I was curious to see how it would work. Anything wrong with being curious? I'm an engineer. That's how I think. If I thought something was dangerous, I wouldn't try it. At the time, I didn't know I needed 75ohm, and I just had some 50ohm available, so when I decided to buy some 75 ohm cable I wanted to see if there was any improvement at all. I wanted a baseline to see if there was a difference. Based on what I found, the difference was pretty small, so it kind of tells me buying an esoteric upgrade from a good 75 ohm would also be small. Does that make more sense now? I could go on for hours on other experiments but you probably wouldn't be interested, so I won't list them.

I keep reading about how the image is wider with this cable or that wordclock, or how jitter is damaging someone's sound. I wanted to know what jitter sounds like so when I make a change, I know if it is really an improvement. I also tried a bare wire with no shielding on the wordclock, just to see how it sounded. Even that didn't sound MUCH different. It was all subtle at the audible level, and hard for me to tell. I was only suggesting a more objective method of testing a setup instead of using subjective listening tests.

Isn't anyone curious if these esoteric cables are really worth the money? I am trying to point out that at least for me, using good quality cables of the proper impedance is good enough.

I read that some esoteric audio cables, not wordclock, sound warmer mainly because they have high capacitance, and actually roll off the highs. I don't think anyone mixing music would want to roll off the highs through their cables.

I just wanted to pass on my experience so anyone else out there with the same questions could learn from my mistakes, and maybe try their own experiment if they wanted to. I sense from reading several audio BB boards that there are alot of folks questioning their gear, and looking for some magic cables or word clock or mic-pre or microphone or ... to solve their problems. Maybe they COULD use some improvements in gear, or maybe they just need to improve their own mixing skills. For me this exercise was just a away of giving me some confidence in my equipment.

YMMV

"Isn't anyone curious if these esoteric cables are really worth the money?"

Hmmmmm, that's a slippery slope dude...... I'd have to say that the folks who have already spent the $$ have already made up their minds

OK, sounds sensible.

I think the biggest thing is the blind listening test. If people can't tell the difference (beyond simple chance), then there's no need to make the change.

A lot of people's monitors aren't good enough to expose the differences either.

Which tweak cables? Digital, mic, line, power?

Long's mic cables vs. standard Canare (maybe it was Mogami, I don't remember) made as much difference with an SM57 as a lot of mic cables would make.