With help from the work and advice of Steve Reeve, Joe Levy and Nelson Pass I have designed and built DIY “Ribbon XLR interconnects.” The design consists of three 39” 11ga Teflon tubes layed out parallel 1” from each other and sandwiched between 32” of a folded over 4.5” of vinyl drawer liner, yielding a 2” wide ribbon with approximately 3.5” of tubing extending from each end. 3M 30FN contact cement is used to hold the assembly together. 24ga naked .999 pure silver wire is inserted into the tubes and soldered to the connectors. The parts cost is under $35 for a one meter pair. After 200 hours of break-in, I suggest you use these interconnects to compare single ended and commercially available XLR interconnects.
Switched from RCA to XLR Interconnects - WOW
I just received a set of Pangea True Balanced Premier SE XLR interconnects from Audio Advisor and connected them between my phono preamp to my amp.
I really didn't expect to hear any major difference, but man was I wrong. The sound quality is night and day improved over my previous cables (Clear Day Cables RCA cables). The improvement in bass response is amazing, and the soundstage got about 2 feet wider and deeper. Mids and highs are also more clearly defined, and the backgrounds are about as black as I have ever heard. What also surprised me is how much hotter the signal is into the amp. I had to turn the volume down quite a bit to equal levels I usually listed to with the previous cables.
FYI, the preamp is a Parasound JC3+ and the amp is a Lyngdorf TDAI-3400.
I'm really impressed. I had always wanted to try using balanced cables but this is the first amp I have owned that had balanced inputs.
I really didn't expect to hear any major difference, but man was I wrong. The sound quality is night and day improved over my previous cables (Clear Day Cables RCA cables). The improvement in bass response is amazing, and the soundstage got about 2 feet wider and deeper. Mids and highs are also more clearly defined, and the backgrounds are about as black as I have ever heard. What also surprised me is how much hotter the signal is into the amp. I had to turn the volume down quite a bit to equal levels I usually listed to with the previous cables.
FYI, the preamp is a Parasound JC3+ and the amp is a Lyngdorf TDAI-3400.
I'm really impressed. I had always wanted to try using balanced cables but this is the first amp I have owned that had balanced inputs.