microphone cables

is Mogami cable way better than other cable link i posted and worth the price difference?

I'm about to order some cable and just want my money to go toward the best choice:headbang:
 
Mogami is some of the best cost/quality stuff you can buy. Both studios I've worked at had it by the mile laying around for spare cables, and about a mile for cables already made. The first studio I worked at was a multi-million dollar place. You'd think the owner could afford anything he wanted for cables and he went with Mogami. The second studio was basically all medium grade BS, but even still, he chose Mogami. From my experience the cable they produce is great. You can tell differences between them and cheaper cables, especially when making long runs from source to the interface/preamp.

You can't go wrong with Mogami, seriously. It'll be money more than well spent.

~e.a
 
Mogami makes a quality cable, but don't buy into all of the cable hype. A "good" cable to me and the electrical engineers I work with is a cable with good solder joints and connectors. It doesn't have to be Mogami.

Don't buy into the bullshit Monster Cable marketing. A lot of their marketing is based on half truths and even false information i.e. the skin effect which only effects RF frequencies and doesn't have any effect on audio frequencies although they say it does and then charge you $100 for a cable. Then they try saying that their cables are directional which again is crap, but I digress.

Any cable that isn't falling apart with a good connector should suit you just fine.
 
according to monster...:

monster cable have frequency time correction in their higher end models. bass frequencies travel faster than mid, and high frequencies. they say the bass travels through the core of the cable, the mids through a cable wrapped sparsely around that, and then the highs through a cable wrapped tightly around that. at the end, all frequencies should arrive at the same time.

hype? maybe. but it sort of makes sense. sort of.. ;)


edit: they also have lifetime warranty, which is nice. but then again so does mogami.
 
I'll add on for Mogami, with Canare in second. I have a personal problem with MarkerTek, because I bought some four-conductor cable from them and they shipped out two conductor, wrong color, less than what I had ordered, and lied right to my fucking face about it when I called them to call them cocks, but that's a different story. Soldering is not at all hard to do - get 63/37 rosin core solder and a cheap soldering gun from Radio Shack, get your Mogami and Neutrik plugs from someplace other than MarkerTek, put on some jazz (you DON'T want to get antsy when soldering... especially if you have a natural jitter, long hair, holes in most of your pants, or any combination of the above), expose a bit of every wire you're soldering in, and HEAT THE WIRE - not the solder, you'll just have a mess, heat the wire while holding it to the plug with the solder resting on the two and it'll melt onto the connection.

As for that frequency time correction thing... sounds like snake oil. Highs, mids, and lows will all just be electricity as far as the cable is concerned, and you need to worry about the cable's impedance more than the fact that you're going to have your treble lagged by a factor dozens of orders of magnitude lower than you're going to notice. If that shit starts compensating for Daylight Savings Time and all of my notes come through an hour in advance, I'll be impressed at their ability to violate the laws of physics, but Monster is very good at making big words justify big prices to consumers - that kind of marketing is profiting off of ignorance.

Jeff
 
according to monster...:

monster cable have frequency time correction in their higher end models. bass frequencies travel faster than mid, and high frequencies. they say the bass travels through the core of the cable, the mids through a cable wrapped sparsely around that, and then the highs through a cable wrapped tightly around that. at the end, all frequencies should arrive at the same time.

hype? maybe. but it sort of makes sense. sort of.. ;)


edit: they also have lifetime warranty, which is nice. but then again so does mogami.


Time correction in a cable = bullshit.
 
yea i've heard a lot that monster cables while good are completely overhyped and priced.



i'm not producing music to win a grammy at this point and don't have a multi million dollar facility so i'm not too concerned with that high end of product but i have multi tens of thousands of dollars invested between gear, instruments, etc. etc. and a monthly lease payment to make so i am concerned that something as overlooked as cables can not give me 100% of my money's worth. i am def going to just buy several hundred dollars worth of bulk mogami cables along with the neutrik connectors and just learn-how-to-solder-as-i-go. JBroll thanks for the detailed description that's what i was looking for.
 
