John Sayers' Recording Studio Design Forum Archive

I did a search and didn't come up with anything.

In my original plan, I was going to take apart my 100' 16 channel snake, cut it up into 3 pieces to do my runs from different rooms. I have recently scored (for free!!!!) about 300' of shielded cable with 12 conductors. The wire is 22 awg. Is this too thin?

Thanks,

Eric

22 gauge is fine for fixed applications audio - as long as the pairs are individually shielded. If you don't have the mfg part #, try to get hold of a multimeter that has a capacitance function - check the capacitance between conductors of a pair, and from one conductor to ground of that pair - divide by the # of feet to get capacitance per foot. If it's less than about 30 picofarads per foot, you're fine. More than that I wouldn't use it for high impedance unbalanced runs. Better snake cable can run as low as 12-13 pf/foot, and some 110 ohm "AES" type digital cable can run down in the 7-8 pf range. The lower the capacitance, the less high frequency attenuation. This can add up pretty fast when each channel's wiring can get to 50-60 feet long easily...

Lower impedance balanced line signals can handle more like 60-90 pf per foot and still sound OK, but lower is always better, unless it's at a cost of worse shielding... Steve

Thanks Steve. This is going to be all balanced wiring so it won't be as critical.