Karaoke Forums

One of my systems I put together was getting worse over a period of time and I have been busy and I went over one afternnon and its one of those places that wont let you do sound checks.. Finally today he had it at his home and I listened to it..He got a new laptop so I set it up with Roxbox .   We fired it up and it absolutely sucked..I hooked up his original computer . He has a Dfx12 with a bbe 362 and an aphex 204 which I put in series from mixer out to Jbl eons (1'4' plug).. My dfx12 I have modified with normalled outs>eq>mains which works better.. Anyway the old comp was slightly better but it took some peaking from input to speakers wasnt quite right yet although its hard to tell in close quarters..

 Ok here is the tip of the week. He had bought some mic cables from the guitar center and replaced the speaker cables.. They were single conductor.. The inputs to eons are balanced and the only way to wire 1/4" to balanced is one wire to pin 3 of the xlr, pin 2 of the xlr to the other wire and ground the second wire back on the 1/4" plug. I fixed his original speaker cables hooked them up What a difference!!! The Mackie manual and I think the Jbl manual tells how to hook up for all the different setups...

Cables can make a huge difference Karyoker.  People think some of Monster cables stuff is quite costly, and I admit it is...Yet if you are running even an instrument into a really nice amp, and using a VERY costly decent guitar, a $4 MF special guitar cable isn't doing yourself a favor.... I suppose same with using cheap guitar cables as speaker cable.. etc.... To conduct sound well, you do need decent cable or wire...

So I guess my question would be this... For guitar and bass, what would I minimally want in a patch cord ? Is there a specific guage and material I should look for ?  Is it cheaper to make my own with cable and a soldering gun ?


Same with speaker cable ?   What must a person be willing to spend ?  and for what ?

_________________
Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

Is it cheaper to make your own?.......

Don't look at it that way........If you make you own using high quality cable and connectors you will save money, but they will still cost more than most.

So yes, make your own, just use the very best materials....It really is simple to do the soldering, and you can then configure all your patch cables to the exact lengths you require so you don't end up with a huge mess behind your stacks.

I get lots of stuff from markertek.com.   That is where all the pro audio/video guys from CNN, ABC and such buy their stuff....If you need anything in the way of cable, connectors and so on, they got it and they only carry the very best quality stuff....You can get all you cable there in bulk at a decent price.

Audio cables are'nt quite as critical as video cables but I dont know how many 1000 ft rolls I have used. One of my major projects was moving a tv studio into the transmitter building out on hill outside of town. We literally made cables for audio and video and wired a complete tv station. With video you have set delays in the video switcher to get all in sync. Of course all the audio is 600 ohm balanced. Rg49 video cable is double shielded with 2 layers of braided shield around the center conductor. It is hard to comb out As a cable ages (i worked some aboard ship it was a cruiser original comission '42) the copper corrodes and is no longer shiny..It takes alot of solder flux to make a good connection to ground. So the first lesson is the solder connection between the wire and terminal is probably the most important thing . Both should be shiny and clean...Things like a Techtronix scope actually requires silver solder which takes a higher temp.. Short cables like hooking up rack components arent real critical in fact I go to the shack and buy these/
with 2 1/4' plugs cut in half then cit for length and sollder the 1/4' plug on the bare ends . This gives 2 hookup cables. On some things like the bbe362 and aphex 204 I actually hard wire one end to one or the other..

Yea I know the pros use monster cable and one that starts with a "c" which I cant tthink of.. If a cable has a woven shield (2 are better) and it is soldered correctly to the xlr or whatever it is good for balanced, single ended for long lengths.. Anything beyond that engineering wise requires knowing the resistivy per foot and output impedance of the amp and input impedance of whatever which I would have to break out one of my dusty books to figure that out again..

It took a whole beer to do this post

Karaoker, why not just buy the metal male RCA 1/4 inch phono plugs you can screw and unscrew the plug from the metal grip ?



Thanks Keith, I'll check this site out !

_________________
Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

 Good site  Keith .. I dont rember now if they are Cannon xlrs or not but the xlrs on my shure mics are loose.. Seems the Shure mics are diffrent size has anybody noticed this?

I'm over there glancing now...

http://www.markertek.com/Product.asp?ba ... rch=0&off=

_________________
Northeast United States runner up for the "Singing Hall of Shame".

I knew you guys especially would like that site....Those guys are the premier supplier for all the big studio and broadcast engineers, Hollywood even....If they ain't got it you don't need it.