In article , Paul wrote:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora...cable-right%3F
"The issue of frequency-response degradation in cables is sometimes
brought up, and while there is a small potential for a cable to do this,
the problem is largely immaterial except when dealing with extremely
long cable lengths. It takes close to four hundred feet of cable to
produce 1 dB of attenuation at 20 kHz (nominal), which in most live
situations, is virtually inaudible."
This I did not know!
This is why audio folks use low-Z balanced systems. That estimate is kind
of silly, though, as you really need to specify the source and load impedances
as well as the cable. With the Schoeps mikes that have a 50 ohm source Z,
you can run longer than 400 ft. before getting 1dB down. Which is good for
classical work where running a thousand feet of cable from suspended mikes
out to the truck is not unusual.
But... there are two cases you will encounter frequently in the studio where
this isn't necessarily the case, and both have to do with high-Z systems.
The first, obviously, is guitar amp cables. Very high impedance line, so
it becomes a huge issue not only the shunt capacitance of the cable but with
some weird cable designs even the series inductance.
But the second one isn't so obvious, and it's the ribbon microphone. Ribbons
have pretty weird source impedances which can be pretty high at some
frequencies, so a lot of people like to use preamps with very high load Z
so that source impedance is not a problem. But, when you do that, the cable
then does start to be a problem, especially cables with a lot of shunt
capacitance like star-quad types.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."