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Does Star Quad Cable Sound Better? Help me find out!
JohnHuntington:
For a talk I'm giving at the upcoming USITT convention on blind testing and the infrasound research we did last fall, I've set up an online, blind listening test which compares recordings of a Yamaha Disklavier with both star quad and conventionally constructed cable.
I'm looking for as many listeners as possible who have 10-15 minutes to listen to a recording and fill out a brief survey.
The file, survey link, and all the details are available at http://www.controlgeek.net/blog/2011/2/27/does-star-quad-microphone-cable-sound-better-lets-find-out.html
The survey is available until 6pm NYC time on Thursday, March 10, 2011; I will be announcing some preliminary results in my USITT session at 2:45pm on Friday, March 11 in Charlotte, and then at some point thereafter will post an analysis and followup on the blog.
Thanks!
John Huntington
www.controlgeek.net
JohnHuntington:
Looks like I exceeded Google's unstated bandwidth limit; I posted an alternate download site.
Thanks!
John Huntington
www.controlgeek.net
John Roberts {JR}:
I am not sure what this is doing in the pro area...
There better not be an audible difference with that signal chain...
You point that the marketing in this product category is hyperbolic, is a given and hardly news.
JR
Ivan Beaver:
--- Quote from: JohnHuntington on February 28, 2011, 08:30:36 AM ---For a talk I'm giving at the upcoming USITT convention on blind testing and the infrasound research we did last fall, I've set up an online, blind listening test which compares recordings of a Yamaha Disklavier with both star quad and conventionally constructed cable.
I'm looking for as many listeners as possible who have 10-15 minutes to listen to a recording and fill out a brief survey.
The file, survey link, and all the details are available at http://www.controlgeek.net/blog/2011/2/27/does-star-quad-microphone-cable-sound-better-lets-find-out.html
The survey is available until 6pm NYC time on Thursday, March 10, 2011; I will be announcing some preliminary results in my USITT session at 2:45pm on Friday, March 11 in Charlotte, and then at some point thereafter will post an analysis and followup on the blog.
Thanks!
John Huntington
www.controlgeek.net
--- End quote ---
As usual the answer is "it depends".
In a very noisy environment star quad can help reduce noise. Why? because there is more conductor exposed to the same noise source and the common mode rejection of the input stage will be more effective.
So what is the downside? Star quad has twice the capacitance of regular mic cable.
So over a long distance (say down a snake), there can be some high freq rolloff. Of course that depends on the terminating impedance and so forth.
Trying to setup a simple test only results in simple wrong answers.
So the correct answer is that it is both better and worse at the same time-depends on what "probelm" you are looking at or are interested in.
Chris Hindle:
--- Quote from: John Roberts {JR} on February 28, 2011, 12:24:03 PM ---I am not sure what this is doing in the pro area...
There better not be an audible difference with that signal chain...
You point that the marketing in this product category is hyperbolic, is a given and hardly news.
JR
--- End quote ---
Ya, I'm kind of thinking that if you want to see a difference, include a 300 foot snake, put a couple of channels of Clear-Com and DMX along for the ride, and pass a couple of runs of 200A feeder. Put the stage box beside the dimmer rack for extra bonus points.
10 feet of mic cable into a USB-Pre is kind of not worth the effort, in a real-world sense of things.
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