Originally Posted By: Mike Halloran
Good for both of you. The ones I bought for myself and my daughter fell apart, literally. Some of the plastic pieces crumbled. There was a matching monitor controller that suffered the same fate.

Outside RFI and EMF are a big issue in my studio. If there’s a stray field in the Silicon Valley, my gear picks it up. About 10 years ago, I bought a pair of star-quad interconnect cables and the improvement was dramatic. I have since rewired my studio with them.

I do not subscribe to the mystic jumbo-jumbo surrounding cable. If you can’t hear the difference, in this case, noise reduction, you don’t need star-quad. I get mine custom made by SESCOM through Markertek at about 1/3 the price of so-called “premium” cables through most channels such as Sweetwater. If it’s not one of their standard listings, SSCOM will make anything I want.

SESCOM Star Quad/Markertek

Amazon has it now, also
Amazon Basics Star Quad

I use a power conditioner,iron chokes on all cables as well as better insulated cables and a D.I. box for bass that allows me to send balanced signal to the interface. The differences are audible but still not enough to leave me happy. I need to use ReaFir on all channels I've tracked with guitar/bass etc. It used to be a hassle but I've set up templates so that the work flow is only minimally altered. Basically if I walk out into the front yard with a fluro tube it will light up.

Cheers
rayc
"What's so funny about peace, love & understanding?" - N.Lowe