At what distance are balanced XLR cables needed?

Atmasphere, whose opinion carries a lot of weight, has suggested that fancy wire is of little value in balanced interconnects.

There is a little more to that statement than meets the eye. For example, Ralph indicates that the balanced cable used between his preamps and amps need not be anything more than Mogami cable. The reason being his designs support the 600 ohm standard, something used in pro audio, and thereby controls the interconnect and makes the capacitive, inductive, resistive and other aspects of the cable negligible. Not all components are designed to this standard.

To further clarify, according to Ralph who posted this in another thread I'm a participant in, a low output impedance will mean that the preamp can drive a load of less than 1000 ohms without loss of bandwidth, voltage or increase in distortion. IOW if you can hear differences in the cable between the line section and the power amp, then the cable is not being controlled.

I have heard significant differences between IC's in the critical line-stage to amp link with Audio Research, CAT, BAT, Aesthetix, Aria/Counterpoint, to name a few products. Are you claiming that the designers of these products are not competent to "control" the cable?

Actually I was restating something Ralph Karsten restated in this thread:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1276356977&openflup&531&4#531

It is 8 paragraphs into the response if you include the numbered paragraphs.

Personally, I think Ralph has been on to something for a while. There is some credence to supporting the 600 ohm standard in balanced designs. Not many manufacturers do. This does not make them incompetent, but it does allow the cable to exert an influence on the signal. As for single ended designs the ability to design components to control the cable is more difficult. As Ralph states in the first sentence of this response to me in another thread:

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?aamps&1276356977&openflup&537&4#537

Driving a load of less than 1000 ohms is not an easy task. So it makes sense that in single ended designs you could more easily hear differences in cables.

FWIW, I hear very little difference in cables in my system these days. I've sold off all my Stealth and other uber expensive cables and am running very modestly priced cables in my system. There's not much I'm missing IMO. Allowed me to to put more money in my components as well.

I have often marvelled at the fact that audiphiles are willing to pay large sums for cables, yet are often uninterested in a proven system that eliminates cable artifact altogether.

Think of it this way. If you have two cables and one sounds better than the other, right away you have to be suspicious of both. Why? Next year, the manufacturer of the 'better' cable will have a new model that is more expensive yet, and sounds better- we have all seen this! How about a system where the cheapest cable sounds as good as the best cable? Wouldn't that be something of interest?

Finally THE TRUTH.