I’m an audio engineer at a midtown Manhattan commercial studio. I’ve worked in recording studios for over 20 years. I’m also a fair audiophile and have considered myself an avid listener for all of my 40 years. Take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, as I’m only one of many who could easily have widely varying opinions on the matter.
The case of outfitting a studio with cabling is rather simple. You buy the best you can with the budget you have. Most people in studios would easily limit spending in this area if they could afford another great microphone or preamp or other outboard. It’s not as important. And they’d be correct. The most important items, and the ones which get you biggest bang for the buck in capture, are generally regarded in this order (keep in mind it’s not always more money equaling better product here):
1. Microphone. Bar none a great mic will have more impact on the end recorded sound than anything else.
2. Preamp. After listening to dozens of preamps in widely varying price points, it becomes painfully obvious that there are just some that can’t cut it next to others.
3. A-D interface. If it’s going to be a digital recording (and let’s face it, 99% of anything newly recorded will be), this is as important as #2.
4. Cable. Not that it’s not important. Just the things above are far more bang for the buck than cable.
So a typical chain for vocals might be like this, if I’m lucky:
Telefunken U47 tube mic > Neve 1073 preamp > Prism Sound interface > Pro Tools at 32/192, all using Mogami or better cable.
ideally, we’d use better cable. I don’t even have the budget for the above chain on most projects. (David Gilmour does!)
Bottom line here is that for the most part, to a certain degree, all engineers know that better cable will yield better results. If I spend 10x as much on a mic, I probably perceive it getting 10x better. 10x as much on a preamp or interface and I’d say we’re getting 5x better. 10x as much on cable and most engineers would perceive maybe only 1.5x better sound. It’s also about experience. More engineers and mixers have had way more experience with varying quality mics, preamps, and interfaces. Cables are generally whatever’s there, as long as it’s not crap.
the more experience you have with comparing what’s good to what’s better, the more likely you will opt for what’s better. At home, I’ve gone from Kenwood and Fisher, to McIntosh and Paradigm, to DeVore and Line Magnetic - all this because I found them and I found spending a little more could get me better. It’s encouraged in every studio environment I’ve been in, but the money is not always there.
BUT
That does not mean we’re losing much detail on the way. The detail on any of the world’s greatest home system playing back a commercial release is marginal percentages lower than what it was in the studio. It’s gotten so much better over the years of course, but there’s still some integrity lost between the master and the release. Hearing a 1/2” 2 track album master on a calibrated Studer in a recording studio and then hearing that album on CD - there’s no comparison. High rate fidelity downloads are so much better now. That’s clearly another topic! What I’ll say is that we would not be satisfied losing large percentages of signal recording anything. We’re trained to hear. I know what the real sound is in the live room and what it sounds like in the control room, and I do my damnedest to get all of it. There’s a small but vocal part of the world that still cares about fidelity, and that includes engineers.
