It was Atmasphere’s comments to me on some thread about component placement (he keeps his gear far from the speakers) that led me to look into AES48 compliant gear.
I do have some experience with AES48 gear, which was the Benchmark DAC3 HGC and the AHB2 amp. I tried various Balanced interconnects from a $60 25 year old from Bryston to Audience Au24e and I could not tell any difference. However, with other non-compliant gear I thought the Audience was better. So I am kind of a believer about AES48 though not the most scientific testing.
That is a good idea about contacting him for a cable.
It looks like I will be able to hide my system in a "closet", behind a small wall, with the system inches from my seating position. This is important to me as I have become incredibly lazy to get up and walk the few feet to my current system position. Long interconnects enable this laziness and more importantly allow me to clear the space between my speakers. A remote does not work for all my components, such as tuner.
Though, I would find it strange that a balanced cable- that is, balanced to balanced, not be wired to support the AES standard. Of course, if you went from RCA to balanced or vice versa, all bets are off.
My understanding after looking at a few cable manufacturers ordering web sites is that some of them take the cable and then terminate the ends with the users choice of XLR or RCA. So in that context I do not see how a cable could be declared as INTERNALLY balanced.
