When to choice XLR over RCA ICs.

williewonka

... a very well designed single ended interconnect cable is every bit as good, if not better than an XLR cable due to several factors ...

If all else is equal and the cables are being used between truly balanced components, I can’t imagine a scenario where unbalanced RCA connections could be better than balanced connections.

@ketchup Mogami Neglex is the gold standard of high quality balanced cables in the studio. They employ oxygen free copper and polyethylene dielectrics (the only thing better perforamance is Teflon, but it does not prevent oxidation of the conductor inside, so polyethylene might be the best thing out there), so in that regard are on par with cables from the high end audio world- I've seen Mogami products rebranded on that account.

@atmasphere That would be something like the quad core W2534?  Or will the W2549 also work?  They say the W2549 is a "Neglex type," but it's a two conductor cable with a shield.  Not sure if it would work as well as the W2534.

@ketchup Either will work fine. I use the 2449 in my system. The quad core is a bit better if you have a noisy environment as the quad construction helps with noise rejection.

Thanks @atmasphere. I already have 2549 single ended ICs at a few location in my system, so converting them to balanced is what I’ll do.

@cleeds - RE:

If all else is equal and the cables are being used between truly balanced components, I can’t imagine a scenario where unbalanced RCA connections could be better than balanced connections.

Unfortunately all things are not equal because of the following...

• The best low mass RCA connector is significantly better at transferring an audio signal than the very best XLR connector is able to achieve - i.e. at present
• Then there are the insulations and cable geometries, which can only really be "equaled" with a very custom cable build
• even then the number of conductors in an XLR cables can cause noise issues within the cable itself. This noise is not canccelled out by the balanced processing of the +ve and -ve signals in the component because it resides on the neutral conductor, which impacts circuit performance

OK, so even with the very best cables we are talking miniscule differences here, but the signle ended RCA interconnect for a 1-2 meter cable will always be just a little superior to an XLR ables of a similar design/geometry/build.

Due to the complexities of cable design there are very few people that will step upto the task of designing/building cables having their own geometry.

So, for the most part the XLR cable will "generally" prove to be superior.

But if you are into custom built cables having their own noise supressing geometry you can spare some expense by building a single ended cable that will better the performance of a similalrly designed XLR cable.

Unfrotunately, since the internal design approaches between the XLR circuit and the single ended circuit within a component can vary, actually proving which is better is incredibly hard, especially if the component’s design is based on a balanced approach and the RCA is there just to accomodate a customer perceived preference.

Regards - Steve