I am building some mic and interconnect cables and I wonder if it is better to use starquad cables for unbalanced interconnect?
My difficulty is to buy small quantity of Belden 1804A as I need to fit two RCA's into a TAF3 and even Canare L45E will be too large to fit into a mini-xlr.
BTW, if there are anyone who is willing to split some 1804A for a cannuck, please let me know.
Thanks,
Ed
Have solely used a custom made small .090' dia star-quad in the DSM mics made here for 20 years, and for some of the adapter patch cables. This cable works for both balanced/unbalanced terminations with excellent noise immunity in both configurations.
It is good to realize this cable has 4 signal conductors close together so has much HIGHER distributed (coupling) capacitance as compared with coaxial and most single signal conductor cords.
While some prefer to use as low a capacity cable as possible for maybe getting more high frequency bandwidth, I seem to think the dampening effect of distributed capacitance in audio cable is very useful for reducing reactive signal reflections (echos).
These reflections are a kind of signal noise artifact common with unterminated audio/video/rf cables. Having more distributed cable capacitance works for improving the audio clarity regardless of a cable being properly terminated and because of this, I prefer using the star-quad configuration for this reason.
Since most mics and (sollid state) preamps have low output impedance (good 200-1000 ohm load driving ability), the additional loading of star-quad is not an issue in reducing high frequency audio bandwidth so I see little reason to avoid using this type cable when practical to do so.