Which is better, a microphone cable that costs €15 for 10m or one that costs five times as much? And if it’s the latter, then the next question is: will you actually hear a difference?
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Tag: cables
As UK-based Rycote is the industry-standard specialist in shock & wind protection for field production sound, I took their Softie Duo-Lyre Mount with pistol grip handle to the test with the Deity S-Mic 2. The microphone came with only a basic plastic mount that I suspected to transmit all the vibrations and bumps it could possibly suffer from common, daily usage.
A quick question: in order to record 4K/HDR/4:4:4 footage would you shell out €115 for a coiled HDMI 2.0a cable that is 30cm-60cm long? Or would you opt for a thin, flexible cable of let’s say 150cm that is certified for HDMI 2.0b but costs €25.95? I don’t know about you, but given that I can roll up the latter to a lightweight loop, yet use that same cable to put my video monitor/recorder in a secure location while operating my camera at a distance, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment. I tested the RU Connected thin cable with a Shogun Inferno, recording 4K/60 in V-log (Rec.2020, aka “HDR”) and was very happy with it.
You can buy any HDMI cable for video recording to an external monitor/recorder equipped with an HDMI-port and it will do just fine, provided it can handle the HDMI specification you’re shooting with. That is undoubtedly true, but the influence of the quality of assembly and an issue with cable management could make you buy an expensive coiled cable. There’s an alternative that works just as good, though, and it’s much cheaper.
What’s in a cable? If you believe the audiophile, there’s an awful lot going on in an audio cable. Audiophiles are happy to shell out well over €1000 for an RCA interconnect. They claim to hear a difference with any lead that’s cheaper. But none of these chaps has ever succeeded to pick the expensive cable out of a bunch of cheap ones without knowing which is which.
