Welcome everybody to another episode of the Face Your Ears podcast. My name is Rich Bozek. I'm joined here today with Justin Hoschella. How you doing, buddy?
I am doing well. Hello, Rich. Hello, everyone. Welcome.
What's been going on in the world of production and recording on your end? Any updates?
Yeah, I have been working with a really fantastic client. We have one song that's almost complete. mutual client of ours, of course and so I'm really enjoying the work there. We've got a second song that we've begun working on as well. So that's uh, earlier on in the process, but still a fantastic song. Been a lot of fun working on that. Also I completed a song myself just for fun. I know, gasp. It's this very, like 1980s esque track.
End of an action comedy movie a la Beverly Hills Cop 2, the greatest action comedy movie in my mind I'm excited. That one, I'm just polishing up and mixing and whatnot, but it was a lot of fun to write. I just... Sat down one day. You and I were actually having this conversation where it's like, Oh yeah, we make our own music too.
How dare you make your own music for yourself? How dare you?
And so I just sat down and started playing around with some sounds and whatnot. And it's interesting cause it's like a blend of very iconic 1980s sounds. So FM synthesizers, they were very prominent in the 1980s. And a Linn drum machine, which if you've basically heard any of Prince's recordings from the 1980s, you've heard a Linn drum machine. Um, So it's really steeped in that kind of sound. But I also got this really cool new plug in from Arturia.
And I sprinkled a little bit of that in there to give it just a little bit of a modern spice, if you will. And yeah, it turned out really well. Yeah, good times. How about you, Rich? What's going on with you?
Actually I've been doing a lot of housekeeping around the studio. Clean things up a bit. Some cable management. And actually been going through all of the files. on my computer and in Google Drive and just getting things in order, getting rid of stuff I don't need, putting things in the right place. Sometimes you get involved in a bunch of different projects and you lose track of things, or you get a little lax in the organization.
I've been trying to correct that and get back on track again with that.
Yeah, you have FinalVersion. 1 FinalFinalVersion. 2 FinalFinalVersion. 2
Yeah. Yeah. Or I'll have like multiple versions of the same project the whole project. So like I've been trying to consolidate and get rid of things that are unnecessary, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, that's, what's going on.
Yeah, we've all been there. You get to the end of a project and you're just like, I just want this to be done. And so you're just naming things to remember them for the next five minutes. And so you end up with 40 versions of your
It could be problematic when you come back in a few months when you do that though, so I don't recommend it anyways, Justin. Can you tell the listeners about our website?
I would love to. I love our website. So if you head over. To faceyourears. com You can read a little bit more about Rich and me or you can check out the episode on us, where we talk about our backgrounds a bit. But yeah, faceyourears. com We've got access to Previous shows, previous episodes, we've got a little bit of a bio about Rich and myself. And we've got some helpful resources for you to check out. If you want to dig into some of that.
Some of the things we've talked about on the show here and there. Also some links out to some great fellows in the production universe. Check it out. FaceYourEars. com you can also connect to our social media on phaserears. com and if you like, comment and subscribe, you will enrich our lives in an infinite capacity that is indescribable. Do that too.
Rumor has it that someone of our posts on Instagram. Is that true?
That's right. That's right. Yeah, I was just sitting there minding my own business when all of a sudden I had this overwhelming sense of serenity and joy. And I don't know why, but I was compelled to look at Instagram in that moment. And lo and behold, we had a comment. And yeah, it's not a coincidence that I had that experience after somebody had left a comment.
So if you, dear listener, want to continue to enrich our lives in such a capacity please visit us on Instagram and X. And I feel like such an idiot saying X, but
That's what it is now,
I guess that's what that's the sway that billionaires have over us now is that we have, know, we sound like idiots. We just have to say X.
Thank you for commenting, listener. Justin, what's today's topic?
Today's topic is a very, what I would call bread and butter topic. Nuts and bolts, if you will. Cables. So we're going to talk about common cables today. And this episode is for folks out there who are new to the game of recording and producing, and don't really know much about cables other than that they exist. So if you're somebody who,
they might not even know they exist.
They might just assume it's all sorcery and magic, but but yeah, this episode is for folks who are less informed, on, on cables and, what, kinds of cables are, what they're used for and so on. So we're going to unpack that a bit in today's episode.
how do we go about breaking this down? How do we sift through all this?
I like to start with some pretty broad categories. What I look at is first is audio we have audio cables. And so within that umbrella, there's a lot to talk about. And so we have things like a quarter inch cable, which you'll find on professional equipment, on guitars, keyboards, synthesizers, stuff like that. So if you plug a cable into an amp from your guitar, that's usually a quarter inch cable, almost. Invariably,
It looks like the headphone cable, but it's thicker.
Yeah, it's the thickness is one quarter of an inch. That's why we call it a quarter inch cable, as opposed to an eighth inch cable, which is a common headphone connector, or it was,
Back in the day when we used to plug earbuds into phones.
