Audiolund Cable Ownership Review - XLR to RCA Interconnect

Hello All,

 

It looks like the cables from a small boutique cable manufacturer from Singapore named Audiolund is not being discussed on this forum previously & hence I am going to follow my track record of introducing new brands to the fellow members of this forum 😀.

 

I was using a pure silver RCA cable made using a Chinese manufacturer's cable. While I was perfectly happy with it, for some reason I looked at the specs of my DAC viz. Merging NADAC & found out that there is a difference in the specs of noise, dynamic range & even the output voltage (XLR puts out more than double the voltage of RCA) of RCA and XLR out. So this made me very keen on trying out the XLR out from my dac instead of RCA. But unfortunately my integrated amp viz. Bakoon Amp-13R does not have any XLR in, I was holding myself from trying this out. But recently few of my friends told me that XLR out from their dac sounded better than RCA out even if they used XLR to RCA cables, that really pushed me to search for XLR to RCA cable for my setup.

 

I again read the Merging's literature for NADAC & in it they had recommended to use RCA but if one had to use XLR to RCA then they had suggested to keep the -ve of XLR open & not to short it with ground pin. I later discovered that this type of pin configuration is used by many pro companies such as Benchmark, Weiss etc. for the XLR to RCA converters. So with the pin layout clear I did some research on which cable to pick for my dac. I wanted to stay with Silver as conductor as I was already using it & was really happy with it. Since I had helped my friend to make his OCC silver RCA cable using Neotech cable & Viborg pure silver RCA, I had a good starting point. But getting them imported here in India was a big pain in a$$. Hence I continued to search for the ready made cables. But I found almost all of the branded cables out of my budget.

 

I had previously made an ultrashort ethernet cable for use inside my dac from Audiolund & that cable was very good in build and SQ, so I checked Audiolunds’s website again for XLR to RCA cables. There were XLR to RCA cables but they were not as per my required termination format, so I contacted Danny who is the owner & master craftsman at Audiolund about making one cable for me with pinout as per the Merging’s specifications. He immediately agreed for it & then asked me which series I wanted to go for.

 

Since he makes all copper and all silver cables and everything in between I went through his all lineups and settled on Extreme Silver line since it uses more silver (3 mm sq ) and less of copper (1.8mm sq.) I thought that it would be perfect to have a balanced sound signature. Danny uses OCC silver cables of varied gauge from 32 AWG to 15AWG as a mix for each conductor along with tinned copper wires from Deulund which is said to have the vintage Western Electric sound quality. Also there is an option to replace 15 & 18 AWG cores with Deulund silver foil cables which are Silver in oiled cotton wires. Since I wanted to have as much silver as I could, I asked Danny if he could add Deulund wires and still keep all the OCC silver cores. Danny confirmed saying that this is possible which took the overall gauge of each core to staggering 10AWG..yeah many speaker cables are also not this thick & even the power cables. I chose the option of using pure silver connectors from Viborg as after including so much silver it was sensible to stick to pure silver connectors.

 

Now such cable from other brands would have costed me a kidney or more organs. But this cable was just 1K SGD. Yes you are reading it correct, that’s not even 1k USD. I knew from helping my friend in building his OCC silver RCA that the cost of that RCA was near the cost of this XLR to RCA cable (though my cable is just 75 cm whereas friend’s RCA cable was 1 meter). The friend’s RCA cable was nowhere near as thick as mine, making my cable actually better value than DIY. Now that’s super impressive.

 

I was so excited to listen to my new cable but courier company managed to test my patience by delaying my shipment. After almost 1 week of delay I finally laid my hands on the new cable. But was the wait worth it? Well, hell yeah! It was all worth the wait.

 

Just holding it in hand I was able to appreciate the amazing build quality of the cable. Since the cable was as thick as my power cord I expected it to be on the stiffer side. But that was not an issue. During the transit one of the RCA centre pin got bent, but that proved to the confirmatory test for the purity of the connectors. Only pure Silver is this soft. I managed to straighten it up just by bending it back by my hand (thumb actually) & the cable was ready to be inserted in my system.

 

All connectors locked onto their respective sockets firmly & securely. Now was the time to start playing the music. Danny suggests burn in of 100 to 200 hrs but that didn’t mattered to me. Right from the first song it was very clear to me that this cable is truly great. In spite of the cable being unbroken & completely new, it made the music flow with utmost ease. It also made the details pop out more clearly. The overall music was more organic sounding yet it’s extension at both extremes was top notch. Treble is detailed, well extended yet delicate and not harsh at all. All the other attributes were preserved.

 

Having listened to this cable for more than 5 days, it seems to be making me enjoy music more than before. I am listening to the albums after albums for hours yet I am not feeling fatigued at all. This truly has been a wonderful cable well worth all the cost and my wait time. I had one of the fellow audiophile come home for a listening session (my entire system) for the first time & even he found the music to be freely flowing and absolutely non-fatiguing making him listen to my system for straight 3-4 hours.

 

I am now completely sold on the cables by Audiolund & now wish to change all my power cables to Audiolund cables, but I will first let my wallet recover before next blow and make sure that I am not being thrown out of the house for splurging all the money on audiophilia. Till that time keep up the great work Danny.

 

Regards,

Audio_phool