$20 XLR cables that sound good

I recently tried bulk Mogami 2534 wire terminated with basic Neutrik XLR terminations that I assembled myself for about $20.00 (including shipping) for a 5' pair of IC's. They are OUTSTANDING. There is an AG member who sells them premade for $100.00. Do yourself a favor and build a set for $20.00 or less and you will more than likely be pleasantly surprised. I sure was.

As Atmasphere has cited, the balanced configuration is insensitive to the kinds of wire characteristics which lead some audiophiles to pay mega-bucks for interconnects.

I have great respect for Ralph and his products. And his amps easily have the ability to show up differences between cables.....and quite dramatic differences. But the quote above is simply not valid. I live in the twin cities and I would love to visit with Ralph to bring over the XLR pair of Jade Audio Hybrid ICs.

Compare the middle and top tier cables from Kubala Sosna, Purist, Stealth and Jade Audio to name a few and then it will be very clear of the dramatic differences of ICs.

get rid of the non-performing gear at one or both ends of the wire.......

Shadorne, every time there is a cable thread, you go off that perfectly designed gear should not respond to cable changes. And yet time after time, even the very impressively designed products that I own, Aria, CAT, Aesthetix, all show significant changes with ICs. For systems that are incapable of conveying the portrayal of space, harmonic overtones, decays, etc., it's just a game of bandaiding a system's tonal flaws with cables. But for truly high performance systems, I am well aware on how many cables can destroy what that system is capable of. It only takes one poor-quality IC from line stage to amp to piss away the dimensionality of such a system. But when relying on a Best Buy CD player as a primary source, such an experience will never be observed anyway.

The CAT amps have a power supply design that few if any other tube amps out there can begin to compete with. And these amps will show in a split second the dramatic difference in 3D and dynamic contrasts with cable and tube changes.

Shadorne, please educate yourself on some of the products I mentioned above and make note of their power supply designs. Maybe then you will understand how and why such products do indeed show differences between cables. Don't make blanket statements to people here that are seeking advice to improve their systems. If I listened to your comments here 5 or so years ago, I would have ignored those from others here that educated me on the capability of such cables. We can all learn a lot from A'gon members like Albert Porter and Jadem6.

I have played with Mogami and Canare XLR cables and they are a good starting point. But there is so much more to benefit with a system that has the capability. It makes no sense to pay for high-performance cables when the rest of the system can not benefit from their contributions. It's all about keeping the system balanced in performance among all components.

As for Sidssp's comment about achieving great sound, over the years we have all felt we had great sound. But then we hear refinements with upgrades and there is no going back to the "great sound" we had 10-15-20 years ago. Such is progress. And it only takes one link in the chainto destroy that progress.

Sorry Nathanso, I did not mean to steer your thread off course.

I think that Ralph's statement about cables is also contingent on balanced equipment being fully differential and following a 600 ohm standard. Not all balanced designs are created equal in this respect. I believe there is a white paper on the Atma-sphere site that discusses this.

Also, if you own an Atma-sphere amp and preamp then Ralph does recommend the Mogami between the components. However, he told me recently that from source to preamp one could benefit from a better cable. Again it all depends on the source equipments design.

Personally I've used a 25' run of Mogami Gold between my Rowland preamp and VAC amps and found it to be more than adwquate sound wise.

Seems Like Ralph needs some help on what he recommends, we obviously know more about his products then he does. Maybe when you buy an amp for 15K, he thinks you need to save a buck on Mogamis. I doubt he has ever listened to them, we know better. Sorry for more crap, it just sounds like that what we are saying here.

I first want to point out that OTL designs such as Ralph's have considerably greater output impedance than most amplifiers, and are designed based on what he refers to as a power paradigm, as opposed to the much more common voltage source paradigm, and so we should be cautious extrapolating from what works best with his amplifiers to others.

For that matter, as Vett93 alluded to above, source components or preamps with highish output impedances will tend to be "revealing" of cable "differences" which are in reality just the interaction of their output impedance with differing capacitances of the cables being compared. And power amplifiers driving difficult loads (loads that are either low impedance at some frequencies, or are highly capacitive such as many electrostatics) may react to those loads differently depending on speaker cable inductance and resistance.

Not to mention that many expensive cables are designed to be non-neutral.

I'm not particularly taking a position on the disagreements which have been expressed in this thread, just pointing out that it's easy to mis-generalize about cable differences, and that some of the reasons for differences don't correlate with price.

Regards,
-- Al

Regards,
-- Al