Transsexual, Androgynous and Hybrid interconnects

I think Grant (Tvad) makes a great point.

However, as an AtmaSphere owner (and, it is a small club, which I why I agree with Grant), having a cable like you mentioned is VERY attractive to me. The Atmas are simply quieter when you run into their balanced input. Yet, as I have always went into them from a single ended component, be it preamp, CDP, or tuner, I have run this kind of cable successfully.

There are probably other people out there with a similar situation to me, but again, I think Grant's opinion is most wise.

This is not for a subwoofer. I purchased a set of Infinity IRS Beta speakers and they come with a servo control/crossover that has all RCA connections and my amps only have XLR connections.

I understand about the re-sale value problem....I'll deal with that later. But from an audible standpoint, would a custom cable be better than using an adapter?

Any time you reduce the number of connection points, the better off you are. [I work in telecom and it always amazed me how many splices exist between the telephone and the CO/end point. Yes, it works, to ~3kHz or so.]

That said, the Betas ARE an end point, at least for awhile, and if/when you choose to sell, perhaps you could bundle the cables as part of the deal, provided the buyer had a similar setup. I always rail against RCAs, and wish they could and would go away. At least the technology is not stale thanks to the likes of WBT and Eichmann, among others.

There's a recent thread about this topic, and one chap found little difference from the Cardas and the generic ones he found from Markertek. No idea what was in his rig, your results may vary.

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?fcabl&1144257714&openfrom&1&4#1