Balanced cables

Am I correct that if an interconnect length is 50’ it is uncontroversial that XLR is the way to go?

@ audiozen you said,

"Back in 1998 I purchased a pair of Paradigm Active 20 speakers and a BAT Vk3 preamp. I decided to buy an pair an eight foot of MIT interconnects with the box on the cables. They retailed for $1000.00 and Audio Advisor was selling them at 40% off. Hooked them up and a week later I was disappointed with the sound quality and on a whim, decided to use the very cheap 20 ft. stock pair of IC's that came with the speakers. I removed them from the box, hooked them up, put on a disc and was blown out the window. Completely shocked. The differences were not subtle, a big major difference. Sounded like a completely different speaker raising the performance to a whole new level I wasn't prepared for. I said to myself, "Whats wrong with this picture?" and called Paradigm and spoke to one of their engineers. I asked how much are your stock IC's that came with the speakers? He said $20.00 a pair. He asked me the model of the MIT's and said that IC will not work because its a high capacitance low resistance cable. Our 20's are designed to use with low capacitance high resistance IC's and mentioned that components from different companies worked best with IC's that match the mathematical values of their designs, and has nothing to do with the price of the cable. The Cable Company in Ohio has complete charts of those mathematical values from each high end company for their amps and preamps. If you go into a broadcasting-recording supply house and buy inexpensive cable that matches the value numbers of those components you will be blown away at the performance of your gear."

Very interesting. Not meaning to railroad the discussion but are you saying TheCableCompany can help match the best IC's for your system based on mathematical value designs each company has for their components? If it's that simple why don't companies list those values in the specs for their products? I've got the Primare A32 power amp and Pre32 preamp (both fully balanced) and am presently using Violectrics XLR IC's (a brand TheCableCompany doesn't even carry) and I love the sound. I'd be curious to see if the mathematical values of these products truly compliment each other. I know it doesn't "really matter" as long as I like what I'm hearing...just curious.

@68pete

That was exactly my point. Also depends on the source. If a phono, which in MOST cases run single ended in, then I don’t see a reason to favor converting back and forth from single ended to balanced downstream in the chain vs just staying single ended all the way.... assuming you don’t have a mixture of true balanced devices and single ended devices in the chain - which itself is a little weird.

Just because you have XLR inputs and outputs on a piece of equipment does not mean you are running in true balance. Check with the maker of the equipment to see if they are true balance from input to output. If they are then i feel the XLR balanced cables will make a difference. If not do not waste your money.

@fsonicsmith
Good points. Though, I’d assume most reviewers don’t have XLR on hand because only a small subset of gear actually *requires* it.

In the case of components which offer both XLR and RCA inputs and/or outputs, it’s probably worthwhile to understand the circuit topology. I don’t know what "pseudo balanced" means. But in many cases (such as in my EAR Yoshino gear), the balanced connectors are offered as a presumed convenience only. For example, my EAR 890 amplifier has balanced and unbalanced inputs selected by a switch. And when I switch to the RCA inputs, then the input transformers are bypassed. Transformers are probably the best way to convert balanced to unbalanced or vice versa, but they have a sound. So now if I prefer transparency, then I should use the unbalanced inputs. But if I prefer the additional transformer coloration, then I could use the XLR. One is not definitively "better", and the only thing to do is try it both ways.

One possible benefit in general of balanced is the elimination of any potential ground loops.

@stringreen ,

Are you listening to lps, cds or both when you experience the metallic sound? If it's only on lps, (if you're still running the Classic platter), I'd suggest you try a nice TT mat...Funk Firm 5mm.

Good luck.

Warren Gehl to my knowledge does some very limited design work for ARC and is key in QC by reportedly listening to every piece of gear hooked up to his reference system of a Ref 6 and Ref 150se and some old, large Magnepans before the piece leaves the factory. It was, however, Ward Fiebiger who took over the reigns from Bill Johnson in the actual engineering/circuit layouts of ARC's top-level gear including the Ref series of preamps and amps. Now does that make a difference? Probably not. Surely Warren knows enough to answer the question being posed here.

Warren has made a lot of contributions to the sound of ARC and little of it has been to circuitry- mostly vibration control, tube choice and similar. Bill hired him for his ears as he was/is very astute.

Ward (RIP) may have been influenced by the Italians who have since learned to let the company do what it does best. I'm not sure where your amp sits in this since it is still current.

