$20 XLR cables that sound good

I think that Ralph's statement about cables is also contingent on balanced equipment being fully differential and following a 600 ohm standard. Not all balanced designs are created equal in this respect. I believe there is a white paper on the Atma-sphere site that discusses this.

Also, if you own an Atma-sphere amp and preamp then Ralph does recommend the Mogami between the components. However, he told me recently that from source to preamp one could benefit from a better cable. Again it all depends on the source equipments design.

Personally I've used a 25' run of Mogami Gold between my Rowland preamp and VAC amps and found it to be more than adwquate sound wise.

Seems Like Ralph needs some help on what he recommends, we obviously know more about his products then he does. Maybe when you buy an amp for 15K, he thinks you need to save a buck on Mogamis. I doubt he has ever listened to them, we know better. Sorry for more crap, it just sounds like that what we are saying here.

I first want to point out that OTL designs such as Ralph's have considerably greater output impedance than most amplifiers, and are designed based on what he refers to as a power paradigm, as opposed to the much more common voltage source paradigm, and so we should be cautious extrapolating from what works best with his amplifiers to others.

For that matter, as Vett93 alluded to above, source components or preamps with highish output impedances will tend to be "revealing" of cable "differences" which are in reality just the interaction of their output impedance with differing capacitances of the cables being compared. And power amplifiers driving difficult loads (loads that are either low impedance at some frequencies, or are highly capacitive such as many electrostatics) may react to those loads differently depending on speaker cable inductance and resistance.

Not to mention that many expensive cables are designed to be non-neutral.

I'm not particularly taking a position on the disagreements which have been expressed in this thread, just pointing out that it's easy to mis-generalize about cable differences, and that some of the reasons for differences don't correlate with price.

Regards,
-- Al

Regards,
-- Al

Jafox,

My view point is that well designed, well matched and well built gear should not be a victim of slight differences in cables. I know you disagree with this approach to equipment selection but from my perspective we simply disagree on what is a "well designed, well matched and well built" gear. I don't subscribe to the princess and pea philosophy - I expect my gear to work despite a pea underneath twenty mattresses. I know you think the sound of my gear will be awful from your perspective but I value repeatability and robustness in products under a variety of conditions and loads and levels. I value these aspects equally as much as the sound quality. I would not be happy with a "princess and the pea" type product just in the same way I could not handle a speaker that required my head to be in a vice like position to get the perfect imaging - I like and expect a large sweetspot - I even expect to be able to stand up and have it sound substantially the same (why I prefer a far-field position).

Shadorne and Clio 09,

I have a Krell FPB-600c amp, an Ayre K-1xe preamp, and an Ayre Cx-7e CDP - all differentially balanced. I don't think anyone (who is rational) would question the quality of the design, components, and assembly of these products (or their power supplies). I can tell a HUGE difference between different XLR interconnects on this system.

I do agree that inexpensive XLR cables all sound about the same - good (or adequate as Clio09 says), but leave a lot of sound quality on the table compared to the best. Admittedly, the best cables are very expensive and usually complex in their design and construction. There is no arguing that the inexpensive cables are a much better value.