2. cables
  3. 1363769103

Have cables become somewhat of a snake-oil topic.

I've invested many tens of thousands in high end 2-channel home audio gear and cables. I'm also a musician who has recorded and created mixes in many of the top recording studios in LA, NY and Nashville. These studios most often use the highest quality power treatment, tube condenser microphones, pre-amps, EQ modules, AD/DA converters, compressors, monitors, etc. Obviously, the goal in a recording studio is to capture the realism of the live studio performance for both vocals and instruments, and create a final mix-down that highlights the natural subtle nuances of the performances of each musician.

With that said, my 20 years of informal research inside these studios says that virtually NONE invest in high priced specially stranded balanced interconnects or speaker cables. Instead, various models of a particular Japanese cable is considered the studio "gold standard" and is WIDELY used in the top studios across the country. Now any good mixing engineer is at least AS interested as any audiophile, in all the audio characteristics and variables we discuss ad nauseum in these A-gon threads. So if recording pros are willing to spend hundreds of thousands on electronics and speakers, to capture the natural and neutral sound of a musician's studio performance, why is it that expensive cabling is seen as the snake oil equivalent in the recording industry. (Moreover, I could go one step further and ask why some home audio D/A converters far exceed the cost of the most sought after professional studio D/A converters?.......we'll leave that for another discussion.)

I DO NOT disagree that substituting a Nordost, Siltech, Cardas or various other high end brands into my personal studio rig do not make a difference. There are indeed audible differences between the brands in terms of bass extension, smoothness, imaging, graininess, etc. However, these DIFFERENCES are not necessarily equivalent to an IMPROVEMENT in capturing the natural/neutral details of a given performance.

(I intentionally will not address the mastering process since that has everything to do with radio and marketing execs commercial sales expectations, rather than a true to life presentation of the musical performances.)
jymc
jymc OP
62 posts
 
Schubert's point is why I explained I'd pass over the mastering process, since that is the step where the pop music industry strives to create a commercial mix that is pleasing (and salable) to the "$15 dollar ear bud" crowd. Furthermore, audiophiles are aware there is a huge difference between recording screaming guitars, electronic beat patterns and senthesized sounds from electronic keyboards, versus the recording of real acoustic instruments.

Please understand that I've spent many thousands on cabling for my home components and want to find a reason to justify the expense. Assume an engineer creates a brilliant mix in the studio, for let's say an acoustic guitarist and vocalist duo, capturing the finest details of the performance. What do you as an audiophile expect to hear? Placing silver speaker and interconnect cables into a system may well increase so called "performance characteristics you hear in the system", but the question then truly becomes whether those characteristics have been added to an otherwise perfect studio capture of the performance. This all becomes highly subjective and is contingent upon each audiophile's "learning history" of what different instruments are supposed to sound like I suppose.

Yes the standard in virtually every major studio I've ever stepped foot in is Mogami.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,150 posts
 
If you can't hear the echo of the fly fart bouncing off the rear wall, then you're system just isn't resolving enough. Even a mid-fi system should be able to tell you the sex of the fly!

Mogami is ubiquitous, but I've read that some engineers will use Cardas or Audioquest for a particular mic. Live sound and even in studio work an emphasis is placed upon a cable's ruggedness and reliability.
grannyring's avatar
grannyring
6,441 posts
 
I guess none of this matters in my home system when one cable causes
my system to play far better sounding music then another. Pretty simple
stuff really. Just a fact - at least for me.
Post removed 
mezmo
516 posts
 
I don't think any of us are suggesting that wires do not sound different -- or that anyone is anything but welcome to, and in fact encouraged, to have and express perfectly legitimate preferences. At any price point, or across them all. Absolutely.

Question is, if virtually all microphones used to record whatever it is that we are listening to are wired with the Mogami Gold Studio Mic XLR cables -- before anything is mixed or mastered or anything else, the purest, rawest most primary source recording that will ever exist of a given event, delivered by this wire -- then what exactly is some other wire plugged into the playback chain changing, or adding, or whatever? I don't profess to have an answer, but worth being precise about the quesiton.
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