I have seen some pretty expensive cables over at ARC (they are a 1/2 hour drive from here) so I've had pretty good reason to suspect that they didn't support the balanced standard (else you wouldn't need the pricey cables). Here is a nice bit about how balanced line works, from the Rane (a popular pro audio manufacturer) website:

http://www.rane.com/note110.html

FWIW, I'm looking at my manual to my Ref 150 SE and it does not include a schematic and instead only has some specs, including that the output polarity is non-inverting with "Balanced input pin 2+ (IEC-268)"
Also interesting to me is this verbiage;
"IMPORTANT
Use the best available speaker wires and interconnects. Audio Research cannot emphasize this enough. As better components and systems are developed, it becomes increasingly important to avoid the limitations of inferior system interconnections"

Al, that makes a lot of sense to me, but both Warren Gehl (of ARC) and Kalvin told me that the amp employed a differential amplifier at its input. But they may have been reading off of the same cue sheet, which may not have been accurate. Although I've known both of them for 40 years, on this point I'm more willing to believe your theory as it is consistent with the amp's behavior. I never had the heart to to tell them that if what they said was true that a lot of performance was being left on the table. But who knows- maybe that will be part of the next iteration.

At any rate, that aspect of the amp's performance is well-known and acknowledged by ARC. So in the case of a balanced interconnect, if noise were able to impinge the cable, the amp would not be very good at rejecting it (in the old days this was often handled by an input transformer, which is usually very good at CMRR). So this would seem to make the characteristics of the cable more audible. For such an amplifier, I would recommend a cable that is double shielded.

At the risk of coming across as overly defensive (I own and love ARC gear), this sounds just a bit too conjectural/speculative. Warren Gehl to my knowledge does some very limited design work for ARC and is key in QC by reportedly listening to every piece of gear hooked up to his reference system of a Ref 6 and Ref 150se and some old, large Magnepans before the piece leaves the factory. It was, however, Ward Fiebiger who took over the reigns from Bill Johnson in the actual engineering/circuit layouts of ARC's top-level gear including the Ref series of preamps and amps. Now does that make a difference? Probably not. Surely Warren knows enough to answer the question being posed here. I actually tried to ask ARC the very same question, more or less. Guess what they said in response to my email? That I should contact my dealer! Very nice, huh? 

but I’ve had the suspicion that instead of using differential stages they basically have a separate signal path through the amp (up to the output transformer primary) for each of the two signals in the balanced signal pair they receive for each channel. That would be consistent with a very dramatic reduction of power capability as well as an increase in distortion if the amp were to be provided with unbalanced inputs via RCA-to-XLR adapters or adapter cables, as was found to be the case with the Ref 150 used by the OP in this thread we had participated in some time ago. I believe it would also be consistent with low CMRR, due to the gain and other characteristics of the two paths not matching precisely.

Al, that makes a lot of sense to me, but both Warren Gehl (of ARC) and Kalvin told me that the amp employed a differential amplifier at its input. But they may have been reading off of the same cue sheet, which may not have been accurate. Although I've known both of them for 40 years, on this point I'm more willing to believe your theory as it is consistent with the amp's behavior. I never had the heart to to tell them that if what they said was true that a lot of performance was being left on the table. But who knows- maybe that will be part of the next iteration.

At any rate, that aspect of the amp's performance is well-known and acknowledged by ARC. So in the case of a balanced interconnect, if noise were able to impinge the cable, the amp would not be very good at rejecting it (in the old days this was often handled by an input transformer, which is usually very good at CMRR). So this would seem to make the characteristics of the cable more audible. For such an amplifier, I would recommend a cable that is double shielded.

It depends on who you believe

Atmasphere 2-28-2018
Its probably not the amp that is causing you to hear the cables so much as the preamp. But there is a recent period of ARC amps that had me scratching my head. I’m not sure which models they are. They were out when Kalvin Dahl (with whom I went to school) was still at ARC (about 2-3 years ago). Apparently the amp has a very low CMRR (Common Mode Rejection Ratio) so it only has balanced inputs. Apparently also if you try to run it single-ended the power goes down and the distortion goes up.

I can’t think of a good reason for a low CMRR in a differential amplifier (which is what these amps use). You wind up leaving performance on the table (I’ve been designing differential circuits since the mid 1980s).

Ralph, I’ve never been able to find a schematic for any of ARC’s amps which only provide balanced inputs, such as the recent Reference series amps, but I’ve had the suspicion that instead of using differential stages they basically have a separate signal path through the amp (up to the output transformer primary) for each of the two signals in the balanced signal pair they receive for each channel. That would be consistent with a very dramatic reduction of power capability as well as an increase in distortion if the amp were to be provided with unbalanced inputs via RCA-to-XLR adapters or adapter cables, as was found to be the case with the Ref 150 used by the OP in this thread we had participated in some time ago. I believe it would also be consistent with low CMRR, due to the gain and other characteristics of the two paths not matching precisely.

