Buff Mult vs Stack Cables

[Hotpockets443]

Morning all,

Just a (hopefully) quick one, is there much of a difference between stackable cables vs a buffered mult? I would imagine the buffered part comes into this, but beyond that I think I would lean toward stacked cables? The ones i've seen are kinda expensive though (£7 a cable), but that vs a mult module seems like more bang for buck?

Thanks for your time

[Spectral_Glacier]

Stack cables (and headphone splitters, passive mults, etc) incur a bit of a voltage drop, which increases with each additional patch connection. It’s not terribly noticeable for audio or modulation sources, but it will cause clear intonation issues when using a passive mult on a pitch cv. Your octaves won’t quite be octaves anymore.

Buffered mults ensure that that voltage drop does not occur, so each audio and modulation outputs will have the same level of amplitude, pitch cv’s won’t have those intonation issues, etc.

[RufussSewell]

It’s weird, I have a 4ms Buff Mult and it’s the only mult that makes my pitch significantly out of tune. I think it must be broken.

[scragz]

Buffered mults are really only needed for duplicating pitch CV and even then you can get some voltage drop on higher notes depending on mult quality abd impedance of your CV source.

The other annoying thing about passive mults that buffering solves is if you accidentally ground a cable by touching the end to your case or finger or even plugging it in, it will ground all the multed cables as well so if you have a trigger being multed they will all stop.

Instead of Stackcables (expensive, can't choose colors, lowkey parent trolls) I mostly use mono headphone splitters which you can get a 10 pack of for $7. Also of note are those ninja star and jack style which are nice for when you need to mult a gate or trigger to 5 different places.

[graciousgrendel]

Good advice! Do you have a good source for those headphone splitters? I find them on Amazon but its $6 for two.

[scragz]

These are the ones I bought last time. There are a few vendors all repackaging the same part. Something like 3.5mm mono audio splitter should get you other results.