most of the people talking about impedance and capacitance seem to think we all work in the RF spectrum. we don't. we are in the VERY low frequency spectrum. the effects are minimal, as to be ignorable.
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bass cables!!!
- Thread starter woolz
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I buy and use the cheapest lead wires I can find. Most recently I bought some of the Musician's Friend house brand instrument cables and haven't had an issue. Very cheap and effective.
I have about a dozen instrument cables in various lengths laying around my rehearsal space and studio and my experience has shown me that there isn't a difference in the way one cable sounds versus another. Unless the cable is broke of course ;-)
So just buy whatever you can afford but please don't waste your money on a 'bass' specific cable regardless of what anyone here on Talkbass says. You will just be wasting your money. That goes for Monster Cables, PlanetWaves, LiveWire, Mogami and the like. Unless of course a lifetime warranty is important to you. Personally I would rather spend the money on having more cables laying around so that one works when I need it. My own personal cable warranty
I have about a dozen instrument cables in various lengths laying around my rehearsal space and studio and my experience has shown me that there isn't a difference in the way one cable sounds versus another. Unless the cable is broke of course ;-)
So just buy whatever you can afford but please don't waste your money on a 'bass' specific cable regardless of what anyone here on Talkbass says. You will just be wasting your money. That goes for Monster Cables, PlanetWaves, LiveWire, Mogami and the like. Unless of course a lifetime warranty is important to you. Personally I would rather spend the money on having more cables laying around so that one works when I need it. My own personal cable warranty
Capacitance of the cables is not insignificant, even for bass. The problem is that the output impedance of passive instruments and the input impedance of instrument amps are REALLY HIGH so that even a small capacitance makes a high-frequency roll-off filter, well into the audio frequencies. This type of filter also causes a phase delay, "smearing" your transients and attacks. The longer the cable, the worse the roll-off.
If you want all the sound you are making, ,the ELIXIR cables have the lowest capacitance per foot of any cable out there and will provide the cleanest sound. It is clearly audible unless you play in the mud.
If you want all the sound you are making, ,the ELIXIR cables have the lowest capacitance per foot of any cable out there and will provide the cleanest sound. It is clearly audible unless you play in the mud.
+1. I've been using them for a few years now. Very simple, very clear, and you can repair them yourself in less than a minute if need be.
not gonna get into an argument with you about this but I don't agree with you.
here is a good article on resonance and how cables work.
http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/debunking-the-myth-of-speaker-cable-resonance
when using this calculator
Invalid Link Removed
for a 20 foot cable I get around 0.2 nF
so lets make a rc filter out of that.
the cutoff frequency of a rc filter is
Fc=1/2piRC
so after some quick research and amp input is usualy 3.9 Mohms...
so the formula is
FC= 1/2(3.14)(3.9x10^6)(0.2x10^-9)
FC= 1/2(3.14)(0.00351)
FC= 1/2(0.0110214)
FC= 1/0.0220428
FC= 45.36 Hz
now that was just quick so I am sorry if it is not very accurate... but I don't know many Cabs that can even reproduce a sound down to 45 hZ and the ear can only hear usuay down to 32 Hz...
I stand by my opinion.
- Aug 21, 2008
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No, just the shield is connected to only one side, but there is still a common ground wire running the whole length. Often these types of cables use a twisted pair for the signal conductors.
The idea is to keep the shield separate from the signal ground.
To think that because you play a bass guitar that the only frequency content of your signal is in the sub-2500Hz range is ignorant. There is harmonic information in your signal all the way out past 20kHz although it is at a lower level than the fundamental. It the very same reason that vinyl LPs sound vastly different than a 320kpbs MP3 file.
A cable is a very complex passive signal filter. It has capacitance, inductance and resistance, not to mention than different dielectrics will absorb re-release energy randomly into the signal at different rates.
are you sure?
on instrument cable there is usaly only 2 conductors... the shield and the center.
for that to work you would need a stereo jack, something I have never seen on an instrument cable, or an amplifier.
- Aug 21, 2008
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If that were true, why do basses with active buffers sound so different from passive basses? Because they isolate the pickups from the cable (and sometimes the controls). So it is not as negligible as you seem to think.
The old PRS guitars had a "sweet switch" which simulated a length of cable to warm the tone of the guitar up when using a wireless transmitter or similar buffered input. This was at the request of Santana, who didn't like the change in tone when using a wireless. So they used a passive delay line circuit.
We are also dealing with very small signals, so the 5 or 10 pico farads of the cable are huge. On top of that, the pickup and cable form a resonant circuit. This is quite different from an active low Z output of a circuit feeding a high Z input of another, like with two effects pedals plugged into each other. Craig Anderton once measured cables and found even metal plugs raised the capacitance. Molded plastic plugs were lower.
As a test, pick up one of those old coiled patch cords, which are very high capacitance, and then see how your bass sounds. Hendrix liked those cords because they warmed up the tone of his Strat!
The reason why people don't find huge problems with commercially available cables is that most of the ones on the market are very good to start with. But it wasn't always that way! Maybe the high end cables have something to offer fussy musicians in studio situations.
I'd still rather trust reviews of music magazines than some internet forum posting where some guys did the monster cable "test". They set out to prove they didn't like Monster cables. That's not the way to test things! And the music magazines say these expensive cables sound better than cheap ones. They even liked them better than George L's, and I've always heard good things about those.