I have no idea why they might have chosen that kind of approach, and I can’t say for sure that they did, but if I am correct in suspecting that they did so it would seem to explain some or all of the things you mentioned about their amps that you referred to above.

Best regards,
-- Al

Its probably not the amp that is causing you to hear the cables so much as the preamp. But there is a recent period of ARC amps that had me scratching my head. I'm not sure which models they are. They were out when Kalvin Dahl (with whom I went to school) was still at ARC (about 2-3 years ago). Apparently the amp has a very low CMRR (Common Mode Rejection Ratio) so it only has balanced inputs. Apparently also if you try to run it single-ended the power goes down and the distortion goes up.

I can't think of a good reason for a low CMRR in a differential amplifier (which is what these amps use). You wind up leaving performance on the table (I've been designing differential circuits since the mid 1980s).

If that kind of amp is used with a preamp of fairly high output impedance as per any of the ARC Ref series, the result will be that cable differences will be heard.

That last bit is the part I don't get- why defeat the purpose of balanced line? At that point you might as well run single-ended, as the ability to run long cables is lost as well.

It is things like this which is (IMO) why the single-ended/balanced debate continues! Think about this for a moment- from whom do you most often hear that saw that 'cables don't make a difference'? Usually its someone with an audio engineering background. Well, most of those people work in pro audio, where balanced lines are used, the balanced standard is observed and cables thus really don't make a difference. But in high end audio, for some reason (my guess is the difficulty) the balanced standards have been largely ignored, so this conversation continues...

So Ralph, based on your engineering knowledge, why would ARC make those design choices? Can you hazard a guess as to what the most likely reasons would be? My experience tells me that there must be trade-off considerations-at this level of audio, there always are.

You are correct. There are several ways to do balanced operation with tubes. If you want to support the balanced standard though, your options become limited because of the low input impedances the standard requires you to be able to drive, and also there is that issue with ignoring ground as I stated in my first post.

In the old days of tubes, an output transformer was employed. That is how my Ampex recorders (which are single-ended internally) drive balanced lines. When transistors came along, and in particular solid state opamps, it became possible to direct-couple the output. But even with solid state, transformers are still in common use even today.

We developed a third means, which is a direct coupled balanced vacuum tube output, for which we also developed a patent. I'm pretty sure ARC didn't have any interest in infringing the patent, using output transformers or a solid state output, so they used the only means left to them, which was to not support the balanced standard. They knew they had to do something because balanced operation offers too many advantages to ignore!

As a result, you can easily hear differences in balanced cables while using their equipment. This is entirely because the balanced standards are not being observed.

So if I understand you correctly, unlike Vladmir Lamm's open admission to having psuedo-balanced XLR inputs on his amps, ARC's Ref Series amps, including my Ref 150se is truly balanced, but deviates from the convention most likely for the reasons you stated. I will leave it for another day and discussion as to whether you are correct that as long as the convention for true balanced is observed, all functioning XLR IC's will sound identical. I just know that with my Ref 6 preamp and Ref 150se amp, the choice of XLR makes a profound difference-I tried Mogami Gold, a custom-made Chris Sommovigo AirWave, a Morrow MA-6, a Harmonic Tech, and then Cardas Clear Beyond and each was markedly different. Only the Cardas gave me repeated goose bumps and chills down my neck and only the Cardas made my speakers disappear in my room. I am not touting Cardas as best, only that Cardas was the best I tried in MY system. 

Just wanted to reiterate that if designer lays out his signal path to be more direct to the XLR and the gain is set higher to that output it will always sound better which is the intention, if the opposite is done to the RCA out, it will always sound better as well.

This statement is false.

Balanced and single-ended (RCA) operations are inherently incompatible. So if RCAs are used its not balanced, and if the XLR outputs are used (and the preamp is properly balanced) then the use of the RCA connections will result in a buzz.

IOW its one or the other and never both, unless additional active circuitry is used.

The gain has nothing to do with it whatsoever. That is saying that to make something sound better, you just make it louder.

