West Penn CN-CSM2XMF-10, CN-CSM2XMF-100, CN-CSM2XMF-15, CN-CSM2XMF-2, CN-CSM2XMF-20 Specsheet

Detailed Specification & Technical Data

CN-CSM2XMF-xx

Stage Grade Ultra Quiet and Ultra Durable Mic Cable

3Pin XLR M to 3Pin XLR F Lengths: 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50

CABLE CONSTRUCTION

The CSM2 cable is designed from the inside out to be the finest stage and tour grade cable available. Every component of the cable itself is carefully chosen with the end goal of creating a tough, flexible, and dead-quiet microphone cable. It’s not an ordinary cable. Here’s a closer look:

Inner Conductors:

The two primary stranded inner conductors each have 20 strands of 0.12 bare copper. While many cable companies will lower cost by using inferior materials here (like aluminum with a copper coating), Elite Core CSM is pure, from the inside out. And you can hear the difference.

Inner Conductor Insulators

The insulator that was chosen to separate the two inner conductor cores is Polyethylene, or PE. This insulator is a part of a class of polymers known as polyolefins. We chose PE over the less expensive old-fashioned PVC because it has the lowest dielectric loss and highest initial dielectric strength of all thermoplastic insulators. PVC would have been cheaper. We weren’t trying to build the world’s cheapest cable, we set out to build the best. XLPE, while it is more resistant to high heat, has more dielectric loss than PE. With careful attention to our selection of soldering equipment and the temperature and methods used to solder, the PE was the obvious choice because of its extremely low dielectric loss characteristic. The PE is firm, strips well, and maintains a constant diameter with ease. We selected a red and a white color for the two insulators.

Conductive PE Layer:

The magic of the CSM2 cable is found on the outside of the red and black inner cores. It’s a refined thin layer of conductive PE. Yes, that’s right, it’s a layer of thermoplastic polyethylene that has been precisely blended with carbon fiber to create a conductive layer that is perfectly snug around the red and white inner cores. This layer is key to the CSM2 cable. These days, there is an extreme amount wireless noise (from wireless mics, IEM transmitters, wireless DMX devices), electromagnetic noise (from power cables, lighting ballasts and moving light motors), and just plain abuse (from people and casters!) in the world of entertainment sound, lighting and video. The CSM2 cable provides an extra layer of shielding with the conductive PE. This layer serves three purposes. When selecting your cable, it’s important to consider whether these three issues are some that you deal with.

(1)Immunity from outside EMI and RF interference. Since the PE is conductive, it provides an additional layer of shielding from RF and EMI noise that is being emitted from many sources on all stages. If your stage has wireless sources or electricity, this is critical.

(2)Containment of any EMI transmission that your signal may emit. The days of microphone cables only carrying natural voices or analog instruments are long since over and gone. Today’s production stages are full of tracks, clicks, loops, and many other loud and potentially troublesome signals. It’s important to keep those signals to themselves. The conductive PE on our CSM2 cable does just that. If you’re anything but an all-natural bluegrass band, this is critical.

(3)Discharge of piezoelectric static and noise. When a mic cable gets knocked around by an active vocalist, or stepped on by an active stage hand, something troubling happens. There is a triboelectric effect that occurs when the insulators are pressed and misshaped, that causes a slapping, or thumping noise. This causes a piezoelectric discharge that ultimately functions as a crude transducer. Granted, the signal level is very low and the resulting noise is very minute, but this noise can still cause problems because it is intensely amplified once it reaches the preamp in the mixer. The layer of conductive PE we have added serves to drain off this static and eliminate the potential of handling noise. The net result is a dead quiet cable. If you have humans using your mics and cables, this is critical for your application.

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