A BLIND SHOOTOUT THAT WILL STUN YOU!

[Mesa4x12er]

No, but apparently you're deaf AND retarded.

Did you not hear the cocked wah comment from Ermz? Did nearly everyone here vote for A OR B? Yes. You're more than welcome to question my thread, but like I said, think I wanted to spend a grand on new cable? I wish it sounded worse, and then I could spend that thousand elsewhere.
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Calm down big boy. I can hear the difference in your comparison I just think you either sabotaged some shit on purpose or maybe inadvertently did it... or some of your cables are just in really bad shape. That and you didn't even respond to what I said. Explain to me how a cable could cause mid buildup or have no lowend. Those strands or solid cores only transfer the signal from the source. They definitely don't add mids or have HP filters on them.

If one cable sounds brighter it only means it is allowing more signal to pass. Even then unless something is horribly wrong there shouldn't be a difference as big as what I heard in your clips. Furthermore I've user some Lava cables in the past and every other type of cable under the sun and never heard a difference as big as what you've demonstrated. I have heard cables that were a tad brighter but nowhere near what you are claiming with this test.

 

[lolzgreg]

Do these sound different to you?

Straight into the amp, not reamped. I played the riff twice to no metronome and it came out sounding tight enough to be considered dual tracked... I wonder if that's enough to warrant that the cable is causing the difference in my sound and not my playing. It's pretty damn monumental if you ask me,

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1569935/STRAIGHT IN CABLE A.wav

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1569935/STRAIGHT IN CABLE B.wav

 

[Ermz]

I'm still wondering how significant the differences are when we compare high-end cables with high-end connectors to each other, rather than generic brands. I'm very curious how the common Mogami, Canare and Cordial cables stack up here.

Re: the clips above. I assume 'B' is the one with the better cabling, and the clarity in the highs/lows is definitely appreciable. The irony however is that 'A' is a fair bit closer to how I would have a guitar sound in a mix. 'B' has too much high-mid stuff going on which makes it sound more brittle, and prone to conflicting with vocals. 'A' is somewhat meatier, albeit looser.

We may ultimately just be talking about shades here. Or perhaps it just depends on how much you like your high-end, hehe.

 

[lolzgreg]

A is the better cable

 

[midget donkeys]

Right from the get go I tought A sounded better than C. And Lolzgreg regularly gets guitar tones that sound like boobs and free pizza coming from the speakers. Thats enough to convice me to buy one of these cables from recording my DI's at home.

 

[MarkG]

Right from the get go I tought A sounded better than C. And Lolzgreg regularly gets guitar tones that sound like boobs and free pizza coming from the speakers. Thats enough to convice me to buy one of these cables from recording my DI's at home.

hmmmmm...boobs

I agree. I've been using cheapass cables all my life, but if a GOOD cable for the DI makes a significant difference I have no excuse. Its an easy fix.

 

[Fama]

This is a discussion board; I'm very aware your comment wasn't aimed at me, but I had something to say about it. You said that differences in playing could account for the differences in the tone. That is obviously true, but no where near as much as to the extent it was heard in this test.

Nonono, you misunderstood me (although reading back my post I see that I wasn't very clear in my post)!

My point was, that if you play something, then go and switch the cable and then play the same thing, you might think the second one sounds better because you use a cable you THINK sounds better. I didn't mean that playing could account for the differences (and certainly don't believe the A -> C difference could be caused by that). I was just talking about placebo and how expectations have such a huge effect if you're comparing something you hear now and something you heard a minute ago (A/B tests help with that, tho, since you can go straight from one to the other, without delay).

So, to reiterate, I wasn't talking about playing affecting the sound at all in my post (although yes, it might read out like that).

 

[neptunian]

(First post, hi everyone).

Ok I just did my own cable test two weeks ago: 20ft Whirlwind / 10ft Planet Waves Instrument Pro / 5ft Mogami / 10ft "Horizon" brand. Sorry no audio files to post, but results were similar to the ones on this thread.

Conclusion: it's all about the cable capacitance. The Planet Waves and Mogami had the lowest, while the 20ft Whirlwind sounded identical to the 10ft Horizon.

Did some research and turns out the capacitance doesn't just bleed off the highs, but also shifts the resonance peak of the pickup/cable (inductor/capacitor) system. It's an LC tuned resonant circuit system. The peak is usually anywhere between 2k and 5k. Higher capacitance shifts the peak toward the 2k, good cables toward 5k.

Using a good cable therefore releases the highs and shifts the ringing/resonance higher. That's why a higher cap cable (lower frequency resonance) creates a half-cocked wah pedal sound, which is why Hendrix and 70s purists prefer long coiled cables for maximum capacitance.

Long story short, I was annoyed at the Mogami and Planet Waves cable because while they made my guitar clearer like in example (A), it also had an ear-piercing resonance in the 4.2k region. Through distortion, my tone became thinner with less perceived dynamics. My guitar's bright anyway (Horizon NT II with Crunch Lab in the bridge). So I ended up soldering in a 330pF capacitor in the guitar, parallel to my pickups, and now I've got the higher cap tone (more dynamics and body) plus the better reliability and lower noise of the Mogami / Planet Waves cables.

Also, changing cables is different from using the tone control on the guitar. The first changes the resonance peak position, the latter merely changes its height with the position set by the tone capacitor. The Varitone tone system uses a rotary switch to switch between several capacitors instead of a pot to vary how much a single cap affects the sound.

Here's an article that explains it all with diagrams: http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/

 

[P-E]

^ Great first post, really interesting stuff.

 

[John_C]

(First post, hi everyone).

Ok I just did my own cable test two weeks ago: 20ft Whirlwind / 10ft Planet Waves Instrument Pro / 5ft Mogami / 10ft "Horizon" brand. Sorry no audio files to post, but results were similar to the ones on this thread.

Conclusion: it's all about the cable capacitance. The Planet Waves and Mogami had the lowest, while the 20ft Whirlwind sounded identical to the 10ft Horizon.

Did some research and turns out the capacitance doesn't just bleed off the highs, but also shifts the resonance peak of the pickup/cable (inductor/capacitor) system. It's an LC tuned resonant circuit system. The peak is usually anywhere between 2k and 5k. Higher capacitance shifts the peak toward the 2k, good cables toward 5k.

Using a good cable therefore releases the highs and shifts the ringing/resonance higher. That's why a higher cap cable (lower frequency resonance) creates a half-cocked wah pedal sound, which is why Hendrix and 70s purists prefer long coiled cables for maximum capacitance.

Long story short, I was annoyed at the Mogami and Planet Waves cable because while they made my guitar clearer like in example (A), it also had an ear-piercing resonance in the 4.2k region. Through distortion, my tone became thinner with less perceived dynamics. My guitar's bright anyway (Horizon NT II with Crunch Lab in the bridge). So I ended up soldering in a 330pF capacitor in the guitar, parallel to my pickups, and now I've got the higher cap tone (more dynamics and body) plus the better reliability and lower noise of the Mogami / Planet Waves cables.

Also, changing cables is different from using the tone control on the guitar. The first changes the resonance peak position, the latter merely changes its height with the position set by the tone capacitor. The Varitone tone system uses a rotary switch to switch between several capacitors instead of a pot to vary how much a single cap affects the sound.

Here's an article that explains it all with diagrams: http://buildyourguitar.com/resources/lemme/

This might well be the best first post i've ever seen here.
It is indeed an LC system, and a by-product of this is that the higher the inductance of the pickup, the less of an effect the cable capacitance has. Also, active pickups are to some extent fully buffered, which again changes the system.

 

[lolzgreg]

Cheers