AW: RE: The great banana debate

[Haible Juergen]

> That's why we use such HUGE signals for audio.  The noise is negligible
> compared to the
> signal strength.

I have to disagree. When the signal comes out of your 4pole filter,
and you have chosen a very dark tone color for the sustain phase
of the sound (something I do all the time), the signal is not strong
in the upper range of the spectrum anymore. Now run a clock signal
for your sequencer module with an also unshielded cable in the
neighborhood of your filter output cable, and the trouble starts ...
(I do *not* speak of a Serge here - I never had one under my fingers -
but from my own bad experience with unshielded cables.)

> a common ground point, usually at the power supply. Nobody relies on front 
> panels to carry
> a ground signal!  At least I hope not.

When systems grow large, things are not that easy anymore.
I have shielded cables (which carry ground!) most of the time, but I
also have a few unshielded ones for special task, where I have to avoid
ground loops:  For controlling the arpeggiator of my OB-8 from the
Modular
system, or for feeding weird modular-created signals ito the external
input
of my CS-50.
The unshielded cables use a ground path that is already there, somewhere
in the system, for some other signal routing. Now if you share a ground
connection for two signals, you will always have some crosstalk. You can
avoid this to some extend if you only work within a single Modular
system
which has 100% star grounding scheme (2 centimeters from the central
gnd point will already make trouble!), but if you connect more than one
system,
this won't work anymore.

The good thing with phone jacks is that you always have the *choice*:
Shielded cables which carry ground, or
Shielded cables with ground lifted at one end
Unshielded one-wire cables.
Wirh bananas, you don't have a choice.

JH.