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Long run XLR cables

Are there significant improvements to be gained by using home audio specific cables versus high quality pro audio cables such as Mogami or Monster. I don’t like frittering money away unnecessarily but I recently switched my main cables from Mogami gold to SVS soundpath when I need new subwoofer cables and I noticed a slight veil over the sound when I switched. Any thought and insights would be appreciated.

johnnybwood
johnnybwood OP
17 posts
 

Thanks for that! I’ll take a look into those companies.

cdamiller5
98 posts
 

The Iconoclast XLR are excellent. I have a 21 FT run going from my Clearaudio Master table and Sim Audio 810 phono preamp to my AR Ref 10 and love them! Believe I paid $3100 for the pair. This is their best interconnect. Stunning quality and great service. Just spoke to them at Axpona.

tonyrox
22 posts
 

Mogami and Canare are the pro industry standards, with Whirlwind using Accusonic cable. 

I'm using Canare L-4E6S cable wherever I can.  System is dead quiet, no hum, no rizz, no noise of any kind.  Benchmark DAC3, Mini-DSP SHD and Benchmark AHjB2 amp.

Notes from John Siau.

The Importance of Star-Quad Microphone Cable

wolf_garcia
6,695 posts
 

Truly transformer balanced ins and outs are what you really need for long balanced cables to do their thing...like in studio and PA stuff where you might go hundreds of feet, and I've also noticed over the years that better quality balanced cables do make a difference.

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,794 posts
 

If a system is differentially balanced, then expensive XLR interconnects should not sound differently from Mogami or Gotham Cable or Canare XLR interconnects.

If components are not differentially balanced, or transformer coupled, then all bets are off.

@tvad Good to see you posting here again.

The actual issue isn't whether its differentially balanced, its whether the output of the source or preamp supports AES48 (Audio Engineering Society file 48), the balanced line standard. If it does not, the cables will affect the sound and 'all bets are off' as you put it. But transformers can do the job quite well.

Put another way, there are fully differential balanced preamps that don't support AES48 (actually quite a lot of them at this point) so they can't drive long interconnects and you hear differences when you change from one cable to another, which should not happen if the balanced line standard is being observed.

I use Mogami Neglex at home and don't worry about the 'sound' of the cables, but the equipment in my system supports AES48.

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