Patchbay cableage

There was a discussion about this a long time ago... AES cable has a lower capacitance which contributes to preserving the high frequency content. I think the consensus was to use it from mic to pre, since this is the place that matters the most. You can also buy AES approved bays from Bittree.

I use Mogami W3159 AES/EBU for all analog outboard to patchbay connections and digital inter connections.
Also used inside DIY projects.
The insulation is a little foamy and has a melt back factor when tinning the end.
Other than that it's easy to work with, good shielding and sounds great.

All part of the relentless pursuit of excellence!!

No not all the same.

Some are rated for AES, others aren't.

One thing I've noticed is on some like that Soundcraft 9625 or similar ones is that the front panel is thin at the mount points. So when you put in patch cable the whole bay pushes in. Pulls out when you pull a cable out too.

I went back to hybrid using an SSL X-desk to track and sum tracks through. I am able to insert compression and EQ, and I like the sound much better. I have a ton of patching options that can be hardwired dsub. Need the bay though for routing to different outboard. Still working on my 500 series console with the X-Desk as the hub. I am looking at building a custom desk as a frame for my desk.

Mathematically the best place to use it is wherever there is higher impedances, such as around inserts and Line-level I/O.  

The relationship to frequency is 1/2pi(RC), where the C is the capacitance (per foot) and the R is the impedance.    As you might see, changing the R factor alone will move the frequency pole inversely.  

For instance, a total cable capacitance of 100pF (add up the cap per foot to get the real total, but this is around 2ft of mic cable on average) with a 1200R load impedance (similar to a preamp input) will result in about 1.3Mhz of bandwidth.  Moving the R to 10K (line level), but keeping 100pF total capacitance, the bandwidth is now only 160KHz.

Moving down to 4 ohms, like a speaker load, would be about 398MHz of bandwidth, but also speaker cable is generally unshielded, so cap values are generally only from conductor to conductor and are dominated by the copper series resistance at this point, so speaker cable capacitance means almost nothing and can be dismissed as a factor. 

Of course, this is just a slice of the factors that matter.  Series copper resistance can be significant over long distances, as are the series inductances, which both also help create a low pass situation, but are swamped by conductor-shield capacitance for short distances and matter a lot more for long snake runs, etc. 

So the lower the load resistance/impedance, the longer the cables can be before they low pass your signal.