speakon cable quality

[agedhorse]

There are double wrapped spiral wound shields that are wrapped in both directions, these are quite effective.

 

[beans-on-toast]

I would question that a spiral wound shield is superior to a braided shield, against electrostatic noise. I've always been impressed with Mogami's offerings though.

A braid isn’t simply a braid, a wound shield isn’t simply a wound shield. It depends on the density. For instance, there are very tight braids and their are looser ones. RG-58/U coax for example has shield coverage of between 70% and 95%.

Shields can open as cables age with winding/unwinding use, especially if they are abused. I find that my twisted shield cables perform better than my braided ones. But you really have to look at the specs of the products that you are comparing. Like the RG-58, specs can vary.

 

[Rojd]

I have a Kirlin speakon from Musician's Friend on one board and a ProCo from Sweetwater on the other. Both are solid and work great.

 

[Bassamatic]

ProCo is and has been a great company for many years. However, we are talking SPEAKER cables. Lamp cord will work and sound exactly the same. For build quality ProCo is excellent. I knew the founder for many many years until he passed.

However, I would certainly buy Speakon cables from MonoPrice. I and my neighbor (PA Company) have several and they are exceptional, and much lower cost. Some say the connectors are not the same, but they are perfect and fully compatible in our experience. Monoprice is historically a cable company! Just take a look before you squander your money - - -
Invalid Link Removed

 

[byacey]

Lamp cord will work and sound exactly the same.

The problem is that a speakon collet won't clamp down well on zip cord.

 

[Redbrangus]

The price is certainly right at that Monoprice site. But I couldn't help noticing in the mic cable items as well as in the speaker cables, that they do not claim to use genuine Neutrik parts, which leads me to believe that they don't, since everyone who does makes a point of announcing it. If they work for you, that's cool, but I stand by my recommendation to only use genuine Neutrik NL4s or NL2s.

 

[agedhorse]

One of the biggest SpeakOn connector headaches from a product support standpoint has been the connectors used on the Monoprice cables. As high as the no name Amazon generic Chinese cables.

Please don't promote something with a verified history of issues.

 

[keyboardguy]

buy real Neutrik SpeakON connectors & SJOOW wire from Home Depot, then build your own
The only special tool required is a PoziDriv #1 bit for your nut driver:

Southwire 150 ft. 14/2 300-Volt CU Black Flexible Portable Power SJOOW Cord-55812146 - The Home Depot

IOW, there is NO soldering with SpeakON

I've built many speakon cables and used a phillips head screwdriver instead of a pozodriv with not problems at all. You're only tightening the screw once; don't worry about it....

 

[Killed_by_Death]

A PoziDriv bit is better, Fact!

 

[agedhorse]

Phillips can kinda work and it's the cheap solution, but the pain you experience when the tip slips and impales the meaty part of your hand is "priceless"

 

[SweetsoundsPups]

$88 for a 3 foot speaker cable? High price doesn't always mean better. You can build your own. Personally, I have never had a problem with the old style cable ( built my own ) Used 14 gauge extension cord wire. Been using it for over 40 years. But..... I know "It's New!" Remember when car keys were $.50 a copy?

 

[Geri O]

Phillips can kinda work and it's the cheap solution, but the pain you experience when the tip slips and impales the meaty part of your hand is "priceless"

Priceless, no question, but one certainly pays for it....

 

[paulears]

In my life I’ve built a mental list of things that matter and things that don’t. The advice I liked best in this topic is the post that said the best cables work the worst ones don’t. Cables that sound different are faulty. Usually damp and capacitance is making them dull. I buy and use hundreds of metres of mic and speaker cable. What matters is flexibility, resistance to damage and price. For mics I have 30 years worth of cables in the bins. My favourite ever is Canfield HST a BBC stalwart for a long time. When it was available I liked Musiflex with conductive screen and easy to put on with the Neutrik IDC connectors. Never had a faulty one, but I went back to solder. In recent years for cost reasons I’ve been using cable from Thomann in Germany. Nearly as nice as HST but cheaper. I always buy purple so my cables are obvious. For loudspeaker cables I now use H07 rubber covered mains cable because it’s flexible and tough. 1.5mm2 for short ones and 2.5mm2 for longer ones BUT all 4 core. I have no 2 core ones in stock now because running a long cable, hooking it up and then discovering it was a 2 core one is a major pain! So for me, every cable is now bi-wire capable.

connectors. Neutrik are well made but they are not foolproof. Their design however is the best. I buy a lot of Chinese products and it is possible to buy Neutrik branded and bagged connectors from China that you cannot distinguish from the European sources 100% genuine products. One of my people two years ago mixed up the bags of speakons and 3 pin XLRs and since then I have no idea which is which and they have ALL mean electrically and mechanically perfect. There are Chinese XLRs that are based on Neutrik but have different clamp designs and they’re fine too. The only ones to avoid from China are the speakons modelled on the original design that have a locking twist ring. These fail and they pull out. Also some of the Chinese ones are made of less hard plastic and after a while, they will insert 180 degrees wrong but not latch.

