Hello everyone! After 6 years of development, I'm excited to finally announce the launch of Ghost Cable @ www.GhostCable.com. I will use this thread to discuss our current and future products and to also field any questions or criticisms.

In order to make our remarkable sounding cable available to as many music producers as possible, we have decided to launch the same 3 cable types across two different lines: Ghost and Ghost+

Ghost and Ghost+ use the exact same Italian made cable, but Ghost+ has some additional advantages that further improve the sound of the cable in subtle ways to most producers, and perhaps more significant ways to critical listeners with highly resolving systems.

Ghost uses industry standard Neutrik XLR, RCA, TS and TRS connectors, while Ghost+ uses custom made connectors with pure tellurium copper contacts (pins). In a future post I will discuss the advantages of using tellurium copper contacts over bronze and brass.

We will initially offer three cable types across both Ghost and Ghost+ lines: Ghost Analog, Ghost Digital and Ghost Instrument.

Ghost Analog (matte black) is our flagship cable; a mastering grade analog interconnect cable that has been used in dozens of mastering and mixing rooms, and across thousands of songs since its creation in 2016. Ghost Cable started on the sound of the original Ghost Beta cable, which had a glossy black jacket that is no longer made. Over the past 6 years I have shipped over a kilometer of Ghost Beta for free to producers and engineers all over the world in return for feedback on its performance. The overwhelmingly positive feedback has inspired us all the way to our public launch.

Ghost Digital (matte navy blue) is a true 110ohm AES/SPDIF cable that is capable of lossless and jitterless transmission of well over 100 meters at quad sample rates. Unlike the pure copper wire of Ghost Analog, Ghost Digital uses nickel plated copper with an added foil shield (in addition to the braided shield) to achieve its strict AES rating. When used as an analog cable, the sound of Ghost Digital is distinctly different, yet complementary to the more robust and neutral sounding Ghost Analog. Due to its sweeter HF and slightly scooped midrange there may be times when pairing microphones to preamps or when tuning playback components where Ghost Digital is sonically preferred during analog transmission.

Ghost Instrument (matte green) is a single pole, unbalanced version of Ghost Analog. They share near identical materials and geometries making them sound much closer to one another than to Ghost Digital. Due to how well a passive pickup into an active DI or amplifier reveals the effect of a particular cable vs another, the feedback we have received from professional musicians using Ghost Instrument for the first time has been the most rewarding to read. When the feel of a performance is altered in the slightest way, veteran players who know intimately how their rig sounds can often verbalize such a change with unwavering conviction. Admittedly, sometimes the extremely fast and clear sound of Ghost Instrument is a bit sobering for certain instrument + amp combinations, but the vast majority of feedback has been positive.

Pricing of Ghost using Neutrik connectors is near identical to the same lengths made with Grimm TPR cable (according to prices found on Pro Audio LA).

Pricing of Ghost+ using custom tellurium connectors is close in price to same lengths made with Vovox Sonorus cable (according to prices found on Pro Audio LA).

Finally, we have an 8 channel analog cable, Ghost Snake, that has passed the prototype stage. Multichannel cable always sounds slightly different than its single channel variant, but we are extremely happy with how Ghost Snake sounds in relation to Ghost Analog. We are optimistic that Ghost Snake will be available Q2 of 2023.

If you've made it this far, Thank You (!) for being patient with me. Those of you who know me personally know that this cable journey has been an unrelenting labor of love, and that this post was many years in the making. If you have any questions, please don't hesitant to ask in this thread.

-Robb

Congrats Robb! I love this cable.

Ghost vs Ghost+

Ghost:




Ghost+:

Will you offer custom lenght like 32 feet XLRs for example?

Yes, but I believe most custom lengths will be fulfilled by Pro Audio LA and other custom shops whom we plan to sell our 500m spools to. It is easier for us to stick to making stock lengths in our spare time.

The stock lengths for Ghost Analog and Ghost Digital are: 3.25, 6.5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 feet. And for Ghost Instrument: 10, 15 and 20 feet.