- Aug 21, 2008
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Yes I'm sure, and it's still two conductors. The common connects to ground, as does the shield. But the shield is only connected on one end, and they are insulated from one another.
Just because you have three conductors doesn't mean you have to wire it to a three conductor plug.
- Aug 21, 2008
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because I am an RF engineer and these things are MAJOR to us.
at lower frequencies the effect are negligable.
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You don't hear the fundamental on your low E string (or your low B)... it's too low, but you do hear the harmonics. And the cable is affecting the harmonics.
You can hear the fundamental if you remove the harmonics. Try it with a signal generator and see.
You're talking about the harmonics of a E string (even the 10th harmonic is sub 400Hz, and i'd be suprised if you managed to coax THAT harmonic out of your strings) and >20kHz noise like it is the same thing.
It's funny, Nino V and I heard these cables at the Int'l GTG and we were both blow away by the difference in sound. Well, take his opinion, I'm just an amatuer noob, but I have noticed sonic variations in cables. I have a 20' Whirlwind that makes my J sound like a P with flats. I know more about why after reading this thread - THNX!
http://www.zaolla.com/
These are simply too much $$ for me. But the openness and clarity enhancment were NOT marginal, but substantial.
They never did reply to me email to buy one, so they must be selling the heck out of 'em.
http://www.zaolla.com/
These are simply too much $$ for me. But the openness and clarity enhancment were NOT marginal, but substantial.
They never did reply to me email to buy one, so they must be selling the heck out of 'em.
Funny how this extremely complex passive signal filter doesn't screw up the intarweb.
- Aug 21, 2008
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Well you aren't an audio engineer then. Talk to a few and see why you are being naive.
And if it's so negligible, explain why a buffered bass sounds different from a passive bass. If your amp already has a high Z input, what difference would a buffer make?
Now ask anyone who actually makes music equipment and they will say the buffer is isolating the pickups from the cable.
Also that link you posted was for speaker cables... how is that relevant here? It's not. Find one for audio cables at audio frequencies.
Now as far as your math before, here's an article showing the effect of very long cables on the audio spectrum. We aren't dealing with very long cables, but then they aren't dealing with passive signal levels... just active line levels, with sufficiant current to drive long transmission lines:
Invalid Link Removed
So this shows it's not just an RF problem.
Then they point out:
How much current comes from passive pickups? As I pointed out earlier, your examples don't work because they aren't dealing with the low current/small signal levels of magnetic pickups. Active basses can drive longer cable lengths, so the effect of cables is less than with passive basses. With an active bass, you will start to have the problem when the cables get very long, as in the above examples.
Lastly when discussion multi conductor twisted pair, and single ended shields:
Now instrument cables are much shorter, but once again we are dealing with a pretty feeble signal and current source.
You're looking at it slightly wrong. The capacitance of the cable is between the hot conductor and ground, not in series. The filter in question is the series impedance of the pickup (resistance and inductance) with the capacitance of the cable to ground, which is essentially a lowpass filter with a resonant peak. In this case, if you have a high capacitance cable and a high impedance pickup, it is possible to get the filter acting well within the audio band.
However, if you're using an active instrument with low source impedance, the inductive element effectively goes away and the corner frequency of the filter moves up into the hundreds of kHz or the MHz range, where it is in no way audible....
For the most part I'm in complete agreement with you on the effects of cables for audio transmission. Things like skin effect are quite negligible at audio frequencies, which in terms of RF are essentially DC. But in the specialized case of passive pickups there may be cable-induced differences that are quite audible.
Check out these plots that I did of a plain old Roadhog and of a fancy Cardas Golden Chord. I'll summarize the curves:
23-LMS measurement system calibration curve.
24,25- The two cables measured directly by LMS (low source Z, high input Z).
26,27- The two cables as measured by running the signal generator through a US Fender Jazz pickup, measured directly by LMS (1M input impedance).
28,29- the two cables measured through the Jazz pickup but terminated by a 100k resistor in parallel with LMS input (so 90-ish K).
You can really see the LPF made by the cable capacitance and the series impedance of the pickup and the resonant peak caused by the inductance of the pickup interacting with the DCR of the pickup and the capacitance of the cable as well as the input impedance of the measurement system. Note that lowering the amp's input impedance damps the peak.
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Wow, I'm surprised that this thread hasn't been closed yet; as this topic has been covered so much.
I mentioned this in a previous thread. I used to think a cable was a cable. However, a few weeks ago a cable comparison was done at my local bass boutique store (Bass Specialties). I was surprised at how much better the bass sounded with the Mogami platinum cable. It was clearly better than all of the rest. There were about six other cables; though I don't remember what they were (one was oil filled).
Now for live sound it probably doesn't matter as much, but for studio it makes a world of difference.
I mentioned this in a previous thread. I used to think a cable was a cable. However, a few weeks ago a cable comparison was done at my local bass boutique store (Bass Specialties). I was surprised at how much better the bass sounded with the Mogami platinum cable. It was clearly better than all of the rest. There were about six other cables; though I don't remember what they were (one was oil filled).
Now for live sound it probably doesn't matter as much, but for studio it makes a world of difference.
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