C O N N E C T I N G A N D P O W E R I N G
24
9
Connecting and Powering
Cables
Analog
XLR vs. RCA
. Balanced cables are inherently transparent and immune to the
effects of cable length and noise pickup. This is why they’re used in practically
every studio that records and engineers musical recordings, and are also used in
live performance venues where cable runs can be hundreds of feet long.
Just as the studios choose cables, if using balanced interconnections, you will
generally do equally well with a pair of $20 - $50 microphone cables from your
local musical instrument / pro-audio store or Amazon, as you would do with
something high priced.
If your equipment has RCA outputs, then you can get perfectly good results
using your existing RCA (single ended) cables. Given the relatively short cable
runs and small amounts of radio interference in a typical home setup, balanced
runs offer little or no advantage.
Digital
Since digital cables carry just ones and zeros, that is, just two voltage levels,
they’re inherently immune to interference. There also has to be something very
wrong for the data to become corrupted in the cables or at the wire terminations
or jacks. Immunity is even stronger for optical digital cables.
We recommend using whichever cables you feel comfortable with, but once the
price gets over about $20, price is no clue to quality.