So if a balanced dual mono/stereo preamplifier has both XLR and RCA outputs, and both outputs from XLR or RCA or moving signal from a separate mono channel for left and right, then in essence their both balanced cables doing the same thing. Interconnects are nothing more than ground connectors. As I already pointed out, no one called XLR cables balanced cables for almost forty years until the 80's when dual mono/stereo components were on the rise having the option of XLR or RCA outputs. If XLR cables were invented in the 80's for the sole purpose only to use with high end dual-mono components, then technically it would be a balalanced cable only, not a cable that was given the nickname "balanced" due to its great ground properties which works best with noisy components especially noisy tube amplifiers.

Al addressed this correctly. I do have the feeling though that you did not read my post carefully. XLR connections were in wide use in the 1950s- my Ampex 351-2 tape machine, built in 1957, uses XLRs exclusively.

They were used by the recording and broadcast industries beginning in the 1950s, and their introduction to high end audio was made by me in the late 1980s (we introduced the first balanced line product for high end audio in 1987).

The reason XLRs are used for balanced operation is that the relationship of both the non-inverted and inverted signals with respect to ground is identical. This is important for a proper balanced connection and is something an RCA connector simply can't do.

A very well designed solid state preamp is quiet as a tomb and its redundant to use a 1 meter pair of XLR's since there is no noise to deal with. To create this myth that XLR cables have an effect on the quality and quantity of the music signal is outright fraud. The quality is in the recording itself whether its vinyl or CD and has nothing to do with the wire or the connector. If its a very bad recording its going to sound like crap regardless what cable your using, XLR or RCA. Now if you have a poorly designed preamp with a high level of cross talk and noise than the XLR will help to flush out the noise at the output. Its just wire with a good ground, its not a "mini preamp, a "processor", or a buffer like many in the high end retail continue to perpetuate to make more money.

This paragraph is full of outright falsehoods so I will attempt to set the record straight.

The noise of the preamp is a different thing from the noise that can enter a cable. It does not matter if the cable is 6" or 60 meters. Balanced operation still has a noise advantage with respect to the cable, and the additional advantage of being able to eliminate cable artifact. If you had to pay big dollars for a single-ended cable because that was the one that sounded right, that's the kind of artifact I'm talking about!

Now balanced operation within something like a preamp can also have lower noise but for entirely different reasons. For example, we use differential amplifiers in our preamps; for a given stage of gain, a differential amp can have 6db less noise than its single-ended counterpart. 

Differential amplifiers are in common use in many solid state power amps and many opamps. They are used because they offer lower noise and also greater power supply noise rejection. They can be executed in tubes as well (the first production opamps were made in the 1950s by George Philbrick and were all-tube).

The bottom line is balanced operation is used to reduce or eliminate the sound an interconnect cable might impose in the system, and also to reduce or eliminate noise that might be impinged on the cable by power cords, magnetic fields and the like- these are things single-ended cables cannot do. This is why all recordings since the 1950s employ balanced line connections- its not just so that the cables can be run a long ways, but if you sit and think about it, the fact that the technology prevents the cable from modifying the signal does also imply you can run the cable much longer distances without troubles.  This can be quite advantageous in the home; I keep my amps right by my speakers with short speaker runs, and run the interconnect cables about 30 feet to my preamp which is located at the spot in the room with the least bass (room nadir). In this way I get considerably more definition and less coloration.

Again, you'd think that audiophiles would be all over that!

I knew Robert Fulton as he lived here in town. He was the guy that founded the high end audio cable industry. Back in the late 1970s he had a high end RCA cable, and his Fulton Brown and Fulton Gold speaker cables.

If you run RCAs, the cables to make the connections are the hidden cost of any preamp. If you run balanced, and the equipment supports the balanced standard, the cables are cheap but the sound is better than the best RCAs.

So Ralph, based on your engineering knowledge, why would ARC make those design choices? Can you hazard a guess as to what the most likely reasons would be? My experience tells me that there must be trade-off considerations-at this level of audio, there always are.

You are correct. There are several ways to do balanced operation with tubes. If you want to support the balanced standard though, your options become limited because of the low input impedances the standard requires you to be able to drive, and also there is that issue with ignoring ground as I stated in my first post.

In the old days of tubes, an output transformer was employed. That is how my Ampex recorders (which are single-ended internally) drive balanced lines. When transistors came along, and in particular solid state opamps, it became possible to direct-couple the output. But even with solid state, transformers are still in common use even today.

We developed a third means, which is a direct coupled balanced vacuum tube output, for which we also developed a patent. I'm pretty sure ARC didn't have any interest in infringing the patent, using output transformers or a solid state output, so they used the only means left to them, which was to not support the balanced standard. They knew they had to do something because balanced operation offers too many advantages to ignore!

