In contrast: Regarding balanced cables, at least one experienced poster and equipment designer has stated here that all balanced cables perform identically, once a few basic design parameters are met.I know I subscribe to this.
And its not because I can't hear differences in cables! I used to play the cable merry-go-round a lot in the old days. I knew Robert Fulton who, more than just about anyone else, founded the cable industry. So I've been playing with high end cables since the late 1970s.
I first got exposed to the technology in high school. I had been recruited to play bass in a local college orchestra as they were short that year. While at a concert, I noticed the Neumann U-67 mics hanging over the orchestra and traced the cables back to their source, the inputs of a Crown reel to reel run by a local engineer. Over the years I saw this done many times in various venues. So of those resulted in LPs.
Here is the thing about balanced. What is happening here is that nearly all recordings are done using balanced lines between the microphones and the microphone preamps. The reason is long ago the industry developed a means of preventing the cables from having an effect on the sound.
So when it came to working on a preamp years later, I realized that if one were to get the maximum benefit possible the interconnect cables would have to be taken into account. So instead of a single-ended preamp, I developed a balanced line preamp so you could use balanced cables at home and get the same benefit.
A number of cable companies sent us balanced cables, so we had plenty of cables on hand to do comparisons. At first we used a balanced passive volume control driven by a balanced phono section. As a control, I had a set of interconnect cables that were decades old. Using this setup, we auditioned the cables. The high end cables had various strengths and weaknesses but overall sounded pretty good. The control cable made the system literally sound like it was broken.
After that we introduced an active line section to the auditions that supported the balanced standard. The standard (now known as AES file 48) outlines how a cable should be driven- its operating parameters so to speak. Using this line section (and the amps being able to accept a proper balanced line) what we found is that not only did all the cables seem to sound better, we also could no longer tell them apart, including the control.
The whole point of the balanced line system is to eliminate cable artifacts. That is why it was created. Now you would think that is a good thing, that audiophiles would want that. But there is this thing called the Veblen Effect. That is the idea that if you spend more for a thing, that it should be a better thing. This certainly extends to cables! You can spend a lot on a balanced interconnect (length being irrelevant) and **if the system into which it is going supports the balanced standard**, the result will be that it will not sound particularly better or worse that a much less expensive cable. I've seen this and demonstrated this many times.
But take away that support of the standard and this is no longer the case! And no mistake- this applies only to balanced lines (there is no way that you can get single-ended cables to be sonically neutral, so you always have to audition them until you find the right one for your system). The thing is, most audio manufacturers in high end audio don't seem to recognize the balanced standard, although there are a few that do. So that means that even if you have a balanced setup you may still have to audition the cable. It shouldn't be that way. But high end audio is what it is.
The fact is that speaker cables can have a huge effect (BTW, the lower the speaker impedance the more profound the cable impact) so its to your advantage to keep them as short as possible. By using balanced lines you can keep the amps near the speakers and the rest of the system where you want it, and actually get *more* resolution (even though the interconnects might be quite long) and impact, as that is what you get from short speaker cables.