XLR cables for a reasonable price?

A friend of mine was considering buying Mogami interconnects and to help out I did a lot of research. My conclusion, only from research, was that the Mogami interconnects are worth their price… meaning that if they cost $100 their sound quality is in line with $100 interconnects… versus say $1,000 or higher, major high end brand interconnects.. like Cardas, Transparent, etc. I have not tried them myself, but I found the conclusion very compelling, and consistent with their construction.

All XLR cables sound the same? A fantasy that we all wish were true. I thought that based on a lot of talk on these forums until I started trying out some different XLR’s in my system. Then I bought some of the top of the line Purist Audio Design cables to go between my preamp and amps. None of that cheap $100/ft stuff. These cables cost much more than that- $500/ft and you won’t pry these cables out of my hands. The difference in sound is startling. The soundstage is totally black. I thought it was quiet before but not like this. The bass came alive. Night and day difference in the bass. And the highs are so creamy good. When I hear cymbals I just want to hug myself. I could go on; but I won’t. High priced, yes but high satisfaction. Everything matters.

My generalizations come from listening to a number of high quality components and comparing the sound quality output. The results I have experience are exactly like speaker cables, other interconnects, power cords and Ethernet and USB cables… they sound different when comparing on medium or high quality electronics. Typically better quality ones sound better… but subject the variability of the particular system.

Standards are useful… but typically are suboptimal for high performance anything… high end design engineers are aware of them, and if they do not follow them, it is usually because they get in the way of performance or funtionality.

@ghdprentice @tonywinga I can’t stress enough how important it is to support the balanced standards! If the designer does not do this, regardless of whatever benefit they might think is there, the simple fact is that you lose the benefit of cable neutrality. IOW, you’ll hear differences between cables, and that isn’t a good thing!

The reason its not a good thing is very simple: next year, whoever made your cable will have a better one, and if he doesn’t, someone else will. Everyone here knows that. Its good that the system is revealing so that it can delineate cable problems, bad that the cables have problems that can be heard as ’bad, good, better’ and so on. If you hear differences between two cables, neither one is right.

Put another way, if you are hearing differences between balanced cables, this makes it highly likely that the equipment you are using for that audition doesn’t support the standards, even though fully differential and/or balanced. I’m not saying that equipment doesn’t sound good- I’m sure it does. But because it doesn’t support the standard, there is a veil between you and the music which is the cable itself.

I can’t think of a good reason to not support the standard- only bad ones: there are only three ways to do it and they all cost money. One way is to use an output transformer, another way is the way we do it, which we patented. Most high end companies don’t like paying patent fees solely on ego (’not invented here’). There’s an integrated circuit that does the job as well, but many tube preamp producers are loathe to put something like that at the output of their preamp. So we have a large number of manufacturers that for whatever reason aren’t supporting the standard; I very much doubt its for sound quality reasons!

I can see (+), (-), and ground output wires on each the Left and Right PCB inside my DAC.  They are labeled as such on the PCB.  So best I can tell is that it has the signal, 180 out of phase signal and ground going to the XLRs on the back.  I also see some small transformers which I’m guessing go to the RCAs.  That seems to be per the standard.  I have not looked that closely at my preamp, but I will sometime.  In any case these XLR cables make a significant difference in sound with the DAC through the preamp or direct.  (My DAC is a preamp as well.)  My amp are a balanced design too.  This also holds true for vinyl.

What you seem to be implying is that the internal wiring in a balanced amplifier, or preamp is not important either.  Then the question would be how good do the resistors, inductors and capacitors need to be?  Or the PCBs?

What you seem to be implying is that the internal wiring in a balanced amplifier, or preamp is not important either.

@tonywinga If this comment is directed at me, no, I did not imply that at all! The quality needed internally is very dependent on how the internal circuitry works.

atmasphere

... there are only three ways to do it and they all cost money. One way is to use an output transformer, another way is the way we do it, which we patented. Most high end companies don’t like paying patent fees solely on ego (’not invented here’). There’s an integrated circuit that does the job as well, but many tube preamp producers are loathe to put something like that at the output of their preamp.

And then there's the fourth way, which I think may be the most common: use an operational amplifier. ("Op-amp.") They can be fully discrete, and seem to be the approach used by many, such as ARC, for example.