most of mine are in and out of venues all the time and they get damaged. Every gig returns a bin of failed cables that get thrown on the check pile. With no work due to the virus, I’ve gone through the pile and thrown away lots of cables. Split ones, crushed ones, ones with mangled connectors and any xlr or speakon fitted cables that don’t mate properly go in the bin. Every cable on the tester. Every mic cable tested with a condenser mic and a quick one two and a cable shake. The water damaged cables often are microphonic when water has gone up the inside or they crackle when the conductors or screen has been damaged. The only connector issues are exposed conductors where the original putting on was a bit dodgy and the occasional worn speakon perhaps caused by an inexperienced member of crew who jammed it in 180 degrees wrong through persistence and ignorance. If the cable has a Chinese own design connector they seem just as good. One exception. I did have one batch where the screw heads stripped pitting them on. I never bought from that supplier again. I now have both varieties of powercon connectors too in the bins. These do sometimes burn and arc when unmated under load. So do genuine Neutrik.
NONE of my audio cables sound different if not faulty. The concept of choosing a better sounding one from the bins makes me smile. If it works it’s good! If they buzz or hum they’re broken!

last comment. For speakers avoid any cable that does not coil nicely. Trying to wrangle 20m if stuff PVC 4 core is not fun. Sounds fine of course!

 

[agedhorse]

If you have failed cables after every gig, maybe your Chinese connectors aren't so good after all, or there's something else wrong.

I ran a sound company as part of my other day job for almost 40 years. We had/have about 1500 pounds (700 kilos) of mic and speaker cable. Much of it is 15-20 years old and have thousands of gigs on them and maybe we find a bad cable 4 or 5 times a year at the most. Haven't seen a bad SpeakOn in several years, but everything is genuine Neutrik.

There is Neutrik Ningbo, Chinese manufactured for the OEM market that sometimes get sold through cable house suppliers. These are. It knock-offs or counterfeits, they are the gunuine parts built to the same standards and the Lichtenstein parts.

 

[DWBass]

buy real Neutrik SpeakON connectors & SJOOW wire from Home Depot, then build your own
The only special tool required is a PoziDriv #1 bit for your nut driver:

IOW, there is NO soldering with SpeakON

Yeah, only Monster Cable would do something stupid like that!! I thought I was having a cab issue. Ended up being the cable came apart inside the speakon connector and was making intermittent contact. Monster Cable is dead to me ever since!!

 

[DWBass]

ProCo is a legit enough company--they're big and they've been around a long time, and while they're not exactly known for making boutique-grade, 'high-end' cabling, they wouldn't survive that long if they ripped off their customers--MI-types and music merchandisers--with bogus connectors. Not to mention that Neutrik themselves wouldn't sell to them if they were ever caught using the counterfeits, and Neutrik supplies the industry a whole lot more connectors than just the SpeakOn line. I think the biggest concern about counterfeits should be when buying loose connectors for making your own cabling; you HAVE to buy from a known source like Parts Express, Mouser, etc. People known to actually sell Neutrik connectors...if you just buy from some unknown source on Amazon, I think you're running some risk of getting fraudulent connectors. At least, so I'm told...I've never encountered a fake NL4 my own self, but I've heard or read plenty of accounts from people whose opinions I trust.

And while I trust that Sweetwater wouldn't carry a product that has a bogus Neutrik connector, I must admit that my faith in them as an online marketer has been somewhat diminished by reading their glowing recommendation of the superior sonic properties of that $88 speaker cable.

I own ProCo cables I bought back in the 90's that are still going strong. No failures.

 

[Bassdirty]

I’m sorry my bad, my cables are procraft..

That's probably a company trying to cash in on Proco's decent reputation. If my guess is true, its kindof a douchey move.

So I did search before posting:

Proco cables google search brings up the company's (procosound) actual website as the 1st link.

Procraft Cables google search showed a bunch of amazon and ebay cables for sale. There was no company website listed on the 1st page.. I didn't search futher, as I think I proved my guess as stated above.

...most of mine are in and out of venues all the time and they get damaged. Every gig returns a bin of failed cables that get thrown on the check pile. ...

This doesn't sound right to me.. well shouldnt sound right..?..

DANG yo! Maybe you need some new "helpers"?



T$

 

[paulears]

Ah - that's interesting about Neutrik Ningbo. Didn't know that - perhaps that explains the similarity.
Maybe it's the types of shows we do, but we damage a lot. We tie a knot in any cable - sound or LX that needs looking at. We had one batch of Neutriks from a well known UK supplier and the cable glands seemed to snap off when the cable was stressed plugged into panels - The change to the latest versions with the different clamping seems fine and stronger - but lots of those cables are still in the bins.

The absolute worst XLRs must be the Switchcraft tapered body ones - terrible in every aspect. I've got a few Shure cables that came with 57's and 58's a long time back with very thick tough cable, and had a Canon plug and Switchcraft tapered female. Those ones are still working untouched since 1979!

 

[Redbrangus]

The absolute worst XLRs must be the Switchcraft tapered body ones - terrible in every aspect.

I'm not sure which Switchcraft connectors you're referring to, but the A3F and A3Ms were pretty much an industry standard for a long, long time. They were so much better than the true Cannon XLR-3 connectors they displaced that there was no comparison, IMO, if only because there weren't any tiny loose screws to get lost. A great thing about Neutrik as a company is that they listen to end-users and implement incremental improvements, something that Switchcraft and Cannon never seemed to see the value of. I switched over to Neutrik XLRs ages ago, but I still have scores of cables terminated with Switchcraft connectors that have given literally decades of dependable service, so I don't get the dissatisfaction with Switchcraft.

 

[agedhorse]

The Switchcraft strain reliefs are the weak link, but when assembled properly with the correct OD cable (like Belden 8412) are plenty reliable. I have maybe a hundred such cables that have been reliable over several thousand gigs with very minimal maintenance.