Current recording engineers - what cables used?

I’m an audio engineer at a midtown Manhattan commercial studio. I’ve worked in recording studios for over 20 years. I’m also a fair audiophile and have considered myself an avid listener for all of my 40 years. Take what I’m saying with a grain of salt, as I’m only one of many who could easily have widely varying opinions on the matter.

The case of outfitting a studio with cabling is rather simple. You buy the best you can with the budget you have. Most people in studios would easily limit spending in this area if they could afford another great microphone or preamp or other outboard. It’s not as important. And they’d be correct. The most important items, and the ones which get you biggest bang for the buck in capture, are generally regarded in this order (keep in mind it’s not always more money equaling better product here):

1. Microphone. Bar none a great mic will have more impact on the end recorded sound than anything else. 
2. Preamp. After listening to dozens of preamps in widely varying price points, it becomes painfully obvious that there are just some that can’t cut it next to others.
3. A-D interface. If it’s going to be a digital recording (and let’s face it, 99% of anything newly recorded will be), this is as important as #2.
4. Cable. Not that it’s not important. Just the things above are far more bang for the buck than cable.

So a typical chain for vocals might be like this, if I’m lucky:

Telefunken U47 tube mic > Neve 1073 preamp > Prism Sound interface > Pro Tools at 32/192, all using Mogami or better cable.

ideally, we’d use better cable. I don’t even have the budget for the above chain on most projects. (David Gilmour does!)

Bottom line here is that for the most part, to a certain degree, all engineers know that better cable will yield better results. If I spend 10x as much on a mic, I probably perceive it getting 10x better. 10x as much on a preamp or interface and I’d say we’re getting 5x better. 10x as much on cable and most engineers would perceive maybe only 1.5x better sound. It’s also about experience. More engineers and mixers have had way more experience with varying quality mics, preamps, and interfaces. Cables are generally whatever’s there, as long as it’s not crap.

the more experience you have with comparing what’s good to what’s better, the more likely you will opt for what’s better. At home, I’ve gone from Kenwood and Fisher, to McIntosh and Paradigm, to DeVore and Line Magnetic - all this because I found them and I found spending a little more could get me better. It’s encouraged in every studio environment I’ve been in, but the money is not always there.

BUT

That does not mean we’re losing much detail on the way. The detail on any of the world’s greatest home system playing back a commercial release is marginal percentages lower than what it was in the studio. It’s gotten so much better over the years of course, but there’s still some integrity lost between the master and the release. Hearing a 1/2” 2 track album master on a calibrated Studer in a recording studio and then hearing that album on CD - there’s no comparison. High rate fidelity downloads are so much better now. That’s clearly another topic! What I’ll say is that we would not be satisfied losing large percentages of signal recording anything. We’re trained to hear. I know what the real sound is in the live room and what it sounds like in the control room, and I do my damnedest to get all of it. There’s a small but vocal part of the world that still cares about fidelity, and that includes engineers. 

1. Microphone. Bar none a great mic will have more impact on the end recorded sound than anything else.
2. Preamp. After listening to dozens of preamps in widely varying price points, it becomes painfully obvious that there are just some that can’t cut it next to others.
3. A-D interface. If it’s going to be a digital recording (and let’s face it, 99% of anything newly recorded will be), this is as important as #2.
4. Cable. Not that it’s not important. Just the things above are far more bang for the buck than cable.

I come from a similar perspective in that I'm a professional recording engineer with 20 years experience and a. audiophile to the extent my time and budget allow. I agree with your list except that there are a few elements preempting what you have here: 
1. Musician
2. Instrument
3. Space 
then microphone, pre, converter, etc.
Though you may have assumed this in your example it cannot be stressed enough that the best equipment in the world won't compensate if any of these elements is lacking.

I wholeheartedly agree with (what I believe to be) the crux of your post in that we're careful to capture as much detail as we can given all the budgetary (incl. time) constraints. Whether we're able to better the playback from what the end listener is capable of will often be debatable. The listener doesn't experience the same constraints the engineer does. We have minutes [to soundcheck and commit to the sound we're capturing], while you have hours [to listen and critique the quality of sound]. Yes to some limited extent, we can change the sound after the fact, but any engineer worth anything will agree you've got to get it right at the recording stage. Back to the constraints, clients expect us to make qualitative decisions quickly and to commit those sounds to 'tape' (really hard disk unless you have the luxury of recording to analog tape). 

