RE: Re: Hilarious Cables

Fred is the "BEST" !

  _____  

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2016 10:07 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [EAC] Re: Hilarious Cables


  


Fred knows his stuff!

I would augment one point, though, I think it's fair to say pretty much all
electric guitar players consider the guitar/cable/processing/amp/driver to
be the palette,  and if they're good, the palette includes the room they're
playing in, so 'linearity' becomes a meaningless concept- it's art, and so
anything goes. And if you add recording, that's where the transition to
'linearity' can begin- mic selection and other acoustic conditions can
either be set up for linearity or 'creative', and through production
creativity is gradually phased out either strongly or gently, through the
mastering process.

Gerry Pehl

From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2016 6:04 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [EAC] Re: Hilarious Cables

  

As the guitarists among you will know, passive magnetic guitar pickups are
*very* different beasts than active line stages in audio gear.  In some
ways, they are much closer to phono cartridges than line stages in their
interaction with cables.  Passive guitar pickups have an output impedance of
around 4.5KΩ - 10KΩ and have a lot of inductance (1-9 Henries).  That makes
guitars very reactive with cable lumped parameters (series resistance,
series inductance, shunt conductance, and shunt capacitance.) as well as
with the input characteristics of the guitar amplifier.  The guitar cable
becomes a "tone control" of sorts for the guitar. We're talking about
producing, not reproducing, music and there is no such thing as "fidelity"
when you're talking about an instrument.    I would not be at all surprised
to learn that a guitarist felt that cable A sounded best for 10 foot lengths
but terrible for 25 foot lengths, while cable B may be completely the
opposite.

By contrast, a properly designed line output stage will have an output
impedance two orders of magnitude lower than a passive guitar pickup and
should be all but immune to the typical differences in cables.  The
exception being when and "audiophile" cable is purposely produced with
excessive (atypical) capacitance or inductance (sometimes even hiding caps
inside of blocks in the cable, as described below), making the cable, in
effect, a really bad tone control.

Cable manufacturers like to talk about "skin effect," something that comes
into play in RF frequencies.  Talking about skin effect at audio frequencies
is like talking about the effects of aerodynamic downforce on a turtle.

Regards,

   Fred

On May 27, 2016, at 10:33 PM, [email protected] [EAC]
<[email protected]> wrote:



I thought I would pitch this into the barrel - this 'technology' carries on
into the instrument cable universe with cables providing "built-in
equalization" (which seems to be an assortment of roll-off caps built under
a rotary switch in the cable head):
<http://www.ordiocables.com.au/product/neutrik-ultimate-plug-guitar-cable/>
http://www.ordiocables.com.au/product/neutrik-ultimate-plug-guitar-cable/
for those too lazy to build their own, and on and on.
However, there is an unscientific but fairly in-depth presentation of cable
capacitance, high-resistance connections, and other such quality-influencing
issues on the Premier Guitar site - many of which really DO figure into the
ultimate transmission of audio quality; 
 
<http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/guitar-cable-roundup-part-one-page-2-
2?page=2> Guitar Cable Roundup, Part One

	
	
 
<http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/guitar-cable-roundup-part-one-page-2-
2?page=2> image

	
<http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/guitar-cable-roundup-part-one-page-2-
2?page=2> Guitar Cable Roundup, Part One

The naysayers are dead wrong: quality cables DO make a difference

	


 
<http://www.premierguitar.com/articles/guitar-cable-roundup-part-one-page-2-
2?page=2> View on www.premierguitar.com

Preview by Yahoo 

	
						


I'm still not ready to shell out $39K for a cable tho.
- T.