Yeah, back when we used to have a headphone jack on our phones. Or maybe I'm dating myself, my mp3 player, my iPod or CD player or Walkman, anyone? So those cables, I have an eighth of an inch in thickness. And those are usually found in consumer products because in consumer products, space. Is that a premium? And so you're trying to cram a lot of little components into a small space. so that's why you usually find those in consumer products.
I noticed on some of those cables, some of them have one black line, some of them have two black lines. Can you talk about that?
Yeah, so that is What is called a TS cable versus a TRS cable. So TS cables are generally used for mono. The TS stands for tip sleeve which are aspects of the connector itself, the tip being the connector, the sleeve being the. The longer extended part of that jack. And like I said, these are commonly used with electric guitars. TRS stands for tip, ring, sleeve. And they can be used for mono. And they provide what's called a balanced signal, as well as stereo signals.
And an example of a mono balance signal would be like the line in or out from your audio interface. So if you have a Scarlett or universal audio interface, that kind of thing.
Can you tell us more about balanced versus unbalanced?
Balanced versus unbalanced is important to consider. I think we've talked about it on the show before. Basically it has to do with noise. Balanced audio provides a connection that is less prone to noise and unbalanced is the opposite. It is going to be more prone to noise. When you're looking at balanced versus unbalanced, that's the broad sort of description and what you want to, consider when you're looking at those cables.
I also heard that cable length can decide noise as well. Is that true?
the longer the cable, the more likely noises to be introduced. Yeah, that is true. If you're going to have a long cable making sure it's a balanced cable and that your connection on your audio interface, for example, is balanced, that, that would be ideal.
And. Can you talk to us about other audio cables that are out there that we should know when we're starting out?
Yes, so one of the more widely used connections, I should say, is XLR. And so you'll find XLR on professional microphones. And you'll also find XLR connections on things like mixers or audio interfaces so that you can connect. Those microphones you'll also find XLR on some speakers too, like my studio monitors here have XLR and I'm using that XLR connection to plug into my audio interface.
Fun fact, they are XLR to quarter inch because the input on my speakers is XLR, but the output on my interface is quarter inch. So there you go. Now we're starting to combine
getting into the hybrid cables.
Yes. We also have RCA cables and you've probably seen these, dear listener, on your consumer electronics devices, like a Blu ray player, DVD player, VHS, home video player video game consoles, et cetera, et cetera. So these are the round, red, and white. audio connectors, either in or out, so they separate the stereo signal into left and right audio. Generally, the red is used for the right channel. Easy to remember, red is right. And the left signal is in the white connection.
RCA is very common on record players. A lot of vinyl enthusiasts are probably familiar with RCA connections, but yeah, like I said, you'll see them on consumer electronics, stereo equipment and so on and so forth, but they do show up in the pro audio world as well.
Any other basic considerations when it comes to audio cables?
Yeah, so there are small, nuanced Features, I guess you could call it things like you can get an angled connector, which is helpful for like tight spaces. If you're looking at guitar pedals, like guitar players have a lot of these effects, pedals and spaces at a premium. So having that angled connector can be really handy. You've got the coiled audio cable. If you want to look like a 1970s rock musician.
sorry, I have to intervene here. Coiled audio cable. Okay,
I don't understand it. I
like I put the coiled audio cable in the category, the same category I put the passive monitor in. It's nothing but trouble. It's nothing but more complication. I've never ran into a situation where I was like, oh, I'm so thankful I have a coiled cable right now. Prove me wrong, listener. If you Have some kind of information on a coiled cable that I am just not privy to, please comment on social media. I challenge you.
Yeah, they just seem to make the whole process more cumbersome. I don't understand their function. But yeah, if you go back 1970s era rockers, I guess they came up a lot and it looked pretty ridiculous because the person would be like 10 feet away from their amp and they'd have this Coiled cable like being stretched out looked absurd So yeah challenge us on that dear listener another thing to consider is the threshold of quality, durability, and construction, the materials, the price.
like anything else out there, be it a car or a TV or whatever, audio cables fall under the broad category of you get what you pay for, generally speaking.
What kind of cables do you use? What do you recommend?
I really like Hosa. H O S A. They're great. They're Really affordable, but also very durable and high quality. Mogami, if I'm feeling fancy Mogami are very high quality, premium cables. And yeah, those are two brands that I really like. How about you?
For XLR, I use COPL. I think it's K O P U L. I really feel that it's important to invest a little extra in an XLR cable. I've gone the cheap route. I've bought the cable that's has the plastic connectors at the end, right? And have paid the price after they go bad in a week or two. I would recommend any XLR cable you get. Does it have the Nutric?
That seems to be something that a lot of people agree upon, at least in the forums that I've been to when I was researching what cables to get, mainly the XLR cable. But because that cable's used so often in the studio for micing stuff or running speakers from the interface, et cetera, et cetera, those are the ones I'd probably invest a little more in. But that's my take on it.
it's the sort of thing where if you're willing to invest, you can get really high quality stuff. And that goes for any consumer good, be it audio related or otherwise.
