standard cable colours in audio?

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Hi,

I just built three simple circuits yet, but on that last one, I had to use a certain amount of cables for the first time - and only had black cable lying around which doesn't make it easier to know which cable goes where... :)

Because I want to do better next time and use various colours I wondered why not use standardized colours if there are any.

I did some searches in Google but didn't find anything like that.
Isn't there any standard?

I just know red is usually + or signal, black or white is ground or minus... well - how do you do if you got all of them at the same time, e.g. in a simple preamp?
+, -, ground, amp input: left and right, amp output l/r

Or do you simply use your imagination?
Any help is appreciated!

Cheers!
Dominique
 
The usual resistor colour code was used in the past where internal wiring could be assigned a numerical identity (even to the extremes of multiple coloured stripes adorning the wires!). The military used the colour pink for non-numerical identifications - leading to equipment using pink cable for all internal wiring!
The colours=numbers scheme is of less use if your project wiring doesn't have an obvious numerical identity.

In the UK, (and many other locations) it is usual for black to indicate negative, red indicates positive, with green/yellow stripes indicating earth.

Aside from these and any others already familar (such as yellow meaning video on AV amps), I'd suggest picking an internal wiring colour scheme that makes sense to you, and staying with it.

This does pre-suppose availability of suitable wire in your chosen range of colours!

A couple of years ago, we noticed that good quality signal, speaker, and power cabling was available in a wide range of different (ie "fashionable") colours - including fluorescent and luminous (very useful in dark corners!). As these coloured cables cost no more than the same in black, we colour-coded most of the cabling for our tri-amped PA, never realising how fickle fashion can be. In under nine months, coloured cable had vanished from every supplier - and only black, grey or white cables were on offer.
 
For power I always use red for plus, black for null/ground and blue for minus. and I strip them together so they are easy to spot and to follow. As I recall that's the way I learned it.

For signals I tend to go for quality cable, but they do not always come in the wanted color. My preferred colors are red/orange for right, white for null/ground and black/brown for left.
 
I use RED for +,BLACK for 0V,YELLOW for -,BROWN for L,BLUE for N,GREEN for E.In my hometown,however,people doesnt concern much about colour(color) when dealing with main AC wiring.I have seen many of them use WHITE(instead of BLACK) for L and BLACK(instead of WHITE) for N.Luckily they still use GREEN for E
 
I use red/black/blue for +/ground/-, white or yellow for internal signals and white/red for left/right external signals (I don't bother to differentiate between left/right within a piece of equipment). As is standard in the UK I use brown for live, blue for neutral and yellow/green for earth.

As my sister likes to point out, engineers (like me) make excuses to use all these different colours when the real reason is that we just like everything to look pretty:D
 
Leolabs said:
I use RED for +,BLACK for 0V,YELLOW for -,BROWN for L,BLUE for N,GREEN for E.In my hometown,however,people doesnt concern much about colour(color) when dealing with main AC wiring.I have seen many of them use WHITE(instead of BLACK) for L and BLACK(instead of WHITE) for N.Luckily they still use GREEN for E

There's no reason at all for internal wiring *not* to look pretty - especially when this aids the ability to follow wiring when fault-finding :)
 
Between the power entry point and the tansformer primary, I use the same colors as the building code requires for mains Black, white and green. From the secondaries on I use anthing *except* those. Reason -- I like to see at a glance what is carrying mains potential vs. what is isolated by the transformer. Maybe that means I'm just a "Nervous Nellie".
 
A long time ago there was a military spec, maybe inpired by a move to NATO interoperability that had all wirring white but with a little tag attached to each end. As I recall, interpreting the tags was not intuitively obvious -- unless you had a cross reference they were about as useful as Nordic runes. I don't know if this scheme is still in effect or if not how long it lasted.
 
Thank you all!
So red for + is obvious and I wouldn't want to do differently anyway.

I like the idea of not using the mains colours any further in the circuit, but here in Germany, it's blue, black and yellow/green, and it's sad to renounce blue and black! :) I'll further have to think of it!

I also like the idea of using red and white for audo right and left, because the standard cinch (rca) connectors use red/white or sometimes red/black anyway.

Now I thought of what a cable cross section I'd use.
For line level (around 1V?) and the usual high input impedances (>10k), the cable could probably be the thinnest I can get, but how much of a security factor (possibly for sound's sake) is reasonable? Maybe I should simply think of the cables I use to interconnect the devices and use a cable that's a bit thicker...
 
HI,
try single core 0.5mm or 0.6mm diam. avaialable on lots of colours
Single core stays bent to route and then bundle them in tiny tywraps on completion. That size solders easily into your PCB and can be used as links. Also available as tinned (keeps the copper oxide free) or silver plated ( helps the hi freq skin effect) but not so common.
 
thanx for your comments!

In the meantime I read a lot on cables, but I think that it's not all that relevant for the short way from the board to the connectors, is it?

I mean read e.g that a pvc isolation is the worst as dielectricum, so teflon shielded cable or copper wire (well, how's it called?) I mean the one with laque on it which you use to wind transformers.

To get cable with that teflon isolation or even just pvc with a diameter of 0,5mm as you recommended, Andrew, seems a bit hard around here in the colours I wish for, so I'll go with 0,14mm² (nearly 0,4mm diameter) for the moment, it should be ok for a mic preamp, shouldn't it?

Cheers
And sorry for being a bother! :)
Dominique
 
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