Ouch.
While trying to find an explanation for what I was hearing when switching between different conductor metals on the same exact cable, I discovered the International Annealed Copper Standard which rates the percentage of conductivity a material has relative to copper.

Silver = 105%
Copper = 100%
Tellurium Copper = 93%
Brass = 28%
Bronze = 15%

It is public knowledge that all Neutrik XLRs use bronze for their female pins and brass for their male pins. I imagine they use the slightly softer, less brittle brass for the male pins that are subject to more insertion stress, and the cheaper, harder and more brittle bronze for the females which are enshrouded in plastic.

Copper alloys are made to increase the tensile strength of copper, which in pure form is very soft and malleable. Bronze is made from mixing tin with copper and brass is made from mixing zinc with copper. Tellurium is also added to copper in order to increase its tensile strength from the 30500 psi of pure copper to 47,900 psi of tellurium copper.

Along with the strength of tellurium copper, we can see that its conductance is only 7 points below pure copper, making it an exceptional conductor that closely maintains the conductance of pure copper wire.
I am not here to convince anyone that Ghost Cable sounds better than any other cable. Ears must do the convincing.

These ghost+'s looks friggen fantastic.. looking forward to it

For anyone curious, I’d like to share how we got started:

In 2016, my friend and fellow mastering engineer, Giancarla Camera, reached out to me saying he found an unmarked cable that he’d like me to listen to. He didn’t tell me anything about the cable as to not sway my opinion of it.

At this time I had just finished rewiring both my production and mastering rooms using a 1000 feet of Grimm TPR, 100 feet of Grimm TPR8 and 250 feet of Mogami 3162.  The soldering took myself, an assistant and two Pro Audio LA cable techs four days to complete. Afterwards I never wanted to think about cable again!

A few weeks after completing the big install I received a package from Italy containing two plain looking 9 foot cables with Neutrik connectors.  It took me a week before finally trying them one morning on a whim.

I was working in a Chris Pelonis designed control room and my speakers were Amphion Two18s + Baseone25s fed directly by a Knif Mastering Console.  My monitoring DAC was a Prism ADA-8XR.  I was very familiar with the sound of the speakers is this room.  I had been using Grimm in my monitoring path for about a year prior before deciding it was time to replace the entire room with Grimm interconnects.

Upon first listen with Ghost cable I immediately noticed a difference to how transients were presented.  I was not expecting this, so I went back to the Grimm to make sure. I swapped cables back and forth multiple times until the difference was undeniable.

I remember thinking, ‘how could this cheap no-name cable sound this effortless?’ I spent the next hour justifying why Grimm sounded better in order to stick with it. There was one major area that I did prefer from the Grimm cable: the low mid to low end weight was more solid and cohesive. To me this is a critical region where a lot of instruments come together to project a sense of power.  Ghost felt a little anemic here in comparison.

As a result, I went back to Grimm for about a month of mastering before my curiosity had me trying the Ghost cables again. This time I swapped cables in the middle of a working master that had been started on Grimm. Within seconds the effortless transient response of the Ghost cable caught me off guard again, and yet the playback sounded correct in the low mid.  

I wrote Giancarlo an excited email asking for more cable and more information about it. I was now very curious to try this random cable in my analog transfer chain, between converters, EQs, and compressors.

Giancarlo wrote back, ‘the minimum order is 3km’.  I thought, ‘that’s gotta be a typo because 3km is 1.86 miles or 9,842 feet!’.  It wasn’t a typo and so of course we started saving up and 3 months later (to my wife’s surprise) 2km showed up at our door.

In the never-ending pursuit of sonic excellence, I replaced all the Grimm I had just installed and was now happily mastering thru nothing but Ghost. I was in transient heaven. Everything was a touch snappier and freer sounding, which to a mastering engineer always up against a limiter is a big deal. And I could easily EQ right thru the slight low mid deficiency without issue.

