Digital XLR vs. Analog XLR - Balanced Cables

Kijanki,

Thanks for clarifying this clearly for me. I checked other answers that you have submitted and you appear to have a very good understand of electrical signal processes. While I had planned on getting a pair of balanced digital cables, I had hoped to initially do a test with analog balanced cables initially. My intention is to use two cables to carry a 24/192 ks/S digital signal as single digital cables (outside of 1394) do not have sufficient bandwidth to accurately carry this signal. I am going from an upconverter to a DAC.

The wiring in the cable is irrelevant since it is straight through. That is, 1 to 1, 2 to 2 and 3 to 3. So, as long as the source and receiver match, any will do.

Kal

The digital and analog XLR cables that Virtual Dynamics sells is the exact same cable, just one cable versus two for the analog pair.

So all XLR cables are wired the same? How about the XLR jacks? Are hot, neutral and ground all terminated the same? I think not but I may be wrong. For AES/EBU input and output jacks are all terminated with the same pattern.

Right. The devices may not be connected in the same way although those differences are less common these days. Nonetheless, the only reason for not having the usual direct connections in the cables is to compensate for differences between the devices on each end.

Kal