• this@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    As an audio engineer I can confirm that shielding is more important in a cable than whether or not it has gold plated connectors. Gold plated connectors don’t really do much unless the connectors are worn down and don’t make good contact in the first place, shielding actually does something for signal to noise ratio, especially for unbalanced and/or mic level(low level signal) and/or long cables. This is really only applicable for analog stuff for the most part of course.

    • ClassyHatter@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not an audio engineer, but I had unshielded (thin) cables in my home speaker setup. If the cables were positioned correctly, everything was fine. Accidentally move them even a little, and there’d be a huge amount of noise, due to power cables going near the speaker cables. Switched to shielded (thick) cables, and there’s no noise ever.

      • bloodfart
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        1 year ago

        Shielding has to do with the orientation of the ground wire in the cable versus the signal wire. In a shielded cable the ground wire completely surrounds the signal wire like a pipe. In an unshielded cable the ground wire is wrapped around the signal wire or run next to it.

        Cables that are shielded like this are coaxial.