As a result, you can easily hear differences in balanced cables while using their equipment. This is entirely because the balanced standards are not being observed.

Aw geez, once again folks here set up straw-men solely for the purpose of setting themselves up so they can nobly slay them before the spectating masses and then take a bow for imaginary accolades of heroic wisdom. Or put more simply, for crying out loud, gimme a break!  Nobody in this thread espoused the view that XLR's are inherently better than RCA's. Anyone who has read the leading audio mags knows that most of the better reviewers only have RCA IC's in their personal collections and if XLR's are the only option on a piece of gear, they borrow some from the manufacturer of the particular piece under review. But, when a component is designed for XLR's only, there is no choice. When a component offers both, setting aside the difference in gain, they sometimes sound different and sometimes they don't. Sometimes one sounds better than the other, sometimes they just sound different. This exact question posed by Stingreen, btw, has been covered here before. The responses are quite predictable. There is the camp that says no, all balanced cables competently made sound the same. There is the "all recording studios use Mogami/Belden and that is all you need" camp. And then there are the rest of us who say, "it all depends". Some of the most widely respected amps ever built don't offer true balanced inputs. Take Lamm gear for instance. There are XLR's on the back of Lamm amps but Vladmir Lamm is very open that they are "psuedo balanced". 

+1 audiozen! Thank you for your cogent explanation and debunking of the "superiority" myth of XLR (Cannon) connectors!

Just wanted to reiterate that if designer lays out his signal path to be more direct to the XLR and the gain is set higher to that output it will always sound better which is the intention, if the opposite is done to the RCA out, it will always sound better as well. 

The only reason James Cannon designed the XLR is for very long cable runs beyond 25 feet. A very well designed solid state preamp is quiet as a tomb and its redundant to use a 1 meter pair of XLR's since there is no noise to deal with. To create this myth that XLR cables have an effect on the quality and quantity of the music signal is outright fraud. The quality is in the recording itself whether its vinyl or CD and has nothing to do with the wire or the connector. If its a very bad recording its going to sound like crap regardless what cable your using, XLR or RCA. Now if you have a poorly designed preamp with a high level of cross talk and noise than the XLR will help to flush out the noise at the output. Its just wire with a good ground, its not a "mini preamp, a "processor", or a buffer like many
in the high end retail continue to perpetuate to make more money. David Belles who makes the finest solid state and tube preamps in the country in their price range, whose always off the radar, could care less about XLR's with his top preamps, soild state or tube. His pieces are dead quiet, all single ended, and when you listen to his model's, "balanced" cables will be the last thing on your mind.   

Shadorne.....thanks, but I sent the mid and trweeter drivers to Vandersteen who tested and deemed them fine.

Audiozen 2-27-2018
... just about all high end mono amps have both RCA and XLR inputs as well as dual mono stereo designs in a single chassis. So if a balanced dual mono/stereo preamplifier has both XLR and RCA outputs, and both outputs from XLR or RCA or moving signal from a separate mono channel for left and right, then in essence their both balanced cables doing the same thing.

They are both doing the same thing in that they are conveying, or at least attempting to convey, the same information from one component to the other. But they are doing it in very different ways, with results that are unlikely to be identical.

A balanced interface by definition has two signal lines which have the same impedance between each of the signal lines and ground, at least to a **very** close approximation. That equality of the impedances between the two signal lines and ground is a necessary condition for a balanced interface to provide the noise rejection it is known for. It is also frequently the case that those signal lines carry a pair of signals that are of equal amplitude but opposite polarity, which can provide additional advantages such as improved signal-to-noise ratio, reduction of certain forms of distortion, and minimization or elimination of cable effects (if the criteria Ralph has described are met).

Components whose internal signal paths are balanced but which provide RCA connectors in addition to XLR connectors typically convert the unbalanced signal provided to the RCA connector or received from the RCA connector to or from a balanced pair of signals that is processed internally, with the conversion often being accomplished via either an active stage or a transformer. Or in some cases the RCA connector is simply connected to one of the two signals in the balanced signal pair, with the ground shell of the RCA connector being connected to circuit ground.

An interface which conveys a single signal and a ground connection is not balanced, both by definition and as a practical matter.

