mogami wiring - help!

[agauchede]

Anybody with mogami model #2549 wire - of the blue and clear wire, which is hot? I thought it was the blue, but my waveforms are coming up out of phase, (down then up). Good news though. . . phantom power works and it really does improve the signal.

Concerning Switchcraft or Neutrik - the Neutrik XLR jacks are really easy to work with.

[tele_player]

Improves the signal? Hmmm, I don't think so, and I've got a bunch of it. It's got rather high capacitance. If you're building them yourself, you get to decide which is hot - it doesn't matter, as long as you do the same at both ends.

[ggunn]

Anybody with mogami model #2549 wire - of the blue and clear wire, which is hot? I thought it was the blue, but my waveforms are coming up out of phase, (down then up). Good news though. . . phantom power works and it really does improve the signal.

Out of phase with what? Depending on what you are micing, mic placement, preamp, etc., the initial departure of the waveform from zero can be negative; it doesn't neccessarily mean that there's anything wrong. In most cases, absolute polarity isn't an issue.

As to phantom power, that is a DC bias applied to a low Z line to supply power to gear (like a condensor mic or DI box) out on the end of that line; it has nothing to do with the signal. If something needs phantom power to work, without it you get no signal at all. If it doesn't, then phantom power has no effect.

As to which is the hot wire, in low Z applications they are both hot, just of opposite polarity. If you are doing your own wiring, then it makes no diff as long as you are consistent.

[agauchede]

Thank you both for your responses!

Tele, what makes you say that it wouldn't improve, or more precisely, retain signal over a lower quality cable - it seems clearer to me somehow.

As for phase - I read somewhere once that the waveform in PT should draw up then down - vice versa if there's a phase issue.

ggunn - I was stating that the cable itself seemed to improve signal, not the phantom power - sorry if I was unclear.

Thanks again!
Chris

[tele_player]

Well, the increased capacitance will tend to cut high frequencies. How high, and how much takes some calculation, and depends on the impedances at each end. Might be inaudible, some say they hear it.

A quality cable is a good thing. The non-quad Mogami #2534 is real good, too. I use both.

You can't make any assumption about phase or polarity just by looking at the waveform. Whatever you read was either wrong, or you misunderstood it.

[agauchede]

thanks again for all this useful information!

chris

[ggunn]

Thank you both for your responses!

Tele, what makes you say that it wouldn't improve, or more precisely, retain signal over a lower quality cable - it seems clearer to me somehow.

As for phase - I read somewhere once that the waveform in PT should draw up then down - vice versa if there's a phase issue.

ggunn - I was stating that the cable itself seemed to improve signal, not the phantom power - sorry if I was unclear.

Thanks again!
Chris

Nothing personal, but hearing is very subjective, and there is definite impetus on people who have spent big bux on cabling to hear (or to convince themselves that they hear) the diff. In some cases I guess it does make a real diff, but in a lot of cases it doesn't. The only one way to know for sure if the diff is audible is to set up a double blind A/B test where the only thing that changes is what is under test. I have read some published results of some of these; one of them indicated pretty conclusively that even the "golden ear" audiophiles cannot discern between extremely high dollar speaker cables and zipcord bought from the hardware store.

Capacitance in coax cable loses high freqs, that's true, but where is the rolloff point? If you do the math on some rival cable companies' products, you'll see that the diff is in the MHz range, which may be of some concern if you are designing radar arrays, but audio folks shouldn't worry about such distinctions. When you are deciding where to spend your money, you have to consider the old Point Of Diminishing Returns.

[agauchede]

You are correct about hearing being subjective, that's for sure - as for not being able to hear the difference between zip and high quality cable, I don't know. . .

Fortunately, one can by bulk w2549 at 50 cents/ft and bulk connectors at $2 or so, ie., 25ft cable costs less that $20 - that's less than cheap mic cable! So, why not? I like to know for sure that my dollars hardspent on good mic, preamp, daw etc., aren't being made obsolete by signal loss in cheap cable.

I resisted the expensive cable thing for a while - and maybe I'm imagining things, but to my ears the cable upgrade does make a difference.

[O.G. Killa]

You are correct about hearing being subjective, that's for sure - as for not being able to hear the difference between zip and high quality cable, I don't know. . .

Fortunately, one can by bulk w2549 at 50 cents/ft and bulk connectors at $2 or so, ie., 25ft cable costs less that $20 - that's less than cheap mic cable! So, why not? I like to know for sure that my dollars hardspent on good mic, preamp, daw etc., aren't being made obsolete by signal loss in cheap cable.

I resisted the expensive cable thing for a while - and maybe I'm imagining things, but to my ears the cable upgrade does make a difference.

You are correct! Cable DOES make a difference and you can hear the difference if the listening environment is pristine enough. Anyone who has been to a Bob Ludwig mastering session knows that cable is everything. Bob will switch make and model of cable before reaching for an EQ or compressor. Which is better or worse is definitely subjective and it depends on a lot of variables.

As long as you find one that you like, then great! There are tons of debates about cable on this forum (some of which I've participated in). Do a search and I'm sure you'll find a lot of great information and a lot of conflicting views as to which cables are good and bad. Some people say surface area is the most important thing, others say capacitance is the most important thing, and so on. My big thing is phase...and with braided or twisted copper stranded cable you get phasing. The phase relationship between frequency bands from one of the cable to the other shifts. With solid core cable it doesn't; what goes in is what comes out. People have argued this with me to death. But like I said, in the end it's what sounds good to you that matters.

One thing I do know for a fact! Hosa cable is junk. Why? Because of their quality control. Recently my tech and I had to solder XLRs on to one end of a bunch of Hosa 8-channel TRS snakes. We found that on average at least 3 of the 8 cables were shorted on the 1/4" connector. Sometimes Pin 2 and 3 were touching, or othertimes pin 2 and 1 were touching. The most one snake had was 5 cables shorting out, the least was one but the overall average was 3. We had to do about 15 snakes as a favor for a friend. We were horrified at the what we found. We ended up having to cut the pre-made Hosa 1/4" connector off and solder on switchcraft connectors to fix the problem.

[tele_player]

OG Killa - have you replaced all your stranded/braided cable with solid?

Gordon's point about where the rolloff occurs is a good one. I sort of alluded to that in what I wrote above, but didn't want to find the numbers.