Starquad cables explained
Starquad cables as the name suggest incorporate four individual conductors. These cables are twisted together with a short lay length (number of twists per metre) typically one full twist every 25mm and in most cases have an overall Aluminium foil tape screen which is overlapped onto the quad during the twist operation with an appropriate drain wire.
The conductors which are opposite to each other are then wired in parallel to form a single balanced pair. As there are more conductors, the capacitance between the cores and the cores and the screen is considerably higher than a conventional microphone cable which can mean a greater high frequency loss in longer cable runs whereas it shouldn’t be an issue in much smaller runs.
The benefits are the cables improved ability to withstand EMI from other surrounding power sources.
It works because all of the conductors are equally spaced from the outside interference whereas in a traditional microphone cable, one pair has a tendency to be slightly closer therefore one pair will be affected more and in essence unbalanced.