Regards,
-- Al

So Ralph, based on your engineering knowledge, why would ARC make those design choices? Can you hazard a guess as to what the most likely reasons would be? My experience tells me that there must be trade-off considerations-at this level of audio, there always are. 

atmasphere-. Having been a Gon member for 15 years under two different handles, this is the first thread I jumped into on the subject of cables. Maybe where the confusion lies is that just about all high end mono amps have both RCA and XLR inputs as well as dual mono stereo designs in a single chassis. So if a balanced dual mono/stereo preamplifier has both XLR and RCA outputs, and both outputs from XLR or RCA or moving signal from a separate mono channel for left and right, then in essence their both balanced cables doing the same thing. Interconnects are nothing more than ground connectors. As I already pointed out, no one called XLR cables balanced cables for almost forty years until the 80's when dual mono/stereo components were on the rise having the option of XLR or RCA outputs. If XLR cables were invented in the 80's for the sole purpose only to use with high end dual-mono components, then technically it would be a balalanced cable only, not a cable that was given the nickname "balanced" due to its great ground properties which works best with noisy components especially noisy tube amplifiers. Speaking of tubes, don't mean to get off subject stringreen, but this will benefit you as well, and that is a tube device I bought last spring at the time I purchased my Rega, Sony SACD, Ascend Acoustics system.
A tube buffer made in London that blew me out the window, its that good.
Its from the I-Fi company. Its called the Ifi-iTube2, and its pure magic and only cost $375.00. I purchased mine from Amazon. It uses a single GE-NOS 5670 tube that has an average life of 100,000 hours. It has three settings for three different sonic signatures. Classic tube, single ended triode, and push pull. It also has a bass boost setting, increase bass below 40hz by 6 db's, and 12 db's below 80hz. If your speakers have a problem with a narrow sound field, it has a 3D setting that will widen your sound field by thirty degrees. If your currently a solid state person and were into tube gear in the past and got fed up with inefficient tube amplifiers that waste energy drawing a constant 100 watts from you ac outlet at idle and all the maintenance hassles, then the iTube2 is the answer to your prayers. I had mine patched between my Sony SACD player and my Rega integrated set on classic tube. All the tube magic is there. Heres the link to the iTube2.

                                        
                                   www.ifi-audio.com

The ferrofluid probably dried out in your midrange and tweeter. This happens after as little as 2 years depending on use. That would explain the metallic sound. Are you the sole owner? It doesn’t take much to damage those drivers - a bit of clipping even at modest power will heat the voice coil up immensely...

Thanks Atmasphere    ...that's exactly the information I was looking for.  I'm hearing a metallic sound that's driving me nuts (mids/highs)...and am looking for the culprit.  I tried everything including removing the drivers from my Vandersteen's ...Richard said they were fine.  My Ayre dealer thought it was the silver in the cables, but you nullified that idea. ...thinking it just may be my ears.....  

+1 Atmasphere!

Do different brands/levels of balanced XLR ended cables going to and from differentially balanced components make a difference?

They shouldn't. The question really should be- does the equipment used support the balanced line standard. If no- then cables make a difference. If yes, the cables won't affect things even in long runs.

I feel compelled to set the record straight in a couple of areas:

BTW-There is no such thing as a "balanced cable". That term implies that an XLR/Cannon connector was only designed to be used with fully balanced left/right channel audio components which is very misleading and completely false. There are solid state components that are fully balanced with both RCA and XLR connector's. The inventor of the XLR never used the term "balanced" for his connector. When the very first stereo receiver was invented by Sydney Harman in the 1950's, the Festival 1000, it was a fully balanced design in twin cabinets with the left channel in one cabinet and the right in the other. with a control panel on the front of each unit. A classic dual mono design. The unit had RCA connector's only. The term "balanced" was a label put on XLR cables by Audiophiles in the 80's. You can label an RCA cable as well as a "balanced cable" if its used between fully balanced components.

The above post is 100% false. The Festival 1000 employed single-ended circuits (combined with a Williamson-style power amp section); thus it used RCA connections. RCA connections are not balanced- the shield connection is used to shield the 'signal' but in reality the shield is important as it completes the circuit. In a balanced connection the shield is ignored (unless the equipment in use does not support the balanced standard, AKA 'AES File 48'). The phone company originally used balanced line connections in the 1950s, which is what made trans-continental phone calls possible and the term 'balanced' was used way back then.

As applies to audio, the balanced connection is used to minimize the effect of the interconnect cable. You would think audiophiles would jump on this like a hobo on a ham sandwich! But I have been surprised at the amount of push back over the decades since we introduced the idea. Regardless, if your gear actually supports balanced operation as intended, the cable isn't going to be something that requires audition- its simply going to work without editorializing.

