Do Costly XLR Cables Make A Difference?

Go the other way first.  Get some bargain microphone XLRs from guitar center, and if you can't hear a difference between them and your $2K cables, you're done:

This is a fine discussion and - so far - unencumbered by righteous zealots. I was a cable skeptic until I visited a NordOst demo at the 2008 RMAF (together with my unbiased - because uninterested - wife: we are both scientists and know everything there is to know about expectation bias). The demonstration involved loudspeaker cables, a standard Radio Shack, followed by 4 NordOst sets of increasing price (if I remember correctly, "Odin" was the top). I do not remember the brands of the front electronics, but they sure looked very impressive with two mono-amps driving the channels. The most impressive part were the small X-1 loudspeakers made by Raidho, a Danish manufacturer of high-end gear (https://raidho.dk/product-showcase/x-series/): these are two-way and quite small shelf boxes with a sound that completely filled the large ballroom of the Mariott hotel. But I digress: the demo music was a big-band swing recording (Basie??) and both, my wife and I were floored by the first presentation (Radio Shack cables) because of the 3-dimensionality of the Raidho presentation. But then came the "shocker" when the lowest-tier NordOst cable was being switched in: the music gained remarkable focus with individual sections clearly defined in space, or in other words, the presentation became definitely more realistic while not losing anything in terms of fireworks and sparkle: the effect was so obvious that we both were really surprised. But then came the "downer": the following three cables, while definitely leading to some improvements in terms of pin-pointing even more the individual musicians, did not really fundamentally change the experience in a way that would have us to say: oh yeah! In other words, at least for us, the presentation showed us one thing - most likely not what NordOst were shooting for: definitely a diminished cost/quality return ratio. In this regard, I think many of the above commentators pointed in the same direction. I must also say that my hearing has considerably worsened in the past 15 years, and that I would possible no longer really experience these last precious effects. And of course: these were speaker cables, while the original question was about XLR. I am currently using Anticable connects after reading deeply into cable construction philosophy (https://anticables.com/interconnects/analog-xlr-interconnects). There is actually a lot of very interesting science around this topic, going as deep as making Maxwell's Field Effects responsible for the audible differences of cable architecture: apparently, the electrical signal "travels" on the outside of the conductor as a disturbance of the circumferent quantum-field, and therefore metal litz-based cables "muddle" the signal inadvertently; single-strand conductors should therefore be better. Several sources state convincingly that thick PVC insulators as well degrade the audio signal in terms of "clarity", and therefore advocate a "naked" approach. Now, I must admit that in this case (my changing from Mogami XLR to Anticable XLR) I could not hear an earthshaking difference in sound presentation: maybe a certain "crispness" in the upper midrange, but I cannot really say for certain (see my musings about my hearing above: after all my ears have been in constant use for 73 years). And here it comes: at least as far as I am concerned, my choices of audio gear are based on a degree of insecurity on my part: "what if...", I could have done better? "What if ..." I am missing in my current set-up a degree of enjoyment and musical veracity I cannot even imagine? And "What if ..." a few thousand dollars more could actually transport me into this experience? That's what many folks on Audiogon seem to mean when they speak of the "Rabbit Hole"; and yes, I am aware of this danger. And so should the originator of this thread be (Ryder): spending an extra couple of thousand $$ on an interconnect might ameliorate his insecurity but not heal it: reading the next cable review in one of the paid-by-advertisers audiophile rags, might again shake his confidence to the core (what these reviews are exactly designed to do; and yes, I fall for those too, as I do for good copy-writing in general). If I were Ryder, I would follow one of the advices above (muvluv) and try to make my own cable, honestly: that's one of my future projects as well. If you look at the architecture of a "naked" cable, it seems that the most important factor will be the nature of your conductor (e.g. 99.9999% pure and drawn non-crystalline or single-crystal copper, silver, or a Cu/Au alloy wire, which can be bought from Mundorf in Germany) shielded by a non-muddling insulation such as cotton, extra-thin silicon or even air, plus the amount of material resistance and the resulting impedance of the entire cable (in tis context urbie contribution about Neotech's square OCC copper or silver conductors is worth following up, I would submit). All these factors contribute to the degree of "purity" of an audio signal, especially in a single-ended cable (but less so in a balanced (XLR) configuration, as the common wisdom seems to indicate). And then of course the fundamental issue: is my gear of a high-enough quality (sensitivity) that I can actually perceive the subtleties that a multi $$ interconnect might (or might not) reveal in my system? I love the comparison by akg_ca making the analogy between putting racing tires on a regular car and expecting them to turn it into a sports car. In this context: make sure you got a DAC/Preamp combo that can indeed reveal those subtleties, lest your potential interconnect investment would be much better spent on your loving spouse or even better, a contribution to your local food bank: making you feel good is guaranteed in this case!

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. 

 

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

I honestly do not know, @holmz: I never did the comparison in a blind A/B setting, let alone did I perform any measurements. I just re-iterated what I had read in various blogs and articles written by specialists (I, on the other hand, am an organic chemist and not an electrical engineer). My only personal reference would be swapping insulated Mogami XLRs for "naked" Anticable ones; and as I have said: the acoustic differences were minor (I got the Anticables for a basement discount, btw). But I must say nevertheless: reading deeply into the physics behind cable design and architecture was quite humbling. There is a lot more going on, then just sending current through a wire, when it comes to a veracious reproduction of highly modulated and complex audio signals, that's for sure; and the scientist in me thinks there might be still effects out there which we do not know about and hence do not know how to correctly measure and quantify. On the other hand, though: the final link in the event chain is our brain, and just before that our innate mechanism to transform minute tree-dimensional air pressure variations into electrical signals. And quite obviously, the fidelity of this mechanism suffers from age. In other words, whatever objective truth there might be behind what we read about cable X being "better" than cable Y, it might just no longer be audible to us once we finally got the financial means to embark on the serious quest for the audio Grail.