Do Costly XLR Cables Make A Difference?

Serious question here…

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My current XLR cable costs about $2k actual price paid.

I’m looking at an alternative pair up to about $2k perhaps $3k tops if it is proven that the cable is able to bring a noticeable or worthwhile if not significant difference. I am actually looking at the Wireworld Silver Eclipse 8 and Gold Eclipse 8 XLR.

Any experience would be appreciated

Have you gone the other way and compared the $2k cable to a $100?
Was it noticeably better?

Thanks @reimarc .
 

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There is a lot more going on, then just sending current through a wire, …

It is more like sending the electric field around the wire, then current in the wire for an IC.
A speaker cable has more of the current. 

Cotton and “naked” are more affecting the field and how it propagates. Whether we hear much of what is happening is uncertain, but it could get pretty nuanced.

I got some cotton ones to try out.

 

Earlier today I posted a recommendation to compare the current XLRs to some bargain cables that can be had from any music supply retailer, costing in the $15-$40 range. Implication was if there was no sonic difference noticed then no need to progress.

However, my post was removed. I’d like to know why. It was intended as a reasonable and cost effective potential solution. Not everybody on this forum has thousands to spend on cables. Some audiophiles appreciate a low cost option.

Was my post considered facetious? It wasn’t.

And the first response (mine) in this thread suggested the same thing @volumizer .
If the $2k cables can be picked out compared to the $25 ones 7 times out of 10, then there is a reason to believe that the OP should be looking at other cables.

if not, then…?

I am sort of a cheap fellow… so my $50 IC cables are Mogami and Nuetrik with solder and flux cost and I use the brown jacket so they match the wood floor colour and hide any coffee stains. Maybe those cables are more like $100 in value, so I am only getting the exact length I need with my wire cutters, iron, and effort.

If I were Ryder, I would follow one of the advices above (muvluv) and try to make my own cable, honestly: that’s one of my future projects as well. If you look at the architecture of a "naked" cable, it seems that the most important factor will be the nature of your conductor (e.g. 99.9999% pure and drawn non-crystalline or single-crystal copper, silver, or a Cu/Au alloy wire, which can be bought from Mundorf in Germany) shielded by a non-muddling insulation such as cotton,

what causes muddling and is the muddling measurable?
If it is some hysterysis of the dielectric, that say a battery bias is trying to overcome… then does the cotton address the hysterysis to achieve the same result?

extra-thin silicon or even air, plus the amount of material resistance and the resulting impedance of the entire cable (in tis context urbiecontribution about Neotech’s square OCC copper or silver conductors is worth following up, I would submit). All these factors contribute to the degree of "purity" of an audio signal.

I got some cotton jacked wire for IC cables but, again, can this stuff be measured or picked out in a blind test?
I am assuming that the capacitance may be lower as the dielectric constant decreases, but unless the thing driving it has a high output impedance, then does that even matter?

Is the “purity” of this audio signal measurable? And how does it show up? I.e. In what measurement? @reimarc

@reimarc the field is zero when it is connected but not energising the conductors with a signal.
Maybe there is a gradient in the room as one moves up, but it should still be around zero with a cable that is driven closer to what the local ground it at.

With respect to smearing, the speed of light is pretty high, and unless the cable is quite long, or there is a lot of dispersion (which looks like group delay), then I cannot imagine a huge contribution.

That fact that many people are not critical of time delay, nor group delay in speakers, seems at odds with being very concerned with it popping up to a lower extent in the cables.

Maybe it does, but I doubt I can afford many of those cables.

reimarc - What’s most interesting is that even if we could measure every aspect of cables and audio equipment in general, listener preference would still trump. My ideal would be to meaningfully correlate measurements to sound signatures so that it would be possible to use the measurements to make at least an educated as to whether I might appreciate the product

I can always hear a difference when I know how much the gear costs and I am looking directly at it.

When one can tell a difference in a blind A/B test, then it suggests that the difference is more than thee chance of a good guess… or seeing the cable while listening.
If there are 6 dozen cables that sound similar, and one differs, it might mean that the 6 are all more neutral ones. But it doesn’t mean that we might llke the odd sounding one better.

Because all materials involved form an inter-relationship, as do electromagnetic fields outside of the system. Its not just "one thing" happening.

The field is part of the system, it is not outside of it.