Since I mentioned the balanced standard, here are the important bits again for those that did not read the thread Al linked above
1) the source will be low impedance able to drive 2KOhms with no worries
2) the signal is pins 2 and 3 of the XLR connection, and travel as a twisted pair within the cable
3) ground is shield only and is ignored by both the source and at the receiving end

Its that last bit that gets so many in trouble- if it is not followed, then the shield (just like with single-ended operation) becomes part of the overall sound and you start to 'hear' 'differences'. ARC as pointed out does not support the standard, as they have no preamps that can drive 1 or 2Kohms and their outputs (pins 2 and 3) occur with respect to ground (pin1) rather than with respect to each other.  With such a preamp the choice of cable will be important- ***which means the point of balanced line operation is defeated***, even if the preamp is internally balanced!

We got around this problem with a floating output that ignores ground. In the old days this was done with an output transformer (usually set up to drive 600 ohms which is the old balanced standard input impedance); we are the OTL guys so we did it OTL; our outputs are balanced and direct-coupled (thus also eliminating the output coupling cap; the latter being used often indicates that the circuit does not support the standard...).

Uh, oh! It’s the heat! Everybody scatter! 😬

+1 Elizabeth...

  audiozen

... I had no idea that a recording engineer was such a low level profession.

Actually, the term "recording engineer" is a misnomer, because real engineers - such as electrical, electronic, civil, structural - are licensed and degreed professionals.

A "recording engineer" is really a "recording technician." They are not truly engineers unless, of course, they've actually earned that designation. Most haven't.

Golly geoffait-I had no idea that a recording engineer was such a low level profession. I wonder, is that a better professional career than a dishwasher at a PHO restaurant? What an insult.

Dean of Audio Engineering school commencement speech, excerpt.

It’s been an eventful two years and now the time has come to say goodbye. Many of you sitting here today will go on to bigger and better things. The rest of you will become recording engineers. 

🤡

Recording studio's and recording engineer's could care less about 
hypo/cryo nonsense. I find it amazing that we all buy our vinyl and CD's 
from companies whose master tape CD's and master tape vinyl sound fabulous and guess what, just about all of these studio's are using budget wire from Belden, Canare and Mogami for recording and mixing. Audiophiles love to speculate that they are more "technically" proficient and superior to well educated recording engineers and the recording industry, since they got their education from high end magazines, but the reality is Audiophiles live in denial and most do not have the technical education on the level of the best recording engineers and studios. Give me a break. 

Pure sound good.

Re: Cryo'd metal......pro musicians I know cryo'd their trumpets, trombones, sax's etc.  to find (what they tell me) is a more "pure" sound.

As fate would have it many if not most high end cable manufacturers employ cryogenics for their cables and power cords. They wouldn’t be able to compete otherwise. The really smart ones like Audioquest control wire directionality for cables and power cords, even stranded cords. The connectors are smoother after cryo, kinda like the way the finger action of cryod trumpet keys is a lot easier and smoother.

The biggest load of hyperbole I ever came across years ago which I still laugh over today is how Harmonic Technologies would tout over their "cryogenic" process to their copper wire to preserve and prevent the crystal cell pattern from breaking up, preventing sonic degradation of the music signal passing through the wire. What a bundle of Barnum and Bailey snake oil. All the sheep bought into that like a moth hitting a light bulb.

Sometimes folks need to realize break-in can be used as an excuse for stuff which just does not work.

Half of break-in is people's ears getting acclimatized to the new and different--though not necessarily better--sound of a new component (and I include cables in the category of components).

shadorne..exactly!

""For those that believe wire is wire, fine"...now let me see, if I take an interconnect cable and slice the side open, guess what, theres copper wire inside. Amazing!!! it must be wire!. You can pretend its the golden hairs from the scalp of Goldilocks all you want, but its just wire. You need to take off your rose colored glasses. And to ignore the post above by an expert recording engineer is disingenuous and disrespectful...your an "Audiophile" and your "opinion" is much more important then recording engineers or the broadcasting industry because you read "high end magazines" and bow down to the demi-god reviewers who are taking you for a ride...Quit being a sheep. Quit being a lemming.As W.C. Fields said.. "Theirs a sucker born every minute""  

You missed you're calling you should have become a fundamentalist preacher oh wait you already have become a preacher good luck with your faith and in attracting a flock of rapt followers..

@audiozen

Many folks simply want to believe cables make a difference - many because they spent a quite considerable portion of their budget on nonsense tweaks.

You will never get these same folks to ever admit they were fools or suckers as W.C. Fields put it.

Furthermore, the mark up on cables and silly fuses and silly contact goo is in the thousands and therefore an army of unscrupulous sellers and resellers will rush to attack anyone who says “the emperor has no clothes”.

