Mogami vs Canare

I ordered 300' Canare cable. Amonng other things I need to make 8 cables from my patchbay to my mic inputs on my FW-1884. Then I remembered that I have a raw length of Mogami 8 pair snake/cable.

Which would you use?

The Mogami is about 9 years old and has been in storage for 5 of those years. Storage was temp controlled for 3 years and the last two just a "shed" (but in plastic bins with the folding flapped lids).

Assuming the construction of both cables is the same (e.g. braided-shield star-quad made for stage use) I doubt very seriously whether you will even notice a difference in real-world use. If they are properly constructed I doubt there will even be a detectable difference in sound quality.

However it is by no means a given that snake pairs are the same cable type as stage microphone cable. "Snake" can mean a lot of things for a lot of purposes, and the shielding, insulation durability, braid strength, and other such stuff may not be the same construction type as mic cable. I.e. some of the structural strength, shielding, and flexibility issues might have been dealt with in the snake jacket, or if the snake was intended to carry pre-amplified signal then it may not be as heavily shielded. So the above "if" is broad one.

The meaningful real-world differences between cables are mostly about humdrum stuff such as wire gauge, insulation durability, shield quality, conductor separation (both physically and electrically) and so on, and either brand is good, generically speaking. Particularly for home studio use where really long runs and heavy abuse are unlikely, the minor differences between professional-grade cable brands are unlikely to translate into a meaningful difference in practice. However, using a different type of cable (such as unshielded single-pair vs star-quad stage cable) is a whole nother story.

Cheers.

i would be more concerned with consistent performance than any audible difference. i used to have some no-name TRS patch cables. over time i noticed an increasing hum in one of my monitors. i tried many things to isolate the sound and eventually found it was one of the no-name TRS cables. replaced it with mogami and was good to go.

i've never used canare but i'm sure they are probably the same as far as that goes. it's not rocket science, monster cable notwithstanding. if you've got both then by all means use them both and i doubt you'll be able to tell which is which.

i don't have the link but someone posted it here - a blind test of monster cable and... wire hangers. many self-proclaimed audiophiles could not tell the difference.

ORIGINAL: bapu
I've made my choice. I'm going with Canare quad as opposed to the non-quad Mogami (ooops forgot to mention the difference in the first post). Just seems to make me feel better that quad may not "break down" before non-quad.

Thanks to all for your input. It was indeed helpful.

A good choice! How much to buy the Mogami off you, and how much do you have?

Corey

I pm'd you.

Corey, I PM'd you.

I agree with Mike. there are bad cables and there are good cables and then there are expensive cables. there's a point of diminishing returns, however on the costs of the "good" cable. I think Canare or Mogami are both in the same category of "good" and I wouldn't hesitate to use either, but I am never going to have $1k cables (or more) in my home studio, no matter how "good" they are!

right. those are good points.

But I still wonder sometimes...at the point where I finally purchase one of those lavry gold dac's and a pair of audio technica w5000s and a $2000 tube headphone amp - will the interconnects then make more definitive differences near that vanishing point? It would make sense to assume so but it doesn't seem like anyone here really has a monitoring system in the realm of the thousands and thousands of dollars who could not just extrapolate but speak from authority on this - is there? I mean, does anyone have a really expensive system (with say halcro or mark levinson or revel or whatever?)

I don't own anything like that but get opportunities to listen to such hi fi gear.

I also have worked in studios with huge sofit mounted Genelec and DynAudio systems.

One category is high end home entertainment... the other is professional studio monitoring.

I find it curious that the high end entertainment crowd recently had a love affair with household ROMEX for the speaker connections... Hi Fi home entertainment is a great hobby.

Most pro studios don't make a hobby of it.

The remarkable thing is that so many stereo enthusiasts choose to remain ignorant of facts that radio and radar guys find to be critical stats.

So it's not just about arguments about bandwidth and golden ears... cable technology has lots of data available and you can certainly select BEST grade cables without ever making a hobby of it or getting all wishy washy about who's ears are better than others.

I like to point out that several years ago AudioNote was marketing their 300B mono blocks at $50k per channel. They gleefully bragged that their 99.9% silver wire was mined by Japanese monks who chanted incantations while sourcing the raw materials.

That's goofy.

I have a tech friend who's son works in a Hi End audio salon in New Jersey. He tells great stories of guys pulling up in $120k Porsches... the kid basically belittles them into buying a $60k sound rig, and they he starts laying out the roadmap for possible upgrades. He thinks it's great sport and a fair enough game considering they came in just for the treatment. I find the stories humorous.

I also like to point out that most of the content listened to or watched on hi end home entertainment systems is created with fairly basic cabling. So it's curious that the end user might spend more on monster cables than the production house did on their professional grade cabling.

If you enjoy the hobby... by all means take it to the limit.

When you get your system together invite me over... I'll bring beverages and some old scratchy Miles Davis LPs :-)

best regards,
mike

I like to point out that several years ago AudioNote was marketing their 300B mono blocks at $50k per channel. They gleefully bragged that their 99.9% silver wire was mined by Japanese monks who chanted incantations while sourcing the raw materials.

Isn't Pear Cable still up to those screwball antics. "Buy our solid gold RCA cable for only $1200 for 1/2 meter"

ORIGINAL: rumleymusic

I like to point out that several years ago AudioNote was marketing their 300B mono blocks at $50k per channel. They gleefully bragged that their 99.9% silver wire was mined by Japanese monks who chanted incantations while sourcing the raw materials.

Isn't Pear Cable still up to those screwball antics. "Buy our solid gold RCA cable for only $1200 for 1/2 meter"

If you had bought them when they first came out it might have been a good investment, after seeing how much gold has gone up in the last few years... tee hee. At least you could melt them down and get something.