protection from interference which sets cables apart… thanks for this!
Great video, Curtis! Good quality XLR cables are well worth the money. Like any piece of gear, it's an investment. I have a flight case full of them from my pro-sound days. They are still in good shape and work just fine, even after 40 years.
Switch mode PSU’s are the bane of the modern engineer. Special mention for budget video walls too which put out a ton of RF interference. Especially when you find the offending cable is a D-Sub fantail or multipin link.
The other problem with cheap cables is cheap connectors which can get stuck in your recorder, had that happen to me once, never again, I had to dismantle the recorder to release the cable. Quality counts and saves a lot of grief.
It's not about shielding with XLR cables. It's the use of balanced cables that help cancel the noise. By using a regular signal and inverted polarity signal, it's able to precisely cancel out the noise it picks up. Balanced audio is quite an ingenious old invention that works purely on the analog level. This is why you can use the absolutely thinnest cables using a shielded CAT5 cable balun snake that puts 4 XLR and it won't make a difference. The shielding in this case is only used as an extra conductor.
@@curtisjudd Yes I see that, which is why you didn't hear much difference. Try an unbalanced cable and put it near some powerlines and power supplies and you'll hear massive differences. Super thick shielded expensive unbalanced cables will pick up a ton of noise while thin cheap balanced cables will pick up almost nothing.
I use Hosa Pro cables with the REAN connectors. They are a good middle ground option that's not cheap but no where near the price of Mogami. I've had my 30 or so cables of different lengths for about 5 years now running live sound and only one has ever had any issues. Definitely check them out if you don't have the budget for the higher end stuff.
I bought some quad Canare’s in 2019 and compared them to Mogami’s and felt the high end wasn’t quite as crisp or HD as the Mogamis. Canare was very smooth though. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the microphone I tested at the time. I probably should test again with some of my latest microphones and see if I hear the same difference. Neutrics are the only connectors I trust 100%.
I had a cheap xlr cable connector implode and get stuck while it was still in the microphone. Was able to dissect it and remove it from the mic. 🫣🫢🙄 never again!!!