Worse, if you look at the sales supporting the economic model of this website you will see a significant percentage is in nonsense tweaks - so moderators are not going to lift a finger to kill a lively business of parting fools from their money....

Nonsense tweaks are to audiofools as expensive rejuvenation creams are to the vain and superficial...

"For those that believe wire is wire, fine"...now let me see, if I take an interconnect cable and slice the side open, guess what, theres copper wire inside. Amazing!!! it must be wire!. You can pretend its the golden hairs from the scalp of Goldilocks all you want, but its just wire. You need to take off your rose colored glasses. And to ignore the post above by an expert recording engineer is disingenuous and disrespectful, acting like the professional recording industry is inferior and has no clue what there talking about because your an "Audiophile" and your "opinion" is much more important then recording engineers or the broadcasting industry because you read "high end magazines" and bow down to the demi-god reviewers who are taking you for a ride. Back in 1998 I purchased a pair of Paradigm Active 20 speakers and a BAT Vk3 preamp. I decided to buy an pair an eight foot of MIT interconnects with the box on the cables. They retailed for $1000.00 and Audio Advisor was selling them at 40% off. Hooked them up and a week later I was disappointed with the sound quality and on a whim, decided to use the very cheap 20 ft. stock pair of IC's that came with the speakers. I removed them from the box, hooked them up, put on a disc and was blown out the window. Completely shocked. The differences were not subtle, a big major difference. Sounded like a completely different speaker raising the performance to a whole new level I wasn't prepared for. I said to myself, "Whats wrong with this picture?" and called Paradigm and spoke to one of their engineers. I asked how much are your stock IC's that came with the speakers? He said $20.00 a pair. He asked me the model of the MIT's and said that IC will not work because its a high capacitance low resistance cable. Our 20's are designed to use with low capacitance high resistance IC's and  mentioned that components from different companies worked best with IC's that match the mathematical values of their designs, and has nothing to do with the price of the cable. The Cable Company in Ohio has complete charts of those mathematical values from each high end company for their amps and preamps. If you go into a broadcasting-recording supply house and buy inexpensive cable that matches the value numbers of those components you will be blown away at the performance of your gear. Quit being a sheep. Quit being a lemming.

As W.C. Fields said.. "Theirs a sucker born every minute"

Elizabeth said "sometimes folks need to realize break-in can be used as an excuse for stuff which just does not work."

Bingo!  If a cable is not acceptable right out of the box then it most likely never will be.  I have used tons of cables in my system and break in for me is real but not jaw dropping.

I agree that simply recommending the cable that worked for you is senseless. However, it is very unfortunate that this thread has to once again devolve into the debate as to whether wire is wire. For those that believe that all wire is wire, fine. Maybe with your system, wire is indeed wire, with no perceptible differences and you could put ten listeners in your room and all would compare notes afterward and all agree. And please don't read some intent to malign your system when I say that. It is always possible that in the culprit for Stingreen's perceived harshness with his Vandersteens have nothing to do with cabling and more importantly, can't be successfully addressed with cabling. But one thing is beyond debate and that is this; in some systems and for some people different cables sound markedly different. I say this in the context of IC's and SC's only. Let's leave PC's out of this. Stingreen, I usually read your posts. IIRC, you've been running Are and Vandies for a while now. When did the perceived metallic sound start and what-that you can think of-changed in your system when the metallic sound was first noticed? Absent some change that you purposefully made, it would seem that there are only two possibilities; a change in your electrical grid or a new sensitivity on your part to something that was always there. 

jerroldls-Well said...

dlcockrum-no offense. I'm sure your familiar with, as most Audiophile's, of gain levels in components. I simply was applying common sense. Wire is wire, and all it does is transfer music signal. Its how the component is configured to the outputs by the designer where the circuit design and gain levels can sound better at one output over another regardless of the cable.

OMG I am old enough to know better than to jump into this lol but. After years of working in studios all I have to say is that none of the music ever recorded was done using anything but some form of Belden or equivalent type cable and connectors like switchcraft  or similar. How some "ulta" type interconnect could add or reveal musical qualities that were never in the original transfer is up to you to figure out. If you do hear a difference and like what you hear do buy the product. We all have our own experiences.

Audiozen,

My intent was to state that I hear significant differences BETWEEN different XLR cables, not between the SE connections and the XLR connections.

I am no rocket scientist (and neither are you) but I am well aware of the gain differences between SE and differentially balanced topologies.

Dave