Markertek is full of shit on that end [EDIT: If they consider that to be a good reason to not go quad cable]. 4 conductor allows you to reduce noise in a way that's most easily explained with a guitar pickup comparison - single coils pick up noise for various reasons, but when you have two coils oriented differently the noise from the two cancels out and you have a less noisy signal. 4-conductor in theory works the same way - you have your standard two wires and ground connected as before, and in addition you have an 'extra' two wires that carry no audio but basically are set up to receive the same 'noise' as the two that are carrying audio, so that it can be cancelled out later. Canare's Star Quad Pro is what I'd definitely recommend on the cheap, it's very nicely priced and if you can honestly complain about the cable ruining your sound at that point, you are clearly deserving of worship by all of us here for your ability to hear minute details of no relevance whatsoever with such clarity that you should be able to tell the difference between different brands of fluorescent light bulbs by their hum.

Jeff
 
what's the difference between using quad instead of 2 conductor/shield for xlr cables? markertek says some crap about the quad having higher capacitance.

Quad has higher RF rejection but higher capacitance. I use canare quad quite a bit and haven't noticed any issues. That said I don't think I've ever run into RF issues where the mic cable was the problem unless it was broken.
 
ok so mogami quad cables


any specific types of XLR neutrik (model) connectors???




also what kinda mogami cable do i get for my guitar (rack, pedals)

i'm talking all bulk by the way this way i can make everything neat and efficient by soldering myself so i'll do custom lengths to avoid clutter around my guitar/rack area.

also need good speaker cables for my monitors as well as guitar cabinet. i'm pretty sure speaker cables are smiliar to the instrument cables. someone please help me i';m lost with all this crap! i kidna got the mic cables down. easy enough, just need to know what model of neutrik connectors


next i need to know what type of cable for instrument, and speaker and what ind of respective connectors for them.
 
I'd go for EMC if you have interference issues and XX if you don't.

For guitars, W2524; for rack stuff, you're probably safe with W2524 until you hit stereo stuff, and then I'd go for the quad cables again (unless you have separare L and R outputs); for speaker stuff you don't want to use instrument cables. There is dedicated speaker cable out there (Mogami's number is W3082) and use whatever connectors are on the amp.

Jeff
 
Forget Monster, unless you like being bent over.

Mogami W2549 is great cable, but Mogami has just raised the price of all their cables. Mogami is very flexible, but not as durable as Canare Quad. Canare is flexible, but not as much as Mogami, though the jacket is very durable, smooth, and comes in a variety of colors. Gotham GAC-3 is the least flexible and probably the hardest to work with out of these three when you're rolling your own, but it does have the best noise rejection.

You will find it hard to hear the difference is cable by comparing one to one. However, when the entire studio/rig is wired with Canare Quad vs. Mogami vs. ProCo vs. Hosa, etc. the difference becomes more apparent. Canare Quad does sound a tiny bit less open compared to Mogami W2549, due to the higher capacitance. The source signal will make a difference as to whether or not this will even matter. Gotham GAC-3 provides more noise rejection than even Canare Quad, but I use Mogami and Canare Quad, and I haven't had any noise issues, but I would probably use all Gotham if I were wiring a live rig.

I'm using a combination of Mogami W2549 and Canare Star Quad. I use the Canare Quad in line-level places where it is near power cabling & power supplies, and the Mogami I use out in the front end for mic sources.

Hope this helps.
 
what connectors for speaker cables?

what connectors for instrument (guitar, guitar rack) cables?

i was also wondering whether i should get a multi connector (http://www.redco.com/shopexd.asp?multi=yes&id=655) like that for my drums to avoid all this cable mes. my studio is too smal i think for a snake but if i had 8 mic cables in one big hose thing and ran them to my preamps i think it would tidy things up.

For speaker cables, get whatever your connection is going to require. If you're ordering from Redco, you select 'Speaker Type' and then a 1/4" NYS225LL Male TS connector, unless your monitors have Speakon connections, then choose Speakon.

For instrument cables, I like the Canare F15 connectors, but they are a little more expensive. You can save some money by using with Neutrik or even more by using Redco connectors, neither of which are shoddy or cheap by any means.

I would definitely get a snake to tidy things up for drum tracking. You can get an 8 channel Redco snake. You'll save quite a bit over the cost of a Canare or Mogami snake, and you'll be better off than with a Hosa that will introduce more noise than it's worth and will need to be fixed or replaced long before the Redco snake will.

Redco builds great cables and they're quick about it. What's more, they don't treat you like you're unimportant if you don't happen to be placing a big order.