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Author Topic: DPA 4061 cable length testing  (Read 1816 times)

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Offline it-goes-to-eleven

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DPA 4061 cable length testing
« on: July 01, 2005, 12:10:17 PM »
I have been wondering how long I can run the cables to my DPA 4061's.  They're 9volt mics, not 48, so cable length is a concern.   

Some folks report mounting their pre-amp on the stand and making their long runs post-pre.  Obviously, that doesn't allow the level adjustments we'd like.  And for me, hanging the MiniMe off the stand and sending USB to my laptop isn't practical.  I recently recorded a show using 15' runs and was concerned that I may have lost quality as a result.

So yesterday, I decided to finally do some tests of cable length.  The extreme case was 40', achieved by connecting 25' and 15' cables. My 'short' rig has the DPA's running into a sound pro bbox and then into the XLR inputs of the MiniMe via a 12" pair of cables I made.  So 1' vs. 40' in the extreme case.  I also collected data at 15 and 25'.

I setup a PC to send source material via USB to a UA5 and into a pair of Sennheiser HD280's.  I sandwiched the DPAs between the headphones with a rubberband.  The DPAs went into my Minime which recorded via USB to a laptop at 16/44.1.

All cables were Canare quads with Neutrik gold XLRs.

The initial tests were done with tones I generated at 50, 3000, 12000 and 16000 hz.

For the 3000 hz case, the amplitude difference between the 40' and 1' Canare runs was .0081 dB.  I consider that below what I can reliably measure.

I also compared samples of a recently recorded show.  Again, the peaks were essentially identical between the 40' and 1'.  In subjective listening with the headphones, I couldn't identify a difference.  Of course I couldn't compare imaging or soundstage with this test method.

I had hoped to post some snazzy eye-candy graphs of dB loss, frequency rolloff, etc, but I couldn't measure a difference or find anything to graph  :o

I think more testing could be done here, but I've mostly satisfied myself that there are far more important things to worry about than cable length ;D

Does anyone have any thoughts regarding what form the degradation should take as cable lengths increase?

 

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