Topic: Silver clad cable recommendations?

[poorlyconditioned]

I'm still looking for good silver clad for ICs, mic cables, etc.. But I'm stuck on the audio quality bit and knowing that 'silver clad' != good sound.  I also feel that you can't read the specs for a cable and know that it will sound better than cable that was specifically engineered and tested for use as mic cable, etc.

Another factor.. The quad connect that is good for mic cables may not be ideal for ICs.

Then there is the whole inductance issue. The 1804a has very fine 28awg conductors.  That low inductance is a somewhat different approach compared to many of the cables in use.  I've wondered how it would work for ICs.

I'm also still trying to settle on some good RCAs for IC projects.  My instinct is that the heavy RCAs with lots of metal mass aren't a good idea.  I wonder if some of cheap ones that are mostly plastic wouldn't actually be better than a lot of those. Obviously, you can spend pretty goofy money on RCAs.  That's especially true if you want to build a few cables to compare. I find it very ironic that we only spend about $2 on XLRs.  Granted, those are balanced cables so the characteristics are different. But I don't think the balanced config changes that connector issues all that much.

I have a bunch of cables to make (rca-rca IC, rca-xlr IC, mic cables)...  FWIW, schoeps active cable is some pretty trick custom stuff and it is not silver clad.

I've seen schematics for the Schoeps actives (over at micbuilders Yahoo groups).  It is several concentric connectors.  I think signal (unbalanced) in the middle, then return, then 60V, then shield, or something like that.  It is different than mic phantom power where a twisted pair floats at the phantom voltage.  Anyhow, be careful with those Scheops actives.  They're certainly not standard cables!

  Richard

[Lil Kim Jong-Il]

I'll probably be ordering 1000 feet just for myself. 

Which stuff are you referring to?  The cable from ebay?

Yup, the ebay stuff I'm offering.  That guy who's link I posted above does not sell his mil-spec cable on ebay afaik.  I'm sure that 1K feet would get the price down fairly low.   I spke with the guys and 500ft was the next price break but I didn't ask because I didn't want that much.


Freelunch,

I agree that specs won't tell the entire story but there are material and construction traits that consistantly appear in the cables reported to be of good audio quality.  Starting with that should be a safe bet for most applications in light of all the anecdotal reports found here and it's cheap enough to try and not really lose anything.