Do cables make a difference in the sound ?

[ISedlacek]

Although I have set quite high end facility for recording my own acoustic instrumental music (Schoeps, Mytek, Millennia etc.), so far I have not paid any special attention to cables. I use just normal XLR cables for connecting Millennia to Mytek. Today a friend brought some special cable with impedance buffer box or what (used for high end consumer audio). I tried to connect Millenia and MYtek with that and compare some samples recorded through my normal cables and this cables and to my surprise I noticed that it does not sound the same. The special cables had some more high end air and a bit more detail around as if. So it brought me to a question - do cables make a difference in a recorded sound ? Since the distance between Millennia and Mytek is very small (1-2 ft maybe), would it be really worth to think about a short piece of some truly special cable, which would REALLY improve the overall sound ? If yes, do you have any positive experience with some particular brand ? What about microphone cables ?
At this moment I have no further desire as per mics, preamps and AD - I reached my total satisfaction. But maybe such details like cables could yet improve the sound ?
Thanks for a sharing

[O.G. Killa]

there has already been much debate about this topic. I know I was in thread a few months about this very topic. Do a search and you should find some info on it.

But in my experiences, cable MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE. We completely rewired our studio A (that's over 8000 ft of cable) after doing listening tests on several different cables.

I always use a friend of mine from college as an example. He had an internship at Gateway mastering (Bob Ludwig's place). He said it was amazing to watch Bob master something because, before he would ever reach for an EQ or any effect, he would change the type of cables he was using.

In my testing it really does make a difference. Other people have there opinions about that...and then people have their opinion about which type of cable sounds the best...

But the best thing for you to do is run your own experiments and see what you find to be the best.

In my testing I found that "solid core" cable sounded better to my ears. Everyone else at the studio also agreed and that's why we changed out all the wiring. If you're only going to buy a couple cables you could check out Zaolla. (www.zaolla.com I think?) They are very expensive but they sound great. I use Alpha wire (model #1775C) for all my mic and tie lines. It's cheap, solid core, shielded well, and sounds better than any other copper wire I've used. The Mastering Lab, Capitol Mastering, and a few other mastering studios are all wired with Alpha and they swear by it. They recommended our studio check it out...we did...and six months/8000 ft of cable later our studio A is now all Alpha.

Anyway...don't trust other people's opinions. Use your ears and find what you like best.

[mpr3]

Yes, in my experience, cables do make a difference. However, up to a certain point ($) the law of diminishing returns kicks in big time. I rewired my studio with Belden 1800F (AES digital cable) and Zaolla silver core cable and it paid off big time. In multitrack projects where you have 30 to 50 tracks, these things add up.

The Belden was bought in a 500 foot roll from markertech and are used as single interconnects. The Zaolla are snake cables to and from PT and the DMX-R100 and to and from the DA converters to the Patchbay/Folcrom. The difference between the Belden and Zaolla for audio and digital use is minimal, but for instrument level, the Zaolla wins easily. In a nutshell, I wouldnt go any cheaper than the Belden or any pricier than the Zaolla.