Not sure what to do with nearly a mile of extra cable, I started sending it to engineers and producers all around the world, asking only for shipping costs and their honest opinion. Over the next 4 years I sent over 3000 feet of cable to dozens of countries. I was so taken aback by the positive feedback and growing demand that I couldn’t help but keep dishing it out to anyone who took the time to ask me about Ghost Cable.

By 2019, with a few thousand masters now done solely thru Ghost, I was very familiar with its sound in relation to all of its pro audio competitors. When the opportunity to revise the sound of the original Ghost cable presented itself, I jumped at it hoping to finally address the low mid issue that still lingered in the back of my mind. Giancarlo and I, along with the help of other mastering engineers, started evaluating new prototypes that had small geometry changes from the original Ghost cable, which we now refer to as Ghost Beta.  The goal was to improve the balance of the low mid (weight) against the high mid (articulation).

We learned a lot during this exploration, particularly how changing the diameter of the strands in relation to the overall lead diameter allows you to tune the midrange. A few missteps were made, but eventually we nailed the sound, and did so without compromising the transient freedom of the original Ghost Beta. Now our new Ghost Analog cable was beating everything we put it up against.

Confidence was at an all time high until late 2021 when Brian Lucey, a talented mastering engineer in LA, emailed me saying, “I did a shoot out through my analog chain using your Ghost cables against my Acoustic Zen Matrix Reference II cables”.  He sent me the transfer files and I could hear a difference right away. Despite their transient performance being remarkably similar, the apparent instrument separation of the Acoustic Zen was noticeably improved over Ghost. This was a tough loss as I assumed Ghost was unbeatable no matter how expensive the cable was.

The Acoustic Zen Ref II’s cost $1500 for a 5 foot pair, while a 6.5 foot pair of Ghost Analog costs $124 ($62 per cable). Even though this wasn’t an ‘apples to apples’ comparison, it was a wake up call that inspired me to try improving the sound of Ghost further.  While exploring different XLR, TRS and TS connectors (mostly from the overpriced HiFi world), I learned of a more efficient conductor called tellurium copper (compared to bronze and brass), and this discovery led to the creation of the Ghost+ line. I wont go into the details of Ghost+ at this time, but it is now all I use in my mastering room as I feel it gets me a little closer to that remarkable Acoustic Zen sound.

Regarding my current view of Neutrik connectors: the law of diminishing returns kicks in heavily once you move beyond them into expensive hifi territory. In our tests against 20 different XLRs, Neutriks outperformed all but 4 of them. I can confidently recommend Neutriks for use in all critical studio applications.

What started out as a quest by two mastering engineers to find the best sounding cable for ourselves, is now a company that sells the fruits of our labor to all. We've attempted to stay as accessible as possible by keeping prices competitive in the pro audio market. As a professional engineer of 25 years, it is my intention to provide working producers and engineers an affordable alternative cable that outperforms what we have all been using for decades.  Ghost Cable is imported from Italy and assembled right here in Orange County, CA. 

Thank you for taking the time to read our story.

- Robb Robinson

Firstly, congratulations on your company and your release, this must be an exciting time for you.

Secondly, I am actually interested in this cable. I like to use the highest quality stuff and I’m always looking for top end gear that isn’t absurdly priced.

Thirdly, I zoned out a bit after reading through the comments on this thread, but if your cable actually presents a difference in sound that can be heard, and you have over a terabyte of comparison audio test data, why not just post the best of your sound data and let the results speak for themselves?

Finally, I do have a random question for my own curiosity. Why does every cable manufacturer use Neutrik connectors? The reason I ask is that, earlier in the thread you stated that they use brass connectors among other materials, and that brass as a material is quite lossy when it comes to sound. Seems like, in a cable where you are trying to squeeze out the last 0.0001% of tone, that the Neutrik connector might be a weak link? Just interested in your thoughts.

Best wishes!

Shut up and take my ghost money!

