Just contact The Cable Company and get all the loaners you want to try.
Seeking recommendations for DAC to amplifier balanced XLR cable
The amplifier is Musical Fidelity M6si and the new DAC is RME ADI-2 DAC FS, both great devices. At first I connected them with AQ Colorado 1m RCA. I happen to believe, however, that balanced cabling, which is possible between these two devices, has theoretical advantages over single-ended. I ordered Sommer Epilogue XLR cable from Germany, plugged it in yesterday and compared... Unfortunately AQ Colorado beats the newcomer. I have 2 choices: stay with AQ Colorado RCA (since it already plays great) or look for a better XLR cable. Any advice here is welcome!
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@soix Sound is terrific; listening to Ricardo Villalobos "Re: ECM". I find it interesting that on 2 forums (not this one) people attacked what I heard, and then attacked various "audiophile myths" and marketing that I am not even interested in, spoke about illusion, and more, before one guy (on the Polish forum) suggested the effective and simple solution :-) https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?pid=150056 BTW, do you think that the AZ can still improve anything? Is it worth the effort/cost? I have doubts and "better is the enemy of good." |
On a related note. RME makes available bit test files for devices sending digital output to the ADI-2 DACs. I copied these files to a USB stick, put it in Bluesound Node2i which now serves as my network transport and "played" them on the RME ADI-2. I played them on both (MUTEC) Toslink optical cable, and Mogami 2964 coaxial. All tests pass! -- except 32 bit samples as S/PDIF transmits "only" up to 24 bit (this is as expected). This means Node2i works perfectly and so do both inexpensive cables (this Toslink is about $6; coaxial was $45 but only because I fancied a "nice" one, a $7 Hosa from B&H should do exactly the same trick). No fancy cables needed here. After making sure that both optical and coaxial work perfectly, and therefore work the same, I kept the optical connection between Node2i and the RME DAC, while moving the coaxial to the digital output from my 27 year old ADCOM GCD-600 CD player (5 CD changer). I have just burned one of the test files, corresponding to Redbook (16/44) parameters onto a CD-ROM and "played" it as well -- again the test passed, so now I know that the CD passes all the WAV bits perfectly to the DAC. The DAC is therefore the heart of the system now, converting music from 1) CDs played on the old CD player, 2) streaming from Qobuz received from Node2i, 3) my FLAC files from an external disk connected to Node2i. Only one interconnect is needed, I can sell all others. Only the single balanced XLR cable, in my case Sommer Epilogue 1m) runs from the RME DAC to the MF M6si amp. The whole system is greatly simplified, perfected, and (bit) tested. It is not very expensive, either. And, I might add, sounds real nice :-) |
Perhaps check these out. I like them. Give Mark a shout, he can make a set for you. https://www.audiogon.com/listings/lis9af99-black-shadow-xlr-1-pair-1-meter-xlr-ic-s-interconnects?sh... |
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