A boom pole advice, please

[Adriano Castaldini]

Thanks (as always) for your reply and help, Mr. Crowley.
I must admit that mic cable is an unknow world for me: I’ve read various forums about different quality cables and the names were Vovox, Mogami, Klotz, Sommer. But each brand has various types of cables for various features (shielded, unshielded, double-shielded, etc.)
First of all I can’t make the cable by myself, I have to buy it pre-made, and the types that I can easily order (in Italy) are the following:
– Vovox link protect S200;
– Sommer Cable Albedo Micro Cable;
– Mogami 2534 Neglex Quad cable + Neutrik NC3 XX-B;
– Mogami 3080 + Eminence E303 & E304;
– Mogami MGAES0300BL;
– Klotz M5.

1. Short question: which is the best cable for noise rejection and shielding?

2. Long question: in THIS image you can see a list of detailed infos about the cable. Can someone of you kindly (and patiently) explain to me the main infos to understand why a cable is better then another one?

Thanks a lot.

[Richard Crowley]

[Adriano Castaldini] “1. Short question: which is the best cable for noise rejection and shielding?”

All of those are good cables for audio. None is better or worse “for noise rejection and shielding” or for any other aspect of audio signal integrity, for that matter. Don’t obsess over various brands of cable and connectors. You will go mad and become a cable fanatic and never make any videos.

[Adriano Castaldini] “2. Long question: in THIS image you can see a list of detailed infos about the cable. Can someone of you kindly (and patiently) explain to me the main infos to understand why a cable is better then another one?”

It is a myth that “one cable is better than another one”. The people who believe in magic cable claim they can “hear a difference” . But no difference can be measured. And none of the “differences” can be correlated with the perfectly ordinary scientific measurements as shown in your image. ALL cable has different amount of resistance or capacitance or inductance or is made of different materials or may be more stiff or more limp, or be a different color, etc.

But remember from the previous response. Microphone signals (and most line-level signals) are low-impedance so that any slight differences in cable capacitance (or other factors) will NOT affect the quality of the signal.

The only kind of audio signals that are vulnerable to cable characteristics are high-impedance signals. These are the kinds of signals that come from vintage electric guitars (with high-impedance pickups) and old, vintage high-impedance, unbalanced microphones. Now, many decades later, we know better than to make high-impedance sources. That makes the choice of cable quite un-important.

This is not worth obsessing over. One of my favorite quotes from another forum was a famous audio engineer who said: “A $200 cable is better than a $2 cable. But it is not better than a $5 cable.” In other words: You can buy very cheap cables made from poor-quality materials (which will fall apart) and constructed with poor workmanship (which may be intermittent or break). But buying very expensive cables gets you nothing more than an ordinary cable can deliver.

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Recording audio without metering and monitoring is exactly like framing and focusing without looking at the viewfinder.

[Adriano Castaldini]

Amazing wisdom!
Thank you so much for your help!
You are a great guru Mr. Crowley!