This is a measure of resistance and means nothing to sound quality. At most a slightly weaker signal (how much of that energy gets converted to heat.) But resistance is dependant on cross-section/length and a pin is ridiculously small in the context of a cable. Ever worry that your connectors are heating up? No.. of course not. The loss to heat is insignificant.

Which is why this is completely meaningless.
You could publish the resistance of the complete cable using two cables with different materials used for the connector pins and see this is absolutely meaningless.

This is "info" for uneducated people to exaggerate importance. Also publishing by percentage just makes this seem more dramatic than it is.

And once again, this does not affect sound. Capacitance and inductance do.

This info aligns with my experience.

Ive heard pure silver wire (not silver plated copper) compared to pure copper wire and they sound quite different. Surely resistance is part of the reason why?

If using pure copper contacts was an option, I would.

Having samples presented like this would be very useful:

https://www.puremix.net/blog/are-all...-the-same.html

That way you can hear the original file, and what (if any) impact each cable has on the sound. I do essentially the same test without an ADC, but in real time. It lets you know how close each cable is to the original and in what areas each cable changes the sound. Having actual samples to listen to would be very useful and speaks for itself.

I've done it with various Mogami, Grimm, Canare, Vovox, Gotham and both new and old Ghost analog. You'll be surprised at how these all differ and which ones come close to the original.

Thanks!

Regarding Neutrik, Whirlwind, Amphenal, Switchcraft, and any other connector that uses brass / bronze for its contact pins, we already know how well they perform. I have never and would never say they are 'quite lossy'. I remain a big fan of Neutriks and will continue to use them in confidence.

I would never have thought of bronze and brass as a potential weak link in copper transmission until I started comparing Ghost to very expensive HiFi cable that use custom XLRs, some of which with pure copper pins (too risky for use in pro audio applications). Others even use pure silver contacts which is insane.

The use of tellurium copper helped us inch a little closer to the ideal, and without breaking the bank. Is it a huge difference? No, not at all. Is it a significant difference? That depends on the listener. I appreciate the difference in my room.

BTW the vast majority of expensive HiFi cables we tested underperformed against Ghost with Neutriks. Most $500+ cables sounded transient stifled and tonally dull in comparison. The few that outperformed Ghost like Acoustic Zen and Nordost use advanced tech that mitigates loss and interference to a very high degree.

WIRE is not pin connectors. And wire is more than just resistance measurement; it has both capacitance and inductance that play the influential part. The influence of wire is determined heavily by the length of it.
The nonsense length of a pin in a connector is meaningless. The construction (literally the soldering technique) would have more influence.

This is clearly where our experiences differ!

According to my tests, different lengths of cable from say 3 to 10 feet have very little affect on the sound. The cable has to be at a certain capacitance spec to make this true, which most modern cables are.

Ghost Analog's capacitance is very low at 36pf/m so there's no audible change up to 10-15 feet, likely up to 25 feet and beyond. I will test this.

Have you done the listening and determined that sound changes between 3 and 10 feet? If so, which cable did you use?

And while it may not make sense as to how the last half inch of conducting metal can influence the sound of the entire cable, my experience says otherwise.

Im assuming you've done your own listening tests in support of this? Sometimes we need to confirm in reality what does or does not makes sense in our heads.

Have you considered making a speaker cable?

Yep, here is the prototype made using the same 5N OFC copper from the Ghost Analog and Instrument cables.

Doesn't look much different than the cheap stuff Radio Shack used to sell, but it sounds gloriously transparent and free from restraint. Using standard banana plugs, this will not be expensive speaker cable.

Since the multicore snake has more studio demand atm, we are gearing up for its production run first, then we'll do a large run of Ghost Speaker. Estimated delivery of Q2 2023.

Not a world famous engineer or anything, but you dont think silver sounds different than copper? Just a question.

Beautiful! Definitely interested in getting a pair of the ghost+ and comparing with my Grimm cables for monitoring.

