It is popular to deride
Mackie console, but they actually have pretty good mic preamps and overall decent and quiet
circuit design. I have used several
Mackie consoles in a wide variety of challenging circumstances, and they sound great when used properly. Of course, there are better sounding and more durable products out there for more money. Chances are if you heard bad sound from a
Mackie console, there were other factors involved, like a loose
nut behind the controls. Often, the difference between good sound and bad is not the equipment, but how it is used.
As for mic cables, I'm not a big fan of overly priced, highly marketed cables, because it is mostly hype. Moderately priced cables just do not affect the resulting sound enough to matter. Claims that high priced cables sound dramatically better seldom stand up to any scientific scrutiny. Most of the time, just give me a run of the mill, not the cheapest nor the most expensive, Whirlwind, Proco, Rapco, Belden,
etc. More important is the mechanical design of the cable, and how well it holds up to use and abuse.
Star quad cables of good design can give you more common-mode noise rejection (CMRR)in an electrically noisy environment. Tighter twists of the pair improves common-mode rejection, and
star quad is essentially a way to twist more while maintaining flexibility. However, like all things, it comes at the price of higher
capacitance per
foot. If the cable length is reasonable, no big deal. If it is long, the extra
capacitance can subtly alter the high
frequency response of the
microphone.
There is also a limit to how much the cable can do to reduce noise. The actual cancellation of noise in a balanced pair happens in the first
stage of the preamp. Some designs have better CMRR than others. The cable simply has to deliver exactly equal amounts of induced noise to both sides of the pair for the electronic cancellation to occur. A perfect cable feeding a preamp with poor CMRR will still result in noise. And, a perfect preamp, with a poorly twisted cable pair delivering the signal will also result in noise. The cable and preamp have to work together to reject noise.
Another surprising fact is that the cable
shield doesn't do all that much to reduce noise pickup in a
balanced line. It's basically there as added insurance. A classic example of the
power of the
balanced line is your telephone. Telephone lines are un-shielded, twisted pairs that are miles long and often run alongside
power lines. Seldom is there hum or extraneous noise in telephone circuits, unless moisture or a bad connection has caused an imbalance of the pair.