Sound systems

What's the most common mistake most musicians make when plugging in their keyboard to a sound system?

OK this is very simple, but many musicians don't know this. If you get this wrong, you'll have buzzes, hums, and even radio noise in your setup.

There are two basic kinds of audio cable - shielded and non-shielded.

Unscrew the end of your cable and look at it. Shielded cable has a metal shield wrapped around the interior wires to "shield" the interior wires. The shield can be a solid shield, looking kind of like aluminum foil, or a braided shield, made up of very fine wires.

Use a shielded cable to plug in any instrument. Sometimes, shielded cables will be marked "instrument cable."

Non-shielded cables don't have a shield. (really? I never would have guessed) They simply are made up of two separate wires. These are used to plug in speakers, never never use them for instrument cables. These may not be marked at all, or marked as "speaker cables."

When a musician uses a speaker cable to plug in an instrument to an amplifier, they'll get lots of extra unhappy sounds that they weren't looking for.

Seems simple, but you'd be surprised at how many times this is the number 1 problem in sound systems.

Questions? Take your cable into a local stereo shop, or a local music store. They'll tell you what you have.

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