Best Short Shielded USB Cable - need recommendations

For audio data / recording. The only ones I can find are the Monster Cable 7 ft. but that length seems a bit excessive. I'd love to find one around 3 ft. Do they exist?

Backstory: I am using an Alesis Multimix 8 as my interface and seem to get this high pitched interference noise when recording with the USB cable. It's not there any other time I use the mixer, just when I am recording with usb as the input. I tried plugging in one of those usb turntables and get the same noise when I arm for record and during recording, so I know it's not the mixer. I'm gonna' try a shielded cable first before going the external soundcard route. Yes, the noise does appear in the recording (not just in monitoring) and yes, I tried unplugging my power supply and ran on battery only to see if it was that first, no change.

Thanks!

isn't usb digital all the way so it shouldn't matter what the cable is like as long as its half decent?

it's like gold tipped oxy free hdmi = fuck all difference and monster cable is the worst for retail mark ups on average cable

try taking the earth from your psu

usb? shielded? GOLD CONNECTORS?

it's all digital, there's no interference. trust me.

also, check this guy out

magical cables are best unbought. I'm thinking there might be a problem with the grounding on your computer. If you have a laptop, have you tried running it on batteries vs plugged in? Grounding sometimes gave me problems when playing live, but it was usually fixable by using an ungrounded socket.

  On 10/25/2010 at 5:51 PM, Gocab said:

magical cables are best unbought. I'm thinking there might be a problem with the grounding on your computer. If you have a laptop, have you tried running it on batteries vs plugged in? Grounding sometimes gave me problems when playing live, but it was usually fixable by using an ungrounded socket.

  On 10/25/2010 at 4:51 PM, Superstix said:

Yes, the noise does appear in the recording (not just in monitoring) and yes, I tried unplugging my power supply and ran on battery only to see if it was that first, no change.

Thanks for the tips guys! I was researching this for hours on Saturday but couldn't really find anything so I thought the problem might be the generic USB cable I was using. But I just searched again, and found some newer customer reviews for my mixer (Alesis Multimix 8 USB) on Amazon.com, and it seems I am not the only one having a problem. I blindly bought the mixer several years ago when it first came out, so there weren't any reviews like this yet. :-( That doesn't explain why I hear the same noise with that USB turntable though.

So I ordered a Behringer UCA202 from Musicians Friend because it's cheap and to see if using a different USB interface would solve the issue. I'll try running the mixer feed into that and hope for the best. If it works, I may return it for a slightly better one as it limited to 16-bit 44.1 / 48 kHz audio but it will be good for a test.

Bummer - I bought the mixer mainly because of its USB interface feature and now I'm finding I have to go around it. :-P

oh. sorry.

A little digital interference sometimes creeps into my recordings when I used my MOTU Micro Express in conjunction with certain other gear, most notably a Kenton MIDI-to-CV converter. It's definitely some kind of grounding issue with my laptop - not sure if it's a ground loop or what. I tried severing both the shielding and the ground wire in the USB cable, and all that did was ruin the cable. I now have all of my recording equipment, computers, synths, etc., connected to the same socket and the problem seems to have disappeared, although I'm sure it's only a matter of time before some other headache crops up. It just kind of goes with the territory, and unfortunately the exact nature of such problems can be very difficult to pin down.

Definitely sounds like it could be a grounding issue.

One more thing you should try before you give up is get a cube tap, and break the ground pin off, and then plug the mixer through that. I just looked at an image of the mixer and it looks like the power plug has a ground on it, so if your apartment/studio has bad grounding this could cause the noise issue.

Good luck!

  On 10/25/2010 at 6:30 PM, Superstix said:

 

So I ordered a Behringer UCA202 from Musicians Friend because it's cheap and to see if using a different USB interface would solve the issue. I'll try running the mixer feed into that and hope for the best. If it works, I may return it for a slightly better one as it limited to 16-bit 44.1 / 48 kHz audio but it will be good for a test.

 

Bummer - I bought the mixer mainly because of its USB interface feature and now I'm finding I have to go around it. :-P

I own 2 UCA202's. Ignore the people sticking their noses up at it because it is made by Behringer. It is a handy little box, especially good if you are in a pinch. Solid little suckers too. The one I have has just been battered, and it still works like a charm. Obviously not high end, but again, good little devices to have around.

I can definitely agree that Behringer has made some good products in recent years despite common belief.

I have that exact mixer, and it had the exact problem. Then the USB stopped working completely. Now it's just a normal mixer haha.

The USB on those is shitty to say the least. Other than that it's a fine little mixer. The USB was really quite limited anyway and I would have stopped using it even if it still worked.