As an engineer, yes. I spend my money on good mics, preamps, and conversion, as well as studio monitors and headphones I can trust. I use good mic cable, and good snake cable for mic and line-level signals. I believe the father down the.line from the microphone, the less important cable becomes. 

At home, I have good sources, DAC / preamp, power amp and speakers. i'm bi-amping to get the most from my amp. I'm slowly upgrading my cables as budget allows. This is tricky because I need four pairs of same or similar length cables. However in the meantime I've spent a lot getting the system updated to where it is now. The sound is on a similar plane to what's in my primary studio, which is of great help to me. Still it's a work in progress. 

Cheers,
-c

It's nice and appreciated to hear from engineers on these threads. Now, whenever someone chimes in and says they've been to a studio and all they use is cheap cabling, we can take it with a grain of salt. That old saw should finally be laid to rest but mark my words, it will surface on a regular basis now and again. 

All the best,
Nonoise

This may go down as one of the most important threads in Agon history. No, I'm not being sarcastic. Hearing from engineers who respect the potential for the impact of cabling may finally quiet some of the naysayers who have been plaguing cable enthusiasts for years. 

What we are seeing here is further evidence of what I have asserted for along time - money rules the discussion. The budget constrained audiophiles at home insist that cables make little difference, while budget constrained engineers are forced, even when they think otherwise, to opt for low cost cabling. IOW, the wallet dictates a LOT of discussion on this topic, not necessarily experience (excepting our two engineers), or performance. 

Obviously, most would agree with the principle that what is upstream in a studio is considered of more critical importance. It is largely accepted also that what is lost upstream in a HiFi rig cannot be recovered (That is not to say it cannot be substituted). It seems budget is the primary impediment to better cabling being used, not a disdain for what cabling can do when improved. 

I predict these cordial, informative engineers who are branching out into better home HiFi will find over time that the overall significance of cabling in the home system is much different than in the studio (I'm not saying in an absolute sense that cabling would be less important in that environment, only that it seems not to be explored much at this point). While a perceived 10X difference may exist in studio between mic and cables, in my experience building hundreds of HiFi systems that extreme of a disparity does not exist in home setups between components and cables. I have many, many times yielded as strong/noticeable a change in systems with a loom of cables as with any component, i.e. amp, preamp, source. So, as shocking as this may seem to the engineers, my ratio of potential sonic benefit from a loom of cables to a component is... 1 to 1, yielding every bit as much performance change as a component! My guess is they may scoff at that comment, until they spend more time with looms of cables in home systems. Then, they will see that I am correct. It's a very different ball game. 

I look forward to continued input from recording engineers at this site. Thank you for your informative and helpful comments! 

I would agree that the keys to recording music are the artist, room, and microphone choices as the main influences on the final sound - but, there is an entire chain that effects sound far beyond something like cabling.

What you have to understand about making a final recorded product is that the sound goes through so many processes to get to a final recording, that cabling adds or detracts marginally in the final product.

Today, you choose how you're going to record (analog or digitally) and then plan the entire processes based on the original recording format.  Few recordings are made analog anymore, but you have a few people, like T Bone Burnett, who use tape for specific projects (New Basement Tapes as an example). 

A friend owns a 48 track studio (48 in, 48 out, with 6 side channels) and what he is interested in is the lowest noise through the entire system.  He uses high quality, balanced line cords throughout the system. 

The first choice you make is the microphone as the microphone response curve and characteristic can shape the sound at the source.  There are real sound differences between something like a Shure 57 and a Telefunken ELA M251.  With some microphones you can change patterns and that has an effect on the sound as you can choose to incorporate room acoustics or exclude them.

Recording digitally is a process choice in itself.  What type of digitizer, bit rate, compressor (digital plug-in or hardware), reverb (digital plug-in, or hardware), editing software, etc. 

After recording, the raw recorded audio has to be mastered - and then the sound is going through a completely different system including the mixing board, amplifiers, compressor / limiters, etc. 

One of the last considerations is what is the final format?  MP3, CD, SACD, etc?  That choice may drive all of the other choices made from the beginning of the recording process.   

Then you have the music reproduction system it's going to be played through - which has its own effect on the sound. 

If you think about how many times the sound has been handled, all of the different equipment its gone through and take all of that into consideration, any effect cabling has, beyond being neutral and low noise, is marginal at best.