ABSTRACT
When people plan their first studios of any significant complexity, they are often shocked once
they find the true cost of the cables and connectors needed to interface all the equipment.
They tend to count carefully the cost of the items of equipment when preparing their budgets,
but when everything is ready for installation, and the reality of the interconnection costs
confronts them, there is often not sufficient money left to do the equipment justice. It is always
a great risk to cut corners on the audio cabling infrastructure because so many seemingly
simple solutions can lead to traps. A simple lead, such as one connecting a phono (RCA) plug
to stereo jack plug, may seem appropriate to connect the output of one device to the input
of another, but there could be five or six ways of connecting those two ‘simple’ plugs. Although
under many circumstances a signal will flow between the two pieces of equipment with
any of the likely wiring arrangements, it is surprising to many people just how wrong some of
those connections can be, and how they can degrade the sound without necessarily making
any change in the measured frequency response.
