TRISTAN JAMES: I am Tristan James. I work as an engineer and a music producer for an independent label called Proletariat Productions. We try to give opportunities to independent artists who mostly do kind of political, progressive, or radical work with their music, all kinds of music from metal bands to soul to hip hop and all kinds of independent work and trying to get it out there.

We used Mogami cabling for most of the studio, good 85% of the cabling in this studio is made by Mogami, which is a Japanese company. You have to import the cable from Japan which makes it a little bit expensive but to me it was extremely worth it. We use Mogami for the mic snakes running from both of our live rooms. We used it to rewire this console and the ins and outs of it. Most of our mic cables are made by Mogami, and we also bring a few with us for live performances even.

We do this because there is a fidelity difference in my opinion that’s definitely worth the investment. Right now I’m talking into a generic cable. The things that that kind of make or break the sound of the cable are the material that the leads are made with whether they be aluminum, copper, what kind of, what grade of copper, have they been exposed to oxygen and stuff like that because they can get corrosion, and even what the material is for the insulation is that does affect it, or the shield, what kind of shield it is. Is it braided? Is it a wrap shield? Those will all make a difference in the way a microphone cable sounds.

You can see a generic connector and generic cable, and it’s not compared to -- well, this is a Neutrik cable -- I mean a Neutrik connector with a Mogami cable on it. You can’t quite see the difference but you will hear it I think. Another thing when we build, we build all of our cables here because it costs a good 75% less to build your own cables than to buy them, so we buy bulk connectors and bulk cables and spools and make all of our own cables. We buy silver solder on a spool. That is debatable whether it makes a difference, but the solder we use has 2% to 4% silver in it in combination with the lead and rosin which if there was a weak connection, that would actually help the connection maintain fidelity because there -- Well, first of all lead is naturally a conductor where it is but it hardly is suitable as a conductor, so when you use just regular lead, I mean if you have a weak connection, how is a weak signal going to pass through lead and get to your preamp? I’m not sure but and so that’s -- those are kind of -- that’s kind of the logic what we’re doing and there’s a lot of skepticism around that but I will show you the difference here.

Both the same preamps set as closely as I can to equal. The EQ is popped out, there’s no EQ, the pres are at the same level. All faders are at the same level so the length of the cable is pretty close as well between the two cables so hopefully it’s as fair as I can make it but it’s not a clean lab experiment but you’ll -- I think you’ll get the point.

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH GENERIC CABLE] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. I’ll do something a lot louder with more dynamics.

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH GENERIC CABLE] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH MOGAMI QUAD CABLE] I’ve switched the microphone cable. You can see Neutrik connector and now a Mogami. This is called Quad, a Mogami Quad cable, and I’ll show you a little bit about that in a second but for now you can kind of probably already hear the difference. I’ll record this just in case, and this is the Mogami cable with silver solder and Neutrik connector.

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH MOGAMI QUAD CABLE] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. I’ll do something with a little more dynamics.

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH MOGAMI QUAD CABLE] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

[CABLE TEST RECAP PLAYING]

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH GENERIC CABLE] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH MOGAMI QUAD CABLE] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH GENERIC CABLE] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

[SPEAKING THROUGH MIC WITH MOGAMI QUAD CABLE] One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

What I usually hear in the comparison between the two is a lot more high end in the cable. The difference in the cable, I’m hearing a lot more high end frequency response, less noise floor, and I get the perception of more dynamic -- more sensitivity to dynamics in my voice there, and now the difference is extremely subtle but it’s enough that that it’s worth it to me, not only for the fidelity but I will show you what it’s like to actually work with different cables when you’re building them why there is a difference.