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atoavyesterday at 11:28 PM1 replyview on HN

Sure shielding is important, especially for high impedance signsls or very small signals (e.g. microphone cables). But the difference in shielding between a 10€ cable and a 100€ cable is not going to be audible in anything but edge cases.

Gauge is only important if the driving or receiving sides suck or you're using ridiculously small gauges or driving high currents (e.g. speaker signals) for long distances. In my lab tests I drove line signals over a spool of hair thin wire without audible difference. A famous experiment that gave me a good chuckle came to similar results: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/copper-wire-vs-ba...

You could literally use CAT 6 ethernet cables and call it a day. There have been tests running balanced audio signals over a kilometer of ethernet cable without audible loss. And since you got 4 twisted pairs you could run 4 channels over one cable (commercially available here for example: https://store.monkeywrenchpro.com/thomann-5fc-cat-snake-spli...). I use this in combination with an ethernet patchbay to route signals around our event spaces and it works well even for unamplified mic level signals.


Replies

jmalickitoday at 12:00 AM

I have seen cables for powered computer speakers make cat5, or coat hangers, look amazing