XLR cables for a reasonable price?

Zavfino Fusion ~$360

For me, switching from RCA to XLR from my PS to integrated amp was mind blowing. 

I have finally settled on these XLR’s which connect a Holo Audio May to a Primaluna EVO 400 pre and also connect the Primaluna pre to an EVO 400 power amp. They are very clean and not overly sharp. The gold/silver alloy has the best sonic balance I have yet heard in an interconnect They do take awhile to burn in.

I also use Anticables Level 3 power cords throughout the system. Their power cords are probably what the company is best known for.

Anticables XLR 5.3

This is absolutely false. Single ended or balanced the first most important thing is the quality of the wire. How much this affects the sound quality depends on your components. In general consumer products, not at all, budget components most likely not, good components, yes to varying degrees.. audiophile, absolutely… very substantially. That is a generalization… and fairly reliable. But I know a couple instances where budget components were tremendously improved with good cables.

 

In general, when buying from well established companies the higher the cost the better quality and greater impact. One way not to not get off on the right foot would be to compare really cheap cables. Typical recommendations are to spend about 10% of the component cost.

There is one more dimension to cables… the sound character. Different companies have different basic sound characteristics… Cardas are a bit warm (can help systems sound more musical)… which can mask deficiencies in your components… they get less warm as you go up in levels and more clear. Transparent are… exactly that transparent and they get quieter and more so as you go up in price.

One thing to note is that XLR are a bit louder… it is easy to mistake this for clarity, so you must equalize the sound level to correctly compare sound characteristics.

@ghdprentice I feel compelled to correct some misinformation in your post. As you might have gathered from other's posts here so far, your first paragraph is not correct. The construction of the cable matters in a balanced cable, but that construction is simple (twisted pair inside a shield) and need not be expensive. It doesn't even seem to matter if the materials are high quality- if your equipment supports the balanced standards.  I've used ancient balanced cables in my system and other's, compared right beside cables that cost $1000/foot and heard no difference between them. If your equipment is balanced but does not support the standard then that benefit of cable neutrality seems to be eroded!

Think about balanced lines as a system that allows you to vastly reduce or eliminate cable problems, rather than just throwing money at it as happens with single-ended cables.

Your second sentence is a good example of the Veblen Effect; the idea that just because its more expensive it will also be better. With balanced lines, if you support the standard, this isn't true. I refer you to other's posts in this thread.

In your third paragraph, if I can point something out: Being able to hear differences in cables isn't a good thing. Its good that you have a system of revealing character that can delineate such things as cables, but consider that exactly such a system might also be able to show you that cables can sound exactly the same (if the equipment supports the balanced standard).

The reason hearing cable differences isn't good is simple. I'm pretty sure no-one has every compared side by side all the interconnect cables available; there seem to be hundreds if not thousands of cable manufacturers- usually comparing cables you might have 3 or 4 at best. So which one is right?? The actual answer is 'none of them are'. This is for a very simple reason! Let's say you chose the best of all the cables in your audition. The problem is, next year that cable manufacturer will have a better cable (maybe more money too) and if he doesn't, someone else will. We all know this to be a fact. What the balanced line system does for you is it allows you to get off that white elephant (because what sort of money are you going to get out of a set of used cables) merry go round. You can buy a set of inexpensive cables and they'll sound just as good as an expensive set. I see cable interaction as a hidden cost of single-ended products on this account; if you're running a single ended system you'll have no choice but to audition cables.

Now to your last paragraph. If the balanced line equipment is supporting the standard, the signal level will be exactly the same between balanced and single-ended. Think of an output transformer driving the balanced line- with one end of the winding on pin2 of the XLR and other end of the winding on pin3. Now if you tied pin3 to pin1 (ground) you'd have a single-ended output, but the actual voltage produced would be exactly the same.

Most balanced equipment that does not support the standard has two single-ended outputs, each referencing ground, out of phase with the other. In this case, if you go from single-ended to balanced, you'll get a 6dB increase. But in this setup, ground is referenced so its not supporting the standard (AES48). Do you see the distinction?

@atmasphere Thanks for joining the conversation!!