All Mogami Point to Point Patchbay- Truth or Fiction

Good cable is important , but Mogami is the defacto standard.
That said If your ears can tell one of my bays wired with Belden wire wrapped Solid core from one soldered with Mogami. Your ears are better than mine.

Matt I think you use pro tools ? if so could you describe your ob send system more specifically ?

thx !

I'm on PT 11HD and have 32 hardware outs using Apogee Symphony and a DA16X. As needed, I map HW outputs to AUX sends in PT in I/O config and bring the outputs from the outboard (just three mono comps right now) back in parallel with the usual stereo stems into an SSL Sigma. Right now I am running two Slate Dragons on kick and snare, and a Neve 543 on bass guitar. Works nicely.

Are you using a point to point patchbay Cary?

If you're running the cables less than say 25ft, you could use anything and not hear much difference. Don't sweat it.

I disagree with this...there are some brands of cable which do sound "thin" by comparison to Mogami or Canare, even in short runs.

I'm also a fan of quad cabling though for shorter runs, and that makes a bigger difference than what brand the quad cabling is.

For snakes in the small 1/4" run I use mogami 8 channel 2932, which isn't quad...but is pretty close in quality to the Mogami Gold 2524

Mogami quad 2534 is a bit nicer to me all around...but I don't have to use it for every cable in a chain to get some benefit of it's effect.

However Warren from Zenpro and I disagree on quad 2534 vs Gold 2524 (this isn't a heated debate, I just noted a post he made in GS once about the issue and we have differing views)...he thinks that the imaging off of regular Gold is better overall...I think that you just get more from the signal even at lower volumes with quad in a musical way.

This stuff becomes the subject of debate a lot...but a mix of all three types of Mogami has worked pretty well for me without breaking the bank...but that's because by and large I make my own cables to save on costs.

I can weigh in on this. I've had 6-8 VERY expensive and expansive TT patch bays in my days. All told, probably pushing very close to 6 figures, and that's with a LOT of DIY input into them.

#1 - point to point TT is good - the connections are solid and....well....point to point. But......point to point SUCKS. I will never have another one. Changing anything takes forever and it's extremely time intensive. I ended up feeling like every patch bay was a ball and chain around my neck.

#2 - multi-pair connectors are COOL! Much less cabling frenzy and easier to reconfigure - either the bays themselves or the studio. Just swap out a M to M interconnect for reconfiguring a rack across the room from where it currently sits, Sweet!!! But.....as convenient and ubiquitous as they are - D-Subs SUCK! Theyi come loose, they come with different threads and they all seem to be falling off all the time. Even when they are not falling off, the pins do not really cinch fit into the F connector well enough to be solid over time.  ESPECIALLY in corrosive (smog, salt air, or humid) environments.

So.....what to do? Both scenario's suck.

Enter #3 - Elco's. Forget 8 pair, go 24 pair with 90 pin elco's which coincidentally match up well with the 24 points in a TT half row, cut down on the wiring mess by 66.6 % and get an audio connection that is gold plated and one that cinches together for no compromise connection.

The best of both worlds.



The only caveat -

Expense and the tools to crimp the dam things. Still way easier to wire than a D-Sub though.....


My $.02 after spending 10's, and 10's of thousands. Recently I COMPLETELY redid my studio layout changing rack locations, adding racks from storage, etc. 10 TT patch bays worth. I did it in less than a day. By myself. With breaks.

I'll never got back to PtP or to D-Sub.

It's more a matter of is there a definable difference in sound with an all Mogami cabling setup. Since I've never had one, I really don't know. I'm not going to spend $6,200.00 to find out. From this thread some people say it makes a difference. Some don't. And it really gets confused when you hear DSUB's suck, but it's the main connection to most A/D D/A converters and summing mixers.

Think about how many connections we're talking about if you add a summing mixer:

Mic->XLR Cable->  Preamp-> A/DConverter Cable->Waveform->D/A converter Cable->LA2A->A/D Converter Cable->DAW->D/A Converter Cable->Summing mixer->XLR connectors to Stereo Compressor + Stereo EQ-> A/D converter Cable-> Back to Daw.  And for all the Mogami talk, what about all the pinouts?  It makes your head spin.

Matt and Svart have it right, given quality soldering and shielding, the only time it matters is with long runs, the only thing sonically that happens over long runs to be concerned with is high end attenuation, depending on how you see things, you could use the more expensive stuff where you need it, and the cheaper stuff on the short runs... or not, show me a mix where every track has pristine hi end on every track, and i'll show you a "hifi" one dimensional mix.

You will not hear a difference between Mogami (95% of my studio connects) and Hosa at around 15', ask me how i know, i'll eat my hat if you can hear the diff, but I'll save you the time, you can't.

The redco metal dsub hoods are great, they shield as good as it gets, but they are co$tly! There is nothing wrong with quality dsubs, they are wildly convenient as Bill pointed out already. A good route is you can get the redco version of the Mogami cable for way cheaper, buy some patchbays off ebay, a soldering iron, and spend a couple days saving yourself $5k 8)

here's a link to the best deal on quality dsub housings on the net, they are of hi Q, you're welcome 8)
www.pimfg.com/Product-Detail/2514-025T

There's a test is a coat hanger as good as expensive audio cable turns out yes..

You cannot tell if a cable is good or just expensive (price can have no bearing on quality) without testing, a simple impedance and noise rejection test would suffice.
There is no voodooo magic beans involved in this its all 100% measurable.