Looking for a cheap, but good, audio interface.

Anything about hardware musical instruments.
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Fox_GAMING_NTF wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 5:40 pm The only real final thing I think I need to figure out is what cable I should get. I know I want it to be stereo, that's about it.
for stereo you will need two mono cables.
standard instrument cable tip/sleeve
not trs!.
:ud:

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Ok, thanks.

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Ok, so, as I'm looking around, I'm finding lots of 'Speaker Cables', yet they say For Musical Instruments. Can these Speaker Cables be used to connect the Behringer Deepmind 12 to the audio interface?
Also, I kept on seeing things about AWG, and I looked it up, it says 12 AWG is the best, but it seems like most of the 12 AWG Cables are all Speaker cables, pretty much.
I don't know which one to get, that will sound nice, and not have any noise. Preferably 3 ft.

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Oh, and I just remembered, I'm going to need a stand for the Behringer Deepmind 12, too, as the space I'm working in doesn't have much desk space.

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as long as they can be used for guitars you're good to go. that will give you the right sized jacks :)

for the stand ill leave it to someone with the deepmind to make a suggestion :)
:ud:

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Oh, also, I think I've found a good cable,;:
Livewire Elite 12g Speaker Cable 1/4 in. to 1/4 in. 10 ft. Black
But I don't know. It seems to get good reviews.... .

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That's a speaker cable. Get an instrument cable ... https://www.guitarcenter.com/Musicians- ... 3038144.gc

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Speaker cables are not shielded and will hum badly at low level or line level signals. Only use speaker cables connected between power amplifiers and passive (non-powered) speakers. That is why the good ones are 12 awg or even fatter wire, so that they carry the most power with minimal resistance.

That doesn't matter so much in shielded signal cables. The wires inside can be relatively tiny. A tip sleeve guitar cable has one insulated center wire with a fuzzy wrap of tiny wires called the shield wrapped around the center wire. The shield helps keep hum from getting into the cable. The tiny inside wire connects to tip and the outside shield wrap connects to sleeve.

The RTS ring tip sleeve cable has TWO insulated tiny wires in the middle with the fuzzy wire weave or wire wrap around both of them forming the shield. The tip connects to one of the tiny inside wires, and the ring connects to the other tiny inside wire, and the shield wrapping connects to the sleeve.

XLR mic cables are "about the same" as RTS cables but even better if the engineers did a perfect job on your source and destination circuits. Sometimes they are wired as 2 internal wires plus a shield wrap and sometimes wired as 3 internal wires plus shield wrap but in "most cases" either way works fine.

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I've found this:
Livewire Elite Instrument Cable

Maybe? I don't know.

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thecontrolcentre wrote: Sat Nov 02, 2019 9:20 pm That's a speaker cable. Get an instrument cable ... https://www.guitarcenter.com/Musicians- ... 3038144.gc
I've found this:
Livewire Elite Instrument Cable

Maybe? I don't know.

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https://www.amazon.com/Hosa-CSS-201-Ste ... th=1&psc=1
Here is an example stereo quarter inch TRS cable.

The thang that makes it a "stereo cable" is that it has two RTS cables molded together in the middle which can make slightly less of a spaghetti mess of wire underfoot.

You can get them short or long this one just happens to be 3 meters.

You can do the same thing with TWO single RTS cables. But a pair of them unless you wire tie them together will probably make two different spaghetti loops underfoot and be more trouble after they begin socializing and tangling together with another dozen cables you might have underfoot. ;)

I am assuming from what you said earlier that deepmimd is stereo RTS out and your interface will be RTS inputs.

However this cable would work in MOST cases even with unbalanced output or input jacks as found on some synths and interfacea.

In very rare cases this RTS cable might give you trouble with the rare occasional oddball unbalanced tip sleeve jack. But very rare.

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Don't worry about the TRS stuff for DM - from manual:
"The DeepMind 6 analog polyphonic synthesizer uses servo-balanced outputs.
The circuit design has an automatic hum suppression with balanced signals and
is able to operate, without problem, even at highest levels. Externally-induced
mains hum etc, is thus efficiently suppressed.
The servo-function, also automatic, recognizes the connection of unbalanced
pin assignments and changes the nominal level internally so that there is no
difference in level between the input and output signals (6 dB correction)"


I never used balanced outs from any external synth gear, but a Mackie mixer then.

Just use ordinary instrument cables and be done with it.

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Well it isn't real critical whether to use balanced or unbalanced for that, but lots of mixers and interfaces have balanced inputs nowadays so why not take advantage of it?

So many units have the xlr/quarter inch combo jacks. Maybe there are a few combo jacks that have unbalanced-only quarter inch parts but that doesn't even make sense because the xlr part of the combo requires balanced circuit. To not also wire it up to the quarter inch part of the jack would almost be criminally incompetent.

My behringer xr18 digital mixer has 16 channela of balanced combo jacks so it would be silly to intentionally degrade it down to unbalanced just because my old mackie 1604 had unbalanced channel inputs. Can't recall for certain whether the 1604 had bal or unbal quarter inch channel inputs.

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You can either get a pair of simple mono guitar / instrument / patch cables, or do a fancy balanced connection with 6.3 mm (equals 1/4 inch) TRS jacks on one side (for the synth) and XLR on the other (for your mixer / interface)
But chances are you will not notice (hear) any difference at all between the cheapest simplest and most exquisite balanced cable. In the end, it's all just insulated copper.

You cannot have enough cables of all sorts. My wifer hates that, but it's true. Particulary handy are 1/4" adapters to put on RCA plugs.
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