What other category of cable will we be discussing today, sir?
Yes, so another broad category is digital. So digital audio and data. So that's another sort of side of things we want to talk about.
Can you explain digital audio cables?
Yeah, there's three really big ones to consider. There's SPDIF, there's optical.
Spdif.
and SPDIF, Sony Phillips Digital Interface. Yeah you'll see that on a lot of audio interfaces nowadays. And that that's pretty common. And it looks usually it's. I believe it's an optical connection. Generally so there's Sony Phillips, digital interface, bit of which is, like an optical connection, like a laser beam of ones and zeros. Flowing through there's an RCA kind of coax, coaxial digital audio connection as well.
So you'll find these generally on the back of your audio interface and their function is really to enable more throughput essentially. So if you think about a standard like guitar cable, you can generally only carry one signal. And with digital audio, that single SPDIF cable or coax digital cable can carry 16 or more channels over one cable.
And this becomes significant in a studio environment where Maybe you're recording a full orchestra or band and you've got dozens and dozens of microphones connected. And so you can connect like two interfaces together. And that becomes significant in terms of workflow and everything like that. So using one digital audio cable, I can connect interface A to interface B and carry all of that information from interface A into B. Which is then connected to my computer.
And so it just showcases the power of digital and using one single cable.
Now, I know in the past we might have addressed this, but maybe you could talk about it briefly. I notice MIDI on a lot of devices. Can you talk about MIDI cables?
Yeah, I love MIDI. Musical Instrument Digital Interface. It is a standard of communication, musical data communication between devices. And so it... harkens back to a day when all these electronic instruments were being created and invented and released, there wasn't really a good standard for them to talk to each other. So you'd have one brand, let's call it Roland, and another brand, let's call it Yamaha.
And in the early 80s, there wasn't really a good way for them to talk to each other, a standardized way. And so that's where MIDI came in about 1983, I believe, where Different instruments of different manufacturers could talk to each other. What that means is like I could press a key on my Yamaha and it would send a signal to my Roland and play the Roland over MIDI. So I could send a note on or off signal and that information would be sent to the other synthesizer.
And you could also control drum machines and you could have clock information which is like the tempo That sort of information controlled over MIDI as well. And so this also got into sequencing and so forth in the 80s into the 90s. And then from there we moved into USB. So in the, late 90s, early 2000s, USB exploded. And nowadays, a lot of MIDI is just handled over USB. Rich, you and I both have these USB controllers. So I have a keyboard right here on my desk, just connects via USB.
And that allows me to control and play software instruments on my computer. And also allows me to play my old 1980s... Yamaha DX7 from this USB keyboard. It's pretty cool. Because I have an audio interface that has MIDI on it, which is going out to my my old outboard gear. And so it takes the input from the USB signal on my desk and the controller. And then it sends it out to the old fashioned MIDI synthesizer and allows me to play that here. So they integrate together is the message here.
Vintage equipment that has MIDI, it can still be integrated into a modern studio. Via a MIDI interface, which is typically either a separate box or it can be on an audio interface like mine. So yeah, that's another thing to look at and consider. And so if you see a MIDI port on your device, now you know a little bit more about why and what it does.
So with regards to the USB connections, do USB connections just do digital signals? Or can they also transmit audio?
USB does pretty much everything. So USB allows us to send and receive audio. It allows us to send and receive MIDI, and of course it is used for data, so actual like file storage and things like that. So your hard drive is a classic example of using USB. So all those recordings and project files that you create and accumulate. Like we were talking about earlier, version 1. 2 final. That gets stored on your drive. And sometimes that drive is external, which is where USB comes in.
So it connects to your computer's USB port.
Excellent. I notice that Some of the devices have different kinds of USB. Can you just talk briefly about that?
the most common connectors you'll see are USB A and B. And these are... Very common across a whole host of different devices, like even your printer uses those connections. And one end goes into the device, the other end goes into the computer.
And I do believe USBA is the rectangular one. Yes. And then USBB is like a square, like a bigger square. Then USBC is like the oval, wider oval shape.
Yeah, and that's where I was going was USB C is this sort of modern incarnation of USB and it's significantly faster. And something about USB C is that it also can carry a video signal. Just fun fact, not that necessarily has to do with this conversation, but just goes to show
This is face your ears, not face your eyes. Calm down.
True. True. We'll save that for the face your eyes podcast, but
Or face your eyes video series.
yeah, face your face, your ears, video series. I don't know. We're still hashing that out.
That's great. Do you have anything else to add about any of this stuff?
The last thing I'll mention is that we will be providing. links in our show description to some of the brands we talked about. There's also a really great cable guide that we recommend. So we'll put a link to that as well. So you can read about this and get a little bit more of a visual on the things we talked about today. But other than that, thanks for the conversation, Rich.
Thank you. And just brief recap. So today we talked about the common cable types. We broke down some of the audio selections, and also some of the data cables, the digital cables that can transfer audio and data. Thank you, Justin. Great conversation. Very informative.
You're welcome. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode. Bye for now.