I appreciate the change of how you approach communication here, went to your website and was actually surprised how inexpensive those cables are, will probably order 4 ghosts+ for my Thermionic Culture The Phoenix mastering plus, as it's the only unit I couldn't replace by plugins in my mastering rig, it deserves the best even if I can't honestly hear the differences between cables.

spool of silver wire/cable and how it is constructed will sound different.
3 pins making that last few centimetres of a connection will not as long as it makes firm connection of a electrically conductive material.

Don't confuse one as being the same as the other.

If five 2m cables were made with and without these up-charge connectors using the same cable, the resistance difference between them would be below any level of statistical significance. The construction technique would matter more (solder used, how the fiber was tinned/stranded, how good the soldering was done.)
There's a reason why the IACS was specified in meters/grams or the capacitance for a cable is a spec determined by length. You reduce the length to small enough numbers, the influence reduces. When you consider that in regards to the material making up the major factor (the cable wire) of passing the signal, it becomes pointless.

I think he would do better with your physical money :D
Great look and finish on these cables btw

pentagon ive always respected your posts. You even helped me via PM years ago when I first got my ATC 110s and needed help identifying which pot was which on the tri-amp circuit boards in order to tune the speakers to the room. Thank you for that!

So respectfully, how can you be so certain if you haven't listened to what happens when you change copper alloys in the pins at both ends of a wire?

If you said, "the plating material (gold, nickel, silver, rhodium etc) atop the pin doesn't matter" id be inclined to agree with you. I think audiophiles make too much fuss about the 5 microns of plating on conductor pins, when they should be paying attention to the whatever alloy the pins themselves are made of.

Thanks for giving me another shot. Things did get heated before.

And yes your Phoenix MP is an unrivaled piece of kit that deserves the best connection to and from your converters as possible. Depending on what you're using now for cabling, the apparent difference could range from 'yea I think I hear a difference' to 'wow thats undeniably better'.

My cable philosophy, and why I care more now than ever, is that with plugins getting better and better, we need to give our beloved analog the best chance at preserving transient clarity it can get.

Plugins may still be inferior in many ways to specific analog boxes, but where they are clearly not lacking is in transient preservation. And as converters have gotten better and better at presenting and capturing significantly more detail in the past decade, so too must our cabling meet this increasing demand of matching pristine digital transmission.

To my ear, 'pristine digital' is best identified as 'transient clarity', and IMO is why many modern genres have typically sounded best mixed and mastered completely ITB. We can fix most anything with an EQ, but when transients (macro and micro) take a hit they are gone forever.

Interesting. I tend to not like transients in the box, but maybe I’m just thinking of most analog emulations that fail to soften transients like hardware does.

This topic deserves its own thread but I have 4 quick thoughts. These are pretty obvious, but I like thinking them thru:

1) When we don't like digital transients, IMO we are objecting more to the recording quality than the medium itself. When the recordings are great, we appreciate the transient preservation of digital.

2) Since our ears generally dont like pokey sounds, we can use tape, tubes, transformers, opamps, limiters, clippers, etc to shape transients creatively.

3) Studio cables (not HiFi cables) should remain transient agnostic in order to accurately transfer the sound of one device to another. Dullness is the suppression of micro transient information and IMO is the enemy of all mastering chains. The difference between dullness and darkness is that dullness cannot be fixed with an EQ, while darkness can. Yes, an exciter can 'lift' apparent dullness using harmonic addition, but it cannot resurrect lost transient info.

4) When im mastering thru analog, I dont want the default to be any shade of dull, no matter how minuscule. I'm trying to go beyond what ITB mastering can achieve in all aspects, especially transient clarity because that is what the client is already used to from the mix. Occasionally I get some razor sharp EDM in here and I like having the option to remain in analog without compromise.

Nice this isn’t the usual GS train wreck of people shouting at each other. Nice having a civilized discussion and hearing people making cogent points that are rooted in what I understand to be fact on the subject. Something I’d like to treat myself to someday lol! Of course would help to have Lucey’s ears and not my tinnitus....

looks super interesting ! i would love to